Stewardship Reflections – January 2007
The recent congregational meeting highlighted the difficulties of the institutional church to use the resources that God has given us to proclaim His word and kingdom here on earth. The council struggled with many tradeoffs to write the budget that we voted on, and they deserve our thanks for that work. But they also deserve our help in making a budget. Therefore, the stewardship committee will organize and execute a pledge drive during the Lenten season.
The first purpose of the pledge drive will be to give the council a better idea of the income that they should use in budgeting. Anyone planning a financial undertaking of any sort should make a plan based upon the best possible data. We have not had a pledge drive at St Paul’s in many years, and the council is at a disadvantage when they try to budget. As a corporate body, this is a prudent and wise decision, and it should help the council to write a better budget based upon better data. The pledge drive, ideally, would be taken before the budget process, and we are too late to input to the 2007 budget. But the drive can and will give better data for the 2008 budget. The usefulness of the pledge drive depends on the portion of the congregation that pledges and then the faithfulness of each of us to fulfill our pledges once made. The council deserves our full support and best efforts in both actions.
At a personal level, I think that the pledge drive also strongly supports the ideas of stewardship in helping us define our relationship with God. Our giving is so little in comparison to what God gives us on a daily basis that we do well to commit to God some portion in return. We can never repay God for His gifts to us, but we can do our part to support His church here on earth. By making a pledge, and keeping it in mind when we give each week, we make a personal commitment to God. As pastor has stressed in his recent sermons, God wants more than a financial commitment from us. He wants our whole beings. He wants us to think of Him in everything we do every day. He wants to be the first priority in our lives. This is right in light of everything He has done for us and given to us. But it is difficult for us to do this as we struggle with our lives “in the flesh.” The pledge drive will give us one opportunity to make this commitment to God.
Knowing that God wants more than our money, we are designing
the pledge drive to include our commitment of time and talents to God and to