Wednesday 18 June 2014

Generous Giving

I walked past Malmesbury Abbey recently. I normally walk in, so walking past was a simple pleasure. My first thought, as a passerby, was how beautiful the fresh cut lawns looked on a warm sunny evening and how the Abbey and its grounds shape the feel and life of our town. My second thought was what an incredible gift to the town (and by implication, of course, to ourselves) is the generous giving of our Abbey congregations—we paid for the lawns to be cut together. We paid for the weeding too.

The impact of the generous giving of Abbey members is profound. It’s not just grass and buildings and heating, although I would say the stewardship of our buildings and their care and development really matter and point towards something beyond the stones themselves. As we give together we resource the genuine breadth of ministry and worship across our Abbey community, we support a number of our own congregation in mission further afield, and we back our diocese as they train and provide ministers and resource Christian distinctiveness in church schools. And, as I mentioned on Vision Sunday, we’re looking to resource our Junior Church and Youth ministries on a different level in 2014/2015 and the recruitment conversation has already begun. So I’m asking you to review your monthly giving in the next couple of weeks with these biblical principles in mind:

It’s all God’s. As a rather overwhelmed King David cried out to God ‘who am I, and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have only given what comes from your hand.’ (1 Chronicles 29:14)

Jesus’ needed money too. We can mistakenly think that genuine Kingdom life and ministry doesn’t need money. But actually Luke records that women travelling with the disciples helped to support them out of their own pockets. (Luke 8:1-3)

Give proportionately. Many use the tithe, the tenth, as a guide to their monthly commitment to the church. (see Malachi 3:10) We should work towards proportional giving as disciples together, because ultimately that is fairer—and those with less in our community aren’t being asked to give more.

Thank you for working with God to sustain the ministry of your church. You can get further information on how to give regularly and  how to giftaid from
chrisjager@malmesburyabbey.com. All communications and giving is treated confidentially.


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