3
Minister's
Message
your time, talent, and treasure. You will know that I am a
member of this church because you will see me do those
three things.
1) Time
You will see me give my time, showing up at worship and other events, coming to coffee hour and meeting people. You will see me work to be a part of this community.
2) Talent
You will see me give my talent: finding something I can do that I can offer here. We all have different things that we feel we’re good at.
I believe that doing what we love to do can make us feel more connected than trying to do something that we can’t feel satisfied about doing. That’s what I want for all of our members: to do something that you feel good about doing, that uses your gifts. When we offer our talents we feel more connected—to us, to this church, and to God.
3) Treasure
There are a lot of things that can separate us from God. We can turn away. (We sometimes call that “sin”: turning away from God.) We also keep some things separate from God, from our faith.
One of the things that we often don’t turn over to God is money. We keep finances quiet, secret from God and from our neighbors. For example, you probably have friends you know a lot about, but I doubt you know how much they make, or what their 401k looks like. These days, money seems to be where we are the most secretive.
I read once that Jesus talks more about the role of money and power in people’s lives - than Jesus talks about love! Why? I think it’s because, as humans, we have always gotten stuck there.
So sharing our treasure, pledging, is a way of saying
“Okay, God: this is my place, these are my people. I’m going to give you back some of what you’ve given me, because I’m so grateful. And also because I know: I need to do big things in the world, and I can join my treasure with the treasure of some of the other people in my church and we can do big things together. So I’m gonna make a commitment. I’m going to pledge to you that I’ll do this.”