Stewardship Sermon 2024

SERMON FOR COMMITMENT SUNDAY AT ASHLEY 2024

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In this sermon, I want to talk about Christian Stewardship and what this means for us at St John the Baptist. So how can we resist God’s call? How can we not give our time and talents and give them sacrificially? God depends on us to be God’s body visible and active here and now.

We need to explore the biblical themes of gratitude and generosity as part of our on-going review of time and talents. It is an invitation to test the reality of our commitment to Christ Jesus. Our Christian faith is not a side-line, like a hobby. It is our whole life, making sense of everything we do and to which everything else is related? Christianity is all about COMMITMENT.

This is Stewardship. It is the way that we look at the world as a disciple of Jesus Christ. At its heart is the recognition that all we have and all that we are is a gift from God. We are on a journey of faith in which we respond to God by living our discipleship in response to all that God has given us. Stewardship is an important part of our spirituality in which we recognise that we are stewards of our time, our talents, our possessions, and our money. So Stewardship is an active response to the words ‘I believe!’

To put it another way, Stewardship is a way of life in which we use all that we have to continue the mission of sharing the good news of God's Kingdom. So what are the key principles of Christian Stewardship? How we handle money, wealth and possessions is a central part of our discipleship. Our giving of time, money, and talents enables God's mission in the world. Our generosity is one of the values that should mark us out as Christians.

Giving is from our whole income, not from what's left over after our other expenditure. So every year at this time we remind people that just as their costs are going up at home, so are the costs in Church. In recent years, the weekly running costs have increased steeply, so much so that income and expenditure are struggling to keep pace with each other. Whilst a crisis point has not been reached, we must act now if the Church is to continue on a sound financial footing. We need to fund the work of this parish. In all this, we want to embrace a Parish Funding Programme that looks to bring together both stewardship of the village Church and our Christian witness in this community.

This commitment program would allow us to think realistically about our giving, not just how much but how and why we give. We don't give just because the Church needs money (which it does) but in response to the love and generosity of the Living God.

I do hope that Church members will feel able to support this review of their giving of time, talents, and money as it is vitally important to the life and future of St John the Baptist Church here in Ashley.

Let us pray,

Lord and Heavenly Father, we offer ourselves to you, our lives, and our endeavours. Particularly now we hold to you our common task of this annual review of our giving of time, talents, and money. May the giving in this Church be in response to God’s generous love and may the incarnate God take the work of our hands and let good come of it. May God take our lives, give us peace, and renew us in his glad service. Amen.