A Good Investment
It is a true blessing to be able to be home today to be with you to have family and extended family and friends that should have been family. Scott, down in Melbourne, where did you go? Did Craig give you a copy of my notes? Yeah, okay, good. Because I was thinking if he didn't, we got some kind of connection here. Yeah, just let it go from there. Most of you probably have some kind of an investment, a 401. K. Mutual Fund, some kind of an investment. And I want to ask you, what kind of return do you expect on that investment? Do you expect 6% 8%? A whopping 10%? What's acceptable? Keep in mind that regardless of the rate of return, the more you put in, the more you get back. For instance, if you invested $100 as 6%, you would get $6 back, right, Scott? Okay. My son in law was the financial guru. If you invest $1,000, you get $60. Back. If you invest $10,000, you get $600. Back, it's all the same rate of return. But it depends on how much you're willing to invest in it. Are you willing to take a chance and take everything that you've got? And make an investment based on your hope, of a good return? How much is God invested in you? How much has God put toward you? And what kind of return does he get? Now let's look at it that God gave us His creation, to be stewards over everything that was created has been given to us to take care of. God gave us life. He gave us his son. Yes. As Scott said earlier, God is all in. He's invested everything in us. And what's he get in return? 6%? Eight, maybe 10%? That may be just a little high. So what about 2%? Or 3%? Or maybe a whopping 5% return on investment? What do we give back? What is God's ROI? His return on investment. Start with our time. Time is a gift that we've been given. We don't know how long we're going to have. But we're supposed to make the best of what we've got. So if we look at a typical amount, it's not even typical. It's a standard week, we get 168 hours. And I'm going to give y'all the benefit of the doubt and say that you get eight hours sleep a night. Yeah, okay. Go ahead. Let it go. All right. That gives us 112 hours 112 hours and if we give a 6% return on that 112 hours, that means we're giving back For close to six and three quarters percent, if we give back 2% of that time of that 112 hours, we're giving back somewhere near two and a half hours a week. How would you feel if you only got a 2% return on your investment? Most of us would cash it in and try something else. But we're fortunate because God is not like us. God does not cash it in God continues to make that investment, just hoping that our return is going to be worth his time. Let's go to the painful part. Now. Let's talk about money. You notice Craig is not here today. People say we don't like to talk about money in the church yet we do. We need to there is believe it or not a business side to the church. But before we get into that, what is fair, Jane and I were coming back from Sunday, one of those few times we were in the car together. Jane has been in banking for 22 years. And we were on our way back. And it's just been a couple of months ago. And she gets a phone call from a disgruntled client about some financial issues. And the conversation went on for 30 minutes, and she finally hung up. And I said, I am so glad I don't have your job. Because you have to deal with people's money. All I have to deal with is their soul. And we take our money a whole lot more serious sometimes. What is reasonable for us to do financially for the church? Well, let's look at the New Testament scripture. That was read in verse seven. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly, not under compulsion. Because God loves a cheerful giver. Giving should not be obligatory. It should not be one of those things that we think we have to check off. To get salvation because it doesn't work that way. Giving should be joyful. You know, if you remember during our communion liturgy, toward the end of the prayer of the confession, prayer pardoning confession, it says, free us for joyful obedience. Now, some people might think that joyful and obedience or oxymoron, that they shouldn't go together, but they really do. And it's like our giving, we should get joy out of our giving. Most of you probably are somewhat familiar with John Wesley. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, may have been a few 100 years ago, but we can still learn a lot from his teaching. First of all, John Wesley put his emphasis on stewardship, on what we can do to give back he his theological understanding was based on the knowledge that everything that we have, and everything that we are comes from God. We didn't do any of this on our own. All of the gifts that we have come from God, the gifts of time, the gifts of of money, and resources, and the gift of love, and how we treat other people. Those gifts that God has given us, we should take the opportunity to use them and to grow them and then give back reflecting our understanding of the holiness of Jesus and what we have received because of his sacrifice. One of the quotes that Wesley is, is known for is gain all you can save all you can and give all you can. Now let's let's break that down a little bit and do a little bit of a dissection of that, quote, gain all you can doesn't mean to hoard it doesn't mean to stockpile remember the parable of the the King who built extra barns because he was hoarding the grain. It doesn't mean for us to hoard it, but it means for us to earn so that we have the opportunity to give what about save all you can, saving all you can according to Wesley is is Basically avoiding all of those unnecessary expenses that we have. