At St Peter’s Church, today is ‘Generous Giving Sunday’.

It’s a time for us all to take stock, a time for us, in worship and in prayer, to remember and celebrate God’s overwhelming generosity and examine our own response. We all know that giving and generosity are vital issues for churches and church members. Generous Giving’ provides resources to enable the mission and ministry of the Church to grow and it also helps foster distinctive Christian lifestyles, distinctive ministries, that enable others to be touched by the overflowing generosity of God.

There is no shortage of biblical material on ‘giving’, with over 2,300 verses in the Bible on money, wealth and possessions alone. Jesus talked about it frequently and almost half of his parables are about money. Jesus knew the centrality of ‘Generous Giving’ and in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 11.1-13) we hear Jesus speak about God’s overflowing generosity once again. ‘Ask, and it will be given to you’; ‘knock, and the door will be opened for you’. We hear about the gift of the Spirit and God’s love freely given in response to the saying of the Lord’s Prayer.

So what is ‘Generous Giving’? In the last year, many of our church members and supporters have signed up to the Church of England Parish Giving Scheme and this is helping our church to be more efficient in managing our finances. Knowing how much money you are giving to St Peter’s can be helpful to you, but it is also extremely helpful to our treasurer and Parochial Church Council, enabling them to plan accurately for the year ahead. Knowing how much money is coming in allows for accurate budgets as well as thoughtful and engaged future planning.

The Bible encourages the principle of tithing or ‘planned giving’ and advises giving away 10% of our income. The General Synod of the Church of England has challenged us all to give 5% of our income to the work of the Church. In an increasingly uncertain world, with gas and electricity prices at record highs and building maintenance prices surging upwards, your planned ‘Generous Giving’ helps us to respond secure in the knowledge that donations will come in regularly and thus, hopefully, we will not overcommit ourselves or respond to issues too late for fear of lack of finance.

Our individual and collective financial support for St Peter’s is crucial. However, it must always be remembered that the scope of Christian generosity is not just financial giving. It is about how we use the money, time, talents and possessions that God has entrusted to us. ‘Generous Giving’ should become second nature to us all, and as it becomes so, our living and our giving are transformed to start to resemble the overflowing generosity of God. At St Peter’s, we celebrate, throughout the year, your selfless gifts of time and talent, but today is primarily about finance.

On this ‘Generous Giving Sunday’, as we remember God’s generosity, we also have an opportunity to examine our own. After 14 years as your Vicar, I know how generous you all are and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your financial, prayerful and active support of our ministry and mission. As a Church family, we do not want people to give more than they can afford. That’s certainly not the point.

Through prayerful engagement with the question of what it is to be ‘generous’, we allow ourselves the opportunity to fully explore God’s love for each and every one of us and the ministries we might be called to fulfil in response. In terms of ministry, I encourage you all to pray about what God might be calling you to and in terms of finance I just want to thank you all once again and remind you that If we are able to plan ahead individually, then we can also plan ahead as a community and provide our church members, visitors and the town of Sheringham with the necessary spiritual and practical resources and support they ask for day-by-day and week-by-week.

May God continue to bless us as we journey on together in ministry, as we seek to sustain our mission and church building, and as we seek to mirror God’s generosity in the daily ministries that have been entrusted to us all.

With every blessing,

Christian