Let's Get Started!
Posted on Aug 28, 2016 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in each of us.
It is good to be back and I want to thank you all for insuring that periodically I am able to get away and for some R&R. It was a good two weeks. Jill and I learned much at the ELCA Grace Gathering and we hope to share much of it with you in the near future and we had a great time with family. Thank you!
You know just before I left for vacation, we had just spent a few weeks hearing some words from Jesus about stewardship. Now I know pastor Ashley took a little different approach the past two week with the texts, but I am going to back to this notion of stewardship, because once again as I read and studied our text this week, I hear Jesus talking about stewardship. Remember, when I use the word stewardship, I am not just talking about money. Stewardship in the biblical sense as one author (Grace Pomroy) defines it is “the way we use the abundance God has entrusted to our care to love God and to love neighbor.” It is how we use the blessings God has given us in live our lives from the moment we are baptized to the time we die.
Now I know at first glance you are saying, how does what we heard Jesus say today have anything to do with Stewardship? Well, first let’s remember that in the time he told this parable, the culture of the day was an “honor-shame” culture that was intensely sensitive to issues of status and recognition, one that I would argue is in many ways alive and well today, also, but I am not going to address that today. No, I want to talk about the issue that I believe we have been talking about here this year, whether we know it or not, and that is the notion that as faithful stewards we are called to be a community that finds ways to insure that all are invited into the presence of God. As a faith community we are called to insure that everything we do is about making sure this place is a place where all will feel welcome and experience God’s presence and today Jesus says when we do that we ought to stop counting the costs, benefits, and rewards of our actions and live from a sense of abundance and blessing and not from a sense of scarcity.
As a people we constantly want to count what we have, and in doing so such actions constantly tell us to respond by saying well we just don’t have enough. When we count, we discover we don’t have enough money, time, prestige, resources, recognition… And that conviction seems sure, even unquestionable, because so much in our culture – and particularly the advertisements we’re relentlessly subjected to – tell us there isn’t.
But, what if there was enough? What if we approached all our ministries with the notion that God has already provided all we need? Well today, Jesus is inviting us to stop counting and start giving and blessing.
As you all know early this year we entered a time of discernment as to what we ought to do with our facilities, our location and our overall ministries. In April we determined that whatever we were going to do, we wanted to do it here, and then your leadership told you that by this month they would develop a plan of next steps based on all the input you provided. Well, today, you are going to here about those next steps and our challenge today will be to hear these next steps with the ears and the heart that we have all we need to take these next steps.
First, we will hear from the President of our Council, Ryan Konen. Ryan will be offering a few words about the Ministry Plan that is being developed and how we will use that plan to guide everything we do.
Secondly we will hear from Steve Clare, Council member and liaison to the Property Team, who will share how we will proceed with revitalizing and expanding our facility so we can better live out our mission.
Lastly, we will hear from Jim Roy, leader of our Stewardship Team and he will share our plans to a new “growth/capital” campaign and our plans to learn more about the needs of our local community here in Lenexa.
Following Ryan, Steve & Jim,
I hope you will agree with me that we have an exciting plan. But, as you listened, I pray you listened not from a notion of scarcity that is, this is great, but we just don’t have what it will take to make it happen, and, but from a belief of abundance, that is God ahs provided us all we need to make all this happen. Keep in mind, I am not saying that we will make all this happen by ourselves, but if we are open to the work and power of the Holy Spirit and if we can stay faithful to God’s mission then we have all we will need to move forward. God is calling us into an uncertain future, but God doesn’t call us to go there alone. Today we are being challenged to stop counting what we have and instead go and use what God has entrusted to us, our time, our talents and our possessions to be Christ in this world. Amen