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, because mine would be one of the first up. How many of you get packages from Amazon? On a regular basis? How many of you have to give your Amazon delivery person? A Christmas card? Yeah. Some of those, what we might think of as unnecessary indulgences, we save so that we can give. And then what about that giving part of it? Do we give reflecting God's generosity in order to participate in God's works? On the mission, and the ministry, the United Methodist Mission, hopefully most of you are somewhat familiar with this, making the decision making disciples in the name of Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world. And I don't know if you've seen the news lately. The world needs transforming. It needs some change. Now we know we know God does not have any need of our money. It would be ludicrous for us to say that God needs our money. However, we also know that the Ministry and the mission of the church does require finances. It does. Our ministry and our mission depend on the generosity and the return of the portion of the gifts that we have been given. Debbie did that have an impact on Miriam's promise? What do we give? Where do we give? What does? What does it do? Again, looking at the scripture that we read, you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous in every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving and God, it doesn't mean that we're going to get money back for money. I'm not a big believer in the prosperity gospel. But I do believe that God will take care of our needs, that God will give us what we need. So why, why should we give to the church and the ministries of the church? Why? I'm just a little piece of that. Well, think of it this way, as Christians, that we are not just giving to the church, we give through the church, we give through our resources we give because God first gave to us. We give, because we love God, and we love the ministry and the call that has been put on our hearts. And we need the support that we give, because that's what Christians do. We give to make mission and ministry happen. Because without that, it doesn't happen. We give because we know that together, as as part of The Connectional system of the United Methodist Church, that if we give together we can achieve so much more through the combined efforts of many congregations than any single congregation, or any single individual can do by themselves. Let's go back to to Wesley again, to another quote that is attributed to him. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. What does that have to do with stewardship? What does that have to do with short? Well, giving is a way that we can be able to close a relationship, not only a closer relationship with the Creator, but a closer relationship with each other and with ourselves. We sacrifice each other. I want you to think about mission work that you have done. And I know that some of you have done mission work in different parts of the world. And some of you have done mission work in Appalachia and some of you have done mission work in downtown Franklin. Think about the mission work that you have done and the joy that comes to you because you have given because you have supported somebody, I'm going to tell you something and it's it's time for confession and I'm not even Catholic. I do quite a bit of work at Riverbend at the maximum security prison. And I'm also chaplain at at the ascension St. Thomas in Centerville and also for the Hickman County Sheriff's Department And there are times that I get called to the jail, or I'm supposed to go in for one of our Friday visits at the prison. And I don't want to go, I'm tired, got stuff to do with family, I've got other things that, that when I just want to rest. But I go anyway. And when I walk through those gates and doors at Riverbend, and I spend an hour and a half, with men that are incarcerated, some of them for life, and I see the joy in their face, just because somebody took the time to come out and give them a hug, and listen to him, and praise God with them, it energizes me, I get so much more in return, than I have given. And I think that's what we experienced when we do mission work is that we get so much more back than we invest. Our ROI is so much higher than the investment that we make. Giving of our substance is a spiritual discipline. And it's a discipline of showing that we trust God to provide remember the people of Israel. I hope you do. When they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, do you know that they had everything they needed? God had invested in them, and he was returning to them, he was giving them everything they needed to survive. He was still investing even though the return from the people of Israel was negligible. Giving is what Christians do. And if we look at the the book of Acts, chapter two verses 44, and 45, it says, All who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had knee that they didn't want. They didn't ask questions. They didn't ask if they deserved it. They didn't ask if they had met the criteria they gave. And they gave, and they gave our finest hour as Christians occurs when we respond generously to those people in need. Those people who are hurting those people that are in prison, those people that are hungry, and homeless and abandoned, those people that we are called to be in ministry to it's who we are, and it's what we do. That's what we're commanded to do. We give to make ministry and missions happen. Our congregations exist, to make disciples of Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world. It's a huge task. It is a huge daunting task. And can our efforts transform the world? Maybe can our efforts transform the world for some body? Absolutely. You can make a huge difference in our world, we know that very little happens without money. Very little happens without our financial commitment. We can and we should