Have you ever sat down in a quiet place and pondered this? Some of us have and others view this as just another obligation and askance from the Church. As we grow in our faith and commitment to the Church and God’s work where does stewardship really fall into our priorities?

When we are young we are focused on starting our lives, new marriages, careers, raising children, their educational needs, the children’s involvements, etc. and stewardship usually was at the low end of our priorities. As time went on and our children grew up, etc, we then turned our attention to the respective career needs, vacations, and retirement saving. To look at it another way on our many priorities where did stewardship fit into the list of things that we wrote the check for each week, probably not near the very top of the list of those bills to be paid. As we mature in our faith, stewardship begins to rise to the top of those items that get paid closer to the top of the list each week. Then at some point we retire and are on a fixed income, then what is our priority for use of our funds?

If we put our priorities in the context of returning to God the first fruits of all He has given us, then where would our priorities of giving to the work of God through the Church be? If we took a reverse view of God’s goodness to us by what he has given us viewed by how much we return to him through our giving, do you honestly think that we would all have what we have today? We all need to acknowledge that God is a great giver, he gives us life, intellect, skills, energy, brains to think with and on and on….. Without these freely given gifts, where would we be? If we can connect a fair return to God for His work through the Church to this, then we can take a realistic look at our personal giving.

In last week’s sermon, Fr. Seel talked about the biblical standard of the tithe and a commitment path to get there through proportional giving. If you are not already tithing, proportional giving is the commitment to grow your giving by a certain percentage each year until we get to the tithe in not too many years. Some believe that tithing is painful or a real hit to your available moneys to spend. A funny thing happens when you tithe, somehow God manages to make those funds available on an ongoing basis with out having to sacrifice more than a short period of time. Tithing is a matter of honor and honoring the commands of the scriptures. How we come to our tithe is a matter of personal choice, before or after taxes is a consideration in your considerations also. The old command was to give of everything received, At that time taxes were minimal and the government provided no services to the people (then the Church provided the bulk of charitable care). Today we have governments that tax us and provide many real services to each of us as well.

All of these things must enter into our thought processes as were consider our stewardship for the calendar year 2008. I ask you to carefully consider and pray about your giving and what has been freely given each of us over the past year.

In Christ, Bill Ritter

Stewardship Chair