This past Sunday, we launched our Fall Stewardship Campaign and I wanted to take a minute to share it with you if you missed it, or if you need to hear it again! And I want to start by giving thanks! Church, I give thanks for you today! I give thanks to our God because of each and every one of you, because we get the privilege of joining together here today whether online or in person at the church, we get to worship together, we get to share life together, we get to carry one another’s burdens and celebrate each other’s joys. I give thanks for you because of all you do in the name of the Lord to bring joy and peace and love to this world, to share with others what God has done in your life. I give thanks because together, we are the body of Christ, we are the church, and we get to bring glory to God through all we do, whether together or individually, whether here at church, or out there wherever we find ourselves. I hope you see how amazing a thing that is, and how wonderful it is to be able to give thanks to God for it all! Part of our Power of Thanks message series focus this Fall is celebrating the good things God is doing now, and preparing for the amazing things God will do in the future. Because we know that God has been, is, and will continue to call us, use us, and lead us in this great kingdom work as His church! As we prepare for that unknown future, we as the leadership of your church are asking you to join with us in praising God and trusting Him with that future. We exist as a church because of the grace of God, and we function because of the work, and the gifts given, by every person here. Because of who you are, what you do, and the heart with which you give, we get the wonderful privilege of doing this church-thing! In the mail this week, you will be getting a letter from the church to start our Fall Stewardship Campain. Each year, we ask those who call this church home to prayerfully commit to supporting the church financially in the next year. With the letter will be a pledge card. Now, this is where things sometimes get awkward. Oh no, I knew it, the church just wants my money. I hear it all the time from church folk and non church folk alike. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t want your money. We want you. We need you in fact. Without you, and you and all the other yous, we couldn’t do this great work for God that we do in our community. We couldn’t be a beacon of hope in a hopeless world. We could be the place that our community comes to for welcome, for support, to get their needs met, to find friendships and healing, to experience love and support. Without you, we can’t be the church. So we ask you to commit to that great work. It is God who calls us to commit our whole selves to that work, including our talents, including our time, and yeah, including our treasures. The truth is, we as a church cannot continue without the financial giving of our people. Without folks like you giving, and giving passionately, giving sacrificial, we can’t keep operating our building, and paying our staff, and running our programs, and offering support to those in need, and partnering with other churches and businesses and organizations to do even greater things for those around us to bring glory to God. Our pledge cards ask us to think through what we can and would like to give to the church in the next year. We use those numbers to plan our budget, to prepare for the ministries we feel led to engage in in the next year. No, your pledge card is not a bill. It’s a prayer. It’s a hope. It’s you saying, with God’s help, I will support the church with this amount of money. When you look at it, it may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but when you bring yours along with yours and mine and all of ours together, with a heart that desires to love God, then God can accomplish great things! So we ask you over the next two weeks, to take that card, and talk with God and your family about it. What do you give now? Can you continue that in the next year? Can you give more? Can you give up something in order to sacrifice for God’s church and His people? I can’t answer those questions for you. Only you and your family and God can. But what I can tell you is that when you trust God, when you commit your resources to Him, when you come together with others, God will do great things, God will be honored, and we will be blessed through it! I ask you to pray, and to make that commitment. When you do, send your pledge card into the church. If you don’t receive one in the mail this week, it’s likely we don’t have your contact information. But if you would like to join in, you can find a pledge card on our website. Send them in. Come join us for worship in person one Sunday in the next couple weeks and bring it with you. Let’s bring our prayers and commitments and resources together as God’s people, trusting Him, and working together to do this great work He has for us. And like I said at the start of this talk, I give thanks to God for each of you! I given thanks to Him for the faith you have, even if you think it’s small. I give thanks for the life you have, because through you, God is glorified! I give thanks for you because, with you, we are the church! And in that, there is great power!
1 Comment
|
AuthorCori Conran is the pastor of The United Methodist Church of Coopersville, a wife, a mother, and an avid amateur at lots of things. Archives
December 2021
Categories |