DID I PROMISE THAT?
I PROMISED TO SUPPORT THE CHURCH BY MY GIFTS AND SERVICE
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
February 14, 2010
II Corinthians 8: 9-15; 9: 6-8
Ephesians 4: 1-7, 11-16
In January, I began a series of sermons on the promises that we make when we joined a Methodist Church, and that we re-affirm whenever someone is baptized. To date, we’ve covered our promises to support the church by our prayers, our presence and our witness.
This morning I conclude the series with our thinking together about the promise we made to support the ministry of the church by our gifts and service.
If you think you know what is meant by gifts and service, you’re probably more right than wrong. From the beginning of my ministry, I’ve told entering classes of new members that, the short story, is that service has to do with what you do in the world to serve Christ by serving others including what you do in the church to make the church stronger. I’ve said that gifts has to do with the money we give to the church.
This morning I want to give you the longer story. I want to situate both gifts and service within the larger category of what biblically is known as “spiritual gifts.” St. Paul says that God’s Holy Spirit gives “spiritual gifts” to all who are baptized. These spiritual gifts are to be used by us to help God love the world in and through the church. In this way also, the body of Christ, the church, will be built up.
Paul mentions only a few as examples in the lesson read earlier: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. But, in another letter from Paul he also includes the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, various kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues. In your bulletins I’ve included a modern interpretation of all these gifts of God’s Holy Spirit.
The fact is, each person here has been given a gift or two or maybe three with which to serve the world and with which to help build up the church.
What is yours, do you suppose? Note at the top of the first page included in your bulletin that I’ve included a web-site that you can access and take this ‘test’ online and have it interpreted for you.
As you look at this list, can you identify one or two or three? Chances are you have another gift or two or three that God has given you that you may not know anything about. Which is why I urge you to take the test and then if you’d like give me a call so we can talk about what this might mean for you. I’d love it.
I’ve had many joys in my pastoral ministry of now 40 years next May. Among my chief joys, however, has been the absolute delight of being part of someone’s life as they discover a gift that God has given them for the church. There have even been a few who discovered a gift for shepherding that led them to ordained ministry. And this has been most rewarding for me. But, honestly, just as joyous for me has been watching someone take a job in the church that they didn’t think they could do and flourish with it.
Maybe it was visiting the homebound. Or maybe it was chairing a committee or organizing an outreach effort or teaching the junior high class or the gift of exciting the whole church about stewardship until that church set records in church giving. If I scratch my head long enough, I bet I could come up with wonderful examples of persons with gifts in every one of these categories that was an absolute joy for me to share life in the church with.
So, what are your gifts do you think? Some of you are so humble, I’m betting you’re thinking “Oh, I don’t have one of those spiritual gifts. I just do what I can.” Let me tell you this: in the Church of Jesus Christ there are no small gifts. Every gift matters as God tries to work through us towards the transformation of the world.
If you’ve been in a play you may have heard the director say there are no small parts, only small actors. Well, that’s how it is in the Church of Christ. Every gift matters. We all have to “play our parts” for the play to work – for the church to work.
Albert Schweitzer once said, “I do not know what your destiny may be, but this one thing I know: that no one of you will ever be truly happy until [you] have sought and found how [you] may serve.”
So, I urge you to consider seriously what gift God has given you to use to advance the church of Christ as it serves the world. And then, if you’re not already using it, give me a call and we’ll figure out where to turn you loose.
Because that’s what it’ll feel like. It’ll feel like you’ve just discovered your whole reason for being because this is the way God made you to feel when you discover the way to honor Christ by serving the church.
To be very sure: No one will ever be truly happy until they have sought and found how they may serve.
Next, gifts. Money. From the sublime, service, to the mundane, money? Right? No. Not at all.
As you can see from the list, one of the spiritual gifts is giving. Giving has to do with giving of our time, our talents, our treasures. Because “service” really has to do with sharing our time and talents, I want to treat sharing our “treasures” as the way we use our money to advance Christ’s cause.
