3rd Quarter 2008 Financial Report
PARISH CENTER ROOF/ BUILDING FUND As of Sunday, December 16th, we have raised a total of $10,229. Our Goal = $17,000.
"Fr. Syl Discussions" on Stewardship:
Stewardship poses the question: How do I make use of my skills and my money? In other words, do I handle these as gifts belonging to God that I am meant to manage on God’s behalf and for God’s purpose? Or do I consider my skills and my money as belonging to me – possessions that I occasionally bestow on others? This is the question. How we answer the question makes all the difference in the world. The difference deals not so much with the effects on others as with the effects on me. This is the key to stewardship - Not the need of others to receive but rather my need to give.
Some basic truths are right there before everyone’s eyes, but not perceived. When such a truth is discovered, it’s not the result of a long process of reasoning. Rather, it comes in a sudden flash of insight. It just plain dawns on a person.
For example, children, sometimes think that everything their parents do for them is simply what mothers and fathers do – wash the clothes, make and serve meals, earn money, care for them when they are sick. Children tend to take all this for granted, like the air they breathe. When do sons and daughters realize that all this was hard work, sacrifice? Many adults say they didn’t get the flash of insight until they themselves had children. When do we, God’s sons and daughter, realize that everything we have really comes from God, belongs to God, and that we are stewards and managers of goods that don’t belong to us…that God intended that we use these gifts for the benefit of others?
It dawns on a few of us fairly early in life, on some of us as adults. Others realize it on our deathbed if at all. If and when that insight does come, it usually doesn’t come as a result of a logical, thoughtful reasoning process. No, it is instead one of those deep down truths, a grace that dawns on a person in a flash on insight. It seems to spring from sentiments of thankfulness, or gratitude, and trust in God. It is, in the end, a grace of God. To catch that insight, and live by it, is called stewardship.
The only thing that is not rolling is our Sunday collection. Even though we decreased our expectations by five hundred dollars a week for this year’s budget, we are still falling an additional one thousand dollars a week for each Sunday. Hopefully people returning from vacations will help us to start closing this gap.The Society of Christ thanks you for your contributions to their work among the Poles who have left their native country. I didn’t have a count on the amount of last week’s collection before this went to print. And some probably took the envelopes home to bring them back this week. So at this point I cannot tell you how much was collected.
At the end of time, we’ll have only the things we gave away. Everything we kept, we will no longer be able to keep. We will be happy about everything we gave away. We can’t give everything away. We need clothes, a house, a car. We also like to have more than the essentials. But those are the things that we will lose. We’’ reap a hundredfold of everything we gave away or shared with others – our precious time to those who needed to be heard, the money, gifts and possessions we gave away or share with others, the loving kindness we generously poured out even to people who didn’t love us.
Jesus said the way to be fulfilled is to “unfill” ourselves.
Continuing Fr. Syl's discussion of Stewardship:
The Israelites were instructed to stand with open, grateful hearts before God, Giver of the land and its fruits, and to share, not hoard their material blessings. God gave land to this nomadic people, and He reminded them that the land was a gift, and that they were to accept it graciously, and share it generously, with others.
There were three specific practices enjoined upon the Israelites, in order to help them remember this truth, as well as their responsibilities.
Firstly, they were to keep holy the Sabbath.
Secondly, they were to care for those in need and for the helpless. These were to include the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, the traveler and the Levite. Each of these faced a common problem – they had no land.
Thirdly, they were to tithe, that is, to share the first fruits of the land’s produce with God, in gratitude for God’s goodness received. They were to offer this as an expression of their commitment to the Giver of the land, as well as of their desire to share this earth with others.
As the Christian Church grew, its material needs increased, and Church leaders resurrected the Old Testament practice and encouraged it as a moral obligation, as well as something good to do. Initially the practice was limited to food, but eventually it was expanded to include one’s profits and wages.
In the United States, only the Church in the North Central and Mississippi Valley areas ever used a percentage giving system. It was introduced by the French, but ended when the United States acquired these lands.
