Gratitude and generosity guide my thinking about stewardship

by the Right Reverend Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont

Mountain Echo, November 2003

As surely as the Vermont landscape is transformed by the changing colors of each new autumn, so too does autumn signal the time when churches turn their attention to financial stewardship and church budgets, the time when we look to the approaching calendar year and the financial resources needed to engage in the mission to which God has called us. Autumn is the time when most of us are invited to consider our financial commitment in support of the church’s mission. Autumn is also the season of our Diocesan Convention, the “family gathering” when we adopt our “family budget” for the coming year [see news about Convention and our diocesan budget elsewhere in this edition of the Mountain Echo].

This autumn I write to you about stewardship, in particular financial stewardship, because I think it is an especially important time in the life of the Episcopal Church, and in this diocese, for us to speak about our giving and our attitudes about giving. I am pleased that our Diocesan Council decided at its September meeting to make stewardship a priority for the coming year. During the upcoming January and March meetings, Council will develop a working stewardship statement for itself and for the diocese. I look forward to sharing that with you. In this column, I want to share some of my personal thinking about this important dimension of our baptismal identity.

Whenever I consider the topic of stewardship, whether on a personal level or in relationship to church and diocesan budgets, there are two words that guide my thinking: gratitude and generosity. Both words speak volumes to me about the attitude I constantly need to cultivate in order to see my financial giving to the church in the best possible light. Ever since I was a teenager, the offertory words, “All things come of thee O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee,” have been a guiding mantra for my stewardship—not just of my money, but also of my time and talents.

Gratitude is all about the response I make to my belief and faith in a loving, creator God. For me, gratitude is the first word of prayer. It is about the response I make to the Incarnation, to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is about the response I make to a merciful, forgiving, awesome God, who has given me the gift of life and the capacity to be a thinking, feeling human being with gifts and abilities.

The gratitude I am speaking of is not born of any comparison of my life to another’s. I learned long ago from my grandparents to count my blessings but not to think that my blessings come at the expense of another’s. That is not the way of our God. Gratitude, for me, is about thankfulness for life, even with all life’s challenges and disappointments. Gratitude is about celebrating the free will that God has given humankind, the capacity to make decisions and the capacity to make a difference.

Gratitude is about being able to wake up every morning and thank God for a new day and to lie down at night and thank God for the day that is past. Gratitude is about placing discouragement and failure in perspective, as well as learning and moving on when that is what is called for. Gratitude is my response to Grace. First and foremost, I give to the work of the church, to our engagement in God’s reconciling mission, because I am filled with gratitude.
Generosity is all about glorifying God. It is about offering back to God the full measure of what God has given to us. Generous stewardship is about giving it all to God, not just a portion. Ultimately, stewardship is all we do with all that we have. Generosity is about not being stingy. It is about not holding back, because God never holds back. There is an old line about “giving until it hurts.” My approach is to “give until it feels good.”

I try not to think of my giving to God as an obligation, or in response to some arbitrary standards or formula, or as a way to meet the expectations of another. I do make choices about my giving, but I try never to withhold my giving to God because something doesn’t go my way. And I try to remember that real giving is letting go, trusting in God’s economy. I like to think I am a generous person, but I know I often fall short of that high calling. I do know that it brings me joy when I am being the generous person I think God is inviting me to be. I try to be generous because God is generous.

I am thankful for all the expressions of gratitude and generosity that I see in the ministries of the people and congregations of our diocese. I am thankful for the stewardship of time, talent and treasure that people express in their local giving and in the sacrificial giving that congregations make to our common life as a diocese. I think the spirit of gratitude and generosity is wonderfully present in our diocese and I thank you for that witness. My hope this autumn is that our gratitude and generosity will continue to grow as we consider our financial stewardship both at the local level and beyond.

Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts about stewardship with you. I encourage you to express your thoughts about stewardship with me and with one another.

With gratitude,
+Thomas