where do you fit in our body?

Note: I wrote this for the November newsletter at our church.  It's stewardship month, and I wound up chair of the Stewardship Committee... so it's pretty specific, and addressed to Joyful Servant folk, but perhaps it is more broadly applicable food for thought nonetheless.  I've put a lot of time and effort into the planning.  I've had some moments of great encouragement (among many other things, our Fellowship Committee is Awesome, and yay for pouch-stuffing pals, helpful words/acts by committee folk and for friends and spouses who are willing to make delivery runs--I appreciate you!)  I'm feeling a bit discouraged right now.  So it goes with church work (any work).  Our "Pony Express" pledge/time and talent drive ends next Sunday--fingers crossed and prayers going up!

            I am not the first member of the Gifford household one would consult when faced with a financial question.  Geoff has worked in finance and accounting for years; he’s responsible for all sorts of complicated financial forecasting involving impenetrable spreadsheets and baffling acronyms. 

            I was quite good at math through high school.  Then I went to college and encountered second semester calculus.  It wasn’t pretty.  Today, I’m noted primarily for amusing students every time we play “Jeopardy” in class as a review tool and it comes time for me to add up group scores on the white board.  

            Consider, then, my own amusement when somehow I was the Gifford to wind up as chair of your very own JSLC Stewardship Committee. 

When faced with the term “stewardship,” I suspect most of us would think about money.  To be sure, money is an essential part of what stewardship committees do.  The simple truth is that it takes money to operate a church.  Most of us have a certain fondness for heat, light and water.  Pastor Tom is a great guy, but he isn’t going to work full-time for free; the Struck family mortgage and grocery bills don’t, after all, pay themselves.  We have a variety of financial obligations that are part of being a ministry in the community, the state and the world around us.  Money enables us to live out our broader mission, from children’s education to worship to participating in the wonderful work of the Lutheran church, here and abroad.  We need your pledges of financial resources, so I’ll be honest and upfront in asking you this month to pledge as you are able from what God has entrusted to you.

If stewardship were only about money, though, I would have said no when I was asked to serve as chair.  I’m not a numbers person.  What I am is a time and talent person.  Perhaps several years’ worth of vocational searching exacerbates this interest, but I believe deeply in the importance of finding out how I—how you—how all of us can best live the lives with which God has blessed us.  This includes our use of the money entrusted to us, but it also includes a wealth of other gifts.

Paul had a little something to say about this in the book of Romans: “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom 12:4-5).  My gifts are different than yours, but as a member of the body of Christ, I am utterly dependent upon your gifts.  You are utterly dependent upon mine.  If I don’t share mine and you don’t share yours… our body falls apart.  Yuck.  Not a pleasant visual.

We all bother to show up around here because within the Joyful Servant community we find something that makes showing up worthwhile.  Perhaps it’s connection to God; perhaps it’s connection to friends; perhaps it’s Sharon Vo’s cake.  Paul indicates, however, that our identity as members of the body of Christ calls us to something deeper than piety, or friendship, or even dessert.   “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness” (Rom 12:6-8).

Gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us.  How big is God’s grace?  It’s big enough to bridge the gap between our absolute inability ever to reach perfection, ever to earn God’s love, and the One who is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good.  God’s grace is a gift beyond all comprehension, a gift restoring lives—our lives—that would otherwise be utterly destroyed by our sin.

That’s a lot of grace.

And it’s given to us.

In the form of our unique and precious gifts.

I hope that blows your mind.  It certainly blows mine.

Discerning our gifts can be the task of a lifetime, but it starts with a single step.  What do you feel God calling you to this year?  How will you live out the tremendous gift of God’s grace?  Where might you fit into the body of Christ?

Thank you in advance for your prayerful consideration of all the materials in the Pony Express pouches that will make their way around the congregation this November.  I feel blessed to be a part of this body of Christ—I feel blessed by my utter dependence upon you.