When I was young my parents bought us a puppy. I remember well the serious talks we had before the puppy came home, we needed to always make sure the puppy had food and water. We were also responsible for cleaning up any mess the puppy might make as well as helping to train the young dog so they could learn to be a responsible member of the household. All of this sounded so easy, so reasonable. The problems began the day the puppy came home. You see I was thinking in terms of possessions I already had, if you put them away they stayed put away. If you cleaned up a mess you were finished and could go on to other things. The puppy however would not stay put away when I had finished playing with him. Nor could I seem to feed him once and be finished and feeding him created other problems which are best left to the imagination. What I was learning through all of this was the difference between owning something and being responsible for something. It also taught me a little about the difficulty and never ending nature of caring for another living being.

Caring for the Body of Christ is infinitely more difficult than caring for a puppy but it has a number of similarities. This is because Christ’s Body is a living organism with purpose and direction of its own outside of ours. It must be fed regularly; it is a swiftly moving target with an ever changing need. While we can lead and direct the Body at times, it is the mind of Christ that truly motivates and often leads in directions we might not understand, nor for which, we are not prepared. But like the puppy once chosen it is a lifelong commitment.

In our prayers every Sunday we lay out the basis for this lifelong stewardship. With our gifts, our offering we say to God: Everything in heaven and earth belongs to you. We joyfully release what you have entrusted to us, our selves, our time and our possessions. This is the commitment we make to nurture the creation and the life of the ministry we have been entrusted