give in non financial ways. Because you see in person ministry that face to face, being able to touch somebody. That ministry is where much of that transformation that we talk about comes from the transformation of the world for both ourselves and those that we touch, those that we ministered to, but it also takes financial investment. And we hate to say that goodness gracious, we don't like to think of, of there being a business side to the church. But the gifts help pay the bills. It helps pay Craig well. There is a business side and it goes far beyond our local congregations. It goes so far beyond what we can do locally. It helps support our conference commitments which used to be known as apportionments. Conference commitment sounds so much more. conference he said The Connectional system our contributions are combined with the contributions of other United Methodist congregations throughout the world. And you are making a difference. You are making a change look at the disaster and the humanitarian relief that is provided by the church. The churches that I serve have benefited from that we had some significant flooding a couple Two years ago, in the Waverly and Hickman County area, and it wiped some people out and through the connectional system, food and cleaning supplies and housing was provided to some of those people that were impacted. What about the World Service fun building new churches, providing leadership for youth ministries? What about ministerial Education Fund, thank you very much. Providing and help recruiting quality candidates for pastoral ministry equipping our annual conference with funding to help support scholarships, and to support the education that is required interdenominational Cooperation Fund that's a mouthful how we interact and are part of the voice of a worldwide organization that is nondenominational and that works together to provide ministry and mission throughout the world. There are others you've probably heard about, you may have heard him talked about from the pulpit human relations day, one great hour of sharing Native American ministries, peace with justice, United Methodist student day, all of those are where we can contribute to make such a difference in the lives of those giving our financial support is like planting a seed and God's harvest. We can plant those seeds, and then we can watch them grow. But but we're not to give God a return on his investment. If it's not done with joy. If it's not, if it's done out of obligation, and so we can make that checkmark. Don't do it. Give because of what's in your heart, give because of the joy that it gives you and has the potential to give other people give because it's what is scriptural. For remember the Scripture. And again, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give not reluctantly, or by compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. So where's your heart? Where is your heart? In the next few days, you'll be receiving probably in the mail, your commitment cards that are going to ask for your commitment, not only financially but prayerfully and attendance and support. How much of a return is God going to get in the investment that he's made? in you? I asked you to prayerfully consider what you feel is an appropriate return. What you feel God receives back for his investment, knowing that God doesn't need your money. But the ministry and mission of the church do think about it and pray about it in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen. As we sing our closing hymn maybe you need to ask God what the return should be. Come and join me nobody's going to talk about it. Nobody's going to ask you why. We just pray about what should what is appropriate for me to give amen. If you'll stand and join us in our closing still getting connected. So if you are looking and I'll make a plug for Mike Loring here, if you're looking for a place to invest that time there's some sign up sheets right outside in the lobby area where you can support our a wonderful ministry of the church room in the end where every Saturday starting in November, homeless men come and use this facility on a Saturday night for a shower, a warm meal and a place to sleep. And it's a fantastic ministry that needs a lot of support so whether it's cooking a breakfast for them on the Sunday morning cooking dinner for them on the Saturday evening it's staying is an overnight hosting to men to do that or it's driving to pick them up on a Saturday evening from downtown and bringing them here or taking them back on Sunday morning or there's so many ways to help out and there's a signup sheet out there if you're feeling so called and the song is called the summons and so it's all about the call what we're called to do will you come and follow you you go here you don't know where you lead the show will you let my life be bro will you leave yourself behind in your Will you care for cruel unkind? Will you raise the hostile stare should your life attract me and so prairie new you left the FBI and CIA FBI all your name? Will you say it the prisoners screen you can select Berkeley clean and do such as this unseen and it means to you you love the you you hide and five call your day? Will you quell the fear inside and never will you use the faith you found to reshape the world around you by sight and touch and sound in you. Your summons error codes drew in let me turn and follow you and your confidence confident me how the Oh where your love and food stamps show. So move and leave and go receive your benediction. Maybe God of grace, the God of glory. The God that charges you to do work in the world and to give of yourself guide you, protect you and maybe make you a little uncomfortable, now and forever. Amen. blessed time to increase the fellowship of kindred mind to you.