Stewards of the King
Redeemer Family,
I hope your summer has been both fun and restful! I hope you’ve played in an ocean, lake, or river. I hope you’ve hiked a mountain or two. I hope you’ve gone to bed without setting an alarm and slept until your body was fully refreshed. I hope you’ve grilled a burger and sipped a cold beverage on a hot afternoon. I hope you’ve read a book or ten. I hope you lingered over a meal with friends and watched kids chase fireflies as the summer daylight faded.
If your summer has been glorious, thanks be to God! And if your summer has not included anything like these, then… well… it’s almost over and there’s hope for the fall!
As we turn our attention towards the fall, I want to give you a sense of what will be thinking, discussing, and praying about as a church family. As you likely know, our parish is ramping up a capital campaign to raise funds to renovate 1801 Park Ave. to be a future home and mission base for our congregation. If you missed some of those announcements, you can catch up here.
In order to lay a good and healthy foundation for this work, there are a number of important things for us to do together.
First, we need to pray. We must continually ask the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ to lead us and guide us every step of the way.
Second, we need to be changed by God’s Word. We need to go to the Holy Scriptures to deeply understand how our relationship to wealth and resources can honor God and participate in His Kingdom.
Third, we need to dream with each other and with the Lord. As God’s children, we have the privilege of imagining what God might do in us and through us in the years to come.
You’ll hear more about all of these in the weeks ahead, but for now, here is the plan for the second part: our need to be changed by God’s Word.
I have drafted a sermon series for the first half of the fall semester that is designed to give us sure and certain grounding on a Biblical theology of wealth and generosity. Now, of course we all recognize that money is generally the most private of matters in our society. As one author put it, “What’s in your wallet is more private than who’s in your bedroom.” And yet, despite our desire for privacy, Jesus talks about money more than almost any other topic! In fact, throughout the entirety of scripture, wealth is consistently a theme that nearly all Biblical authors name as vital to a faithful life of obedience to God. What’s more, as I mentioned in a sermon during the season of Lent, our money is one of the most powerful resources we have at our disposal to affect our own spiritual formation.
And so, in the weeks ahead, here’s what you can anticipate:
STEWARDS OF THE KING
8/23 —All Wealth is From God (1 Chronicles 29:10-14)
8/30 —Jesus Transforms Our Relationship to Wealth (Luke 19:1-10)
9/6 —The Habit of Tithing (Leviticus 27:30)
9/13 —Your Work, Your Wealth, & the Poor (Ephesians 4:28)
9/20 —The Pleasures of Contentment (1 Timothy 6:6-9)
9/27 —A Free & Generous Heart (Exodus 35:4-29)
10/4 —In All Things, Gratitude (James 1:17-18 )
Along the way, I will share plenty of absurd and ridiculous personal stories about my own mistakes when it comes to money and what God has, in His kindness, taught me along the way. My hope that is that, far from being a burdensome series that weighs us down, this can be a cheerful, open, honest conversation where we all lean in and grow together as a church family.
Redeemer, I love you all and am grateful to share a church community with such excellent people.
In the Father’s love,