As I’ve said in other settings, Jesus talked more about giving money to God than he talked about any other subject including prayer. Perhaps most memorably, Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart.”
Truth is, and Jesus knew it, one’s faith or lack of it is pretty much determined by how generously they give of their money to helping others or advancing the cause of Christ. It’s been said that looking at what we spend money on will show just who is our real god.
Well, some say, I give of my time and talents and very generously, but I need all my money. Well, God is pleased that you’re generous with your time and talent. However, unless you have a plan to give scripturally of your financial resources, you’re frankly playing games with God. And that isn’t good. In fact, you’re likely suffering spiritually because of it.
So, what do the Scriptures teach about giving? St. Paul helps us here. It’s truth for those who earn millions, and it’s truth for those who earn very little.
In the scriptures read earlier, in his writing to the church in Corinth, Paul gives 3 basic principles. First, he instructs his readers to set aside their offering each week on the first day. This is to say, to give regularly not sporadically.
Then he writes, “The gift is acceptable according to what one has.” In other words, to give proportionately. Proportionate to income.
And then Paul concludes with a challenge and a promise: “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
So, first, we are to give regularly. Second, we are to give proportionate to income. And, third, we are to give cheerfully.
This isn’t a typical stewardship sermon so I won’t elaborate much further, but I do want to say a brief word about each.
First, we are to give regularly. That is, we plan to give so much to God and then we do it regularly. Which is to say, we give off the top, not off the bottom.
If we love God most of all, we must make sure not to short God. Our practice is not to see how much money we have left after we’ve decided what other things to buy. Instead, we do it the other way around: we commit to giving God what is due God and then with what is left we buy life’s necessities and pleasures.
The Bible calls this way of giving, the giving of the first fruits after the agricultural world of God’s first called people. They were to give from the best of their crops and offspring, not from the left-overs. We may not live in an agricultural world, but the principal is the same.
Second, Paul says we should give proportionately. For me this has always been a tithe, 10% of what I earn. My folks did it and I can’t stop. Not all of it goes to a church or churches, I need to say. But it all goes to Christian mission if not to a particular church. I can’t imagine cutting back.
Tithing is the biblical standard and was the practice of stewardship in effect during Jesus’ day.
Now, as I said, if you’re presently giving 10% of your income to God’s mission in the world you, too, probably can’t imagine stopping. On the other hand, if you’re not giving 10% of your income to God’s mission in the world, you probably can’t imagine how you could ever do that.
The key is to determine the percentage of income you are giving now and then try as hard as you can to steadily increase it year by year.
Say you’re making $40,000 a year and giving $1,000 to church and charity. That’s 2 ½%. So, you try to get closer to 10%, maybe just a percentage or even half a percentage point a year until you get there. God is honored by such devotion, and I can almost guarantee that if you do this you will find blessings in your lives you never imagined.
But, now here’s an interesting piece that no preacher I know would tell you about if it wasn’t also in our Holy Scriptures. Paul admonishes that we should only give if we can do so cheerfully. Not reluctantly, but cheerfully. This is also a biblical principle. God only wants cheerful givers on God’s team!
We promise to be loyal to Christ through the United Methodist Church and do all in our power to strengthen its ministries and to faithfully participate in its ministries by our prayers, our presence, our witness, our gifts and our service.
I urge you to spend some time with the list of spiritual gifts I referenced earlier. And call me if you’d like to talk more about what God may be revealing to you about how you can serve God in new ways.
Further, I urge you to take a serious look at your financial stewardship. Now, without the pressure of a pledge campaign. What does your use of your money tell you about yourself? Does your giving match your faith? Are you satisfied? Can you do better? Do you want to do better?
As Paul wrote: “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
Truly, we are blessed to be a blessing – with our lives, our particular talents as well as the unique spiritual gifts that God has given us to advance the kingdom of Christ. And, of course, all this includes our money. We are blessed to be a blessing. After all, this is what we promised.
