Stewardship

If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity – Tobit 4:8-9*

 

After college, I accepted an offer to teach sixth grade World History. For that one year as a public school teacher, I found myself financially richer than I had ever been in my young adult life. At the same time, because I was a first-year teacher, I found myself living paycheck to paycheck – barely. As a single 20-something, it almost never phased me. However, when my best friend challenged me to give more to our Church – it phased me. My friend made less than me and his wife was a stay-at-home mom for their baby. Yet, they were quicker to “give according to the little [they had]” than me.

I spoke to our pastor about my financial concerns and perceived inability to give financially to the church. I told him all the reasons why I simply couldn’t give much (if anything) financially to the church– especially not ten percent! He kindly affirmed my concerns, encouraged me in the ways that I offered my time to serve the church, and gently asked, “Can you give one percent?” He said that sometimes just starting with a budgeted number can help a person get to where he or she would like to be in the future – weather that be ten percent or much more. That pastor, in his pastoral way, basically said what the apocryphal book Tobit says, “If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be afraid to give according to the little you have.”

Ten percent is a nice biblical number, yet our Lord knows what it means to live in poverty (Lk 9:58). He also knows how people too often manipulate financial giving to puff themselves up or to take advantage of vulnerable people (Luke 20:46-21:4). Our LORD “desires mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6).” Jesus calls us to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind,” and he calls us to “love our neighbor as ourself (Matt 22:36-40).

One of the many ways we can love the Lord our God and our neighbor, and at the same time “store up treasures in heaven” (Luke 12:32-34; Tobit 4:9), is through financial giving. I would encourage you to prayerfully ask our LORD to help you budget for giving to his church and those in financial need this coming year. I also pray that none of us gives “reluctantly or under compulsion,” but cheerfully out of love for our God and neighbor (2 Cor 9:7).

John Laffoon
Deacon
Minister to Youth & Families

*These verses from Tobit are one of the optional Offertory Sentences found in our BCP on pages 149-151. Here at CCA we typically use Eph 5:2: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”