Congregational Stewardship
I was in my twenties, out of college and in seminary, before I learned about the seasons of the “Christian Year.” Like many Protestants, I experienced Sunday as the Bible’s “first day of the week,” the worship anchor for each week of the year. But it was easy to see each Sunday as a one-shot…
Read MoreA lot has changed in the past twenty years, politically, sociologically, in many ways. But Just Generosity: A new vision for overcoming poverty in America, by Ronald Sider, hits home just as powerfully now as it did then. In fact, its overall message seems even more urgent. Coming into the 21st Century, the author says,…
Read More“Enough” does not have to be barely enough or just enough – it can be fully enough! Growing Generous Souls talks about “an ethic of enough” as contentment (not complacency): the sense of sufficiency that prompts people to act responsibly toward others in gratitude for all they have received. Sometimes what is fully enough is…
Read MoreHow can we help our local church become more generous – understood in the full biblical sense – as a group of Jesus’ disciples? Stewardship coach Michael Reeves says that a biblically generous church teaches stewardship of all dimensions of our lives as part of the church’s training of its members. Holistic stewardship is part…
Read MoreListed in order of related chapters in Growing Generous Souls:Becoming Grace-Filled Stewards Betsy Schwarzentraub 1 “Turning Around” Isaiah 30:15 Matthew 5:13-15 Can we turn around from compulsive doing toward being the people God created us to be? Reflecting the rhythm of creation by balancing work and rest. See Growing Generous Souls…
Read MoreIn Chapter Three of Growing Generous Souls, I say that “spiritual disciplines” are things we do to help us be intentionally present to God’s presence in our lives. They provide a framework for our days and encourage us to center on God while being involved in the world. In Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, 1 author Adele…
Read MoreEugene Peterson was a U.S. Presbyterian clergyman, scholar, theologian, poet, and author of more than thirty books, including The Message, an award-winning paraphrase of the Bible. In Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 1 he says four terms 2 work interactively to give us a common vocabulary for exploring the Christian life. One of them…
Read MoreThere is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, said Quaker evangelist Thomas Kelly:1 a Divine Center or Voice to which we can continually return. Kelly called this Center “the Inward Living Christ,” “Christ Within,” or “The Light Within.” He spoke of renewed immediacy with this Center, which encourages us to keep growing in our…
Read More“I give thanks to You, O God,” we pray, along with the one who prayed Psalm 86 aloud in worship thousands of years ago. For us, in that moment of realization we are face to face with the Divine, we want to pray this not just with words, but also with our actions: how we…
Read MoreThese days, most of us tend to think of the heart as related to emotions. But back in Bible days, that was the role of the kidneys! In the language of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, levb, “heart,” means the direction in which my life leans, in other words the thrust of my life,…
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