Stewardship

First United Methodist Church, Tallassee

October 24, 1993

Thank you, Larry.  It’s a privilege to share with you—for about eight minutes is what I think they told me I could have—about stewardship.  I want to talk about the concept of stewardship.  A few months ago, we decided to embark on a building ministry in this church.  We decided it was appropriate for us to do a little work on our building, and always the concept of a building ministry is very exciting, and it’s always attractive to give to a building ministry.  We want to talk about the building ministry now but in a slightly different intonation of the word.  We want to talk about building ministry because what we are really here about is building ministry.  After all, why build a church if we are not going to build ministry?

Rev. B. Gene Williams used to use a verse of scripture that goes like this.  The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.  He said that experts had told him that that is not a stewardship verse, but he used it for that purpose anyway; and I agree with him wholeheartedly.  What we are here about is managing God’s resources.  Managing those resources that He has entrusted to us.  And that is very Biblical in its origin.  Sometimes we think or even say that when the preacher starts preaching about money or about our relationship to material things, he’s quit preaching and gone to meddling.  But if our religion doesn’t have something to do with our relationship to the material things of the world, then what in the world does it have to do with?  After all, this is a theological concept—you don’t have to go very far in the Bible until you find Jesus telling the rich young ruler “sell all of your possessions and give to the poor”.  And saying “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”  You hear the parable about the man who tore down his barn to build a bigger barn and the word that came to him was “thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee.”  So, there is ample basis in Scripture to consider our relationship to the material things of the world.  For after all, what profit is there if a man gains the whole world that but loses his soul?  These are just a few verses that came to my mind as I was going over my remarks for today. 

Several years ago, Bishop Hancock and I made stewardship speeches in every district in the Alabama-West Florida Conference.  Of course, Bishop Hancock was the principal speaker.  We were to share fifty-fifty, but after the first night, I knew that his fifty-fifty was going to eat up my fifty-fifty, and so I cut it down to about 10 or 12 minutes while we were talking.  He told a story that I’m going to borrow from him.  He said that he talked to this man one time about tithing, and the man said, you know, you’re talking about giving ten percent, but I can’t possibly…do you know how much money you are talking about?  To which the Bishop responded, “I’m going to pray for you, and I’m going to pray that you become poor so that you are able to tithe.”

What does our church do for us?  What does it do for the community?  We’ll be looking at that a little further as we proceed through the evening, but for me personally, the church is a place and a time of renewal.  It prepares me for the events of the week.  And our ministry to ourselves is very important.  The ministry of each congregation internally, what we do for each other in the name of Christ is extremely important.  Our ministry to others is also very important.  Having charged our batteries, so to speak, then we have our tasks in the world, and we all—each of us—has our own calling. 

We are in the laity season; that is, the season of laity Sundays, and I’ve been away for the last three Sundays delivering the laity message in other churches in other congregations.  And the message always is the same:  We meet in church on Sunday morning so that we know how to be the Body of Christ in the world.  And the work we do in the world is a very important part of our ministry.  My work is to be a judge.  In the last five years, I’ve dealt with at least seven different people who were charged with capital murder arising within a five-mile radius of this church.  All of those, as far as I can tell, with perhaps one exception, all of them were related to drugs.  Specifically, in all of them the deceased person was an informer for the police–a snitch, as the drug dealers call them.  Now, the last time I went through a term of court in Dadeville, we didn’t have as many drug cases to deal with.  I’ll let you figure out whether to worry about that or to be glad about it. 

Our ministry in our community is very important.  For every person that I send to the penitentiary, we will spend in tax dollars fifteen thousand dollars a year.  There was an ad on television a few years ago that went something like this:  it had this mechanic on, and he more or less said “pay me now or pay me later.”  So, in a sense, we will either do our ministry here or pay later.  We talk all the time about we ought to spend more money on education instead of on the penitentiary.  We ought to spend more on the Christian religion and we ought to reach out to the entire community. 

We have the opportunity in this country to exercise our freedom of religion, and I think that religion has a more important role to play in moral formation than the schools do.  So, from my vantage point, it seems to me that stewardship—ministry in the community—ministry in the world—is extremely important.  Our ministry is significant and it’s true that we probably don’t do enough.  Stewardship is a big concept.  It’s a theological concept.  It’s a commitment of not just money but of time and talent, resources, services, to the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.  It is our total response to God’s Grace.  If God has been good to us and we have confidence in Him, then it is through our stewardship that we respond to God.  When I made my rounds through the conference with Bishop Hancock, I always closed with a verse from one of my favorite hymns—When I Survey the Wondrous Cross—not the first verse, but the verse that follows: 

Were the whole realm of nature mine/

that were an offering far too small/

love so amazing, so divine/

demands my soul, my life, my all. 

This is what stewardship is about. 

Stewardship is not just a matter of committing X-number of dollars to this church.  It’s a matter of committing everything that we have to the Kingdom of God, including the support of this Church.  Thank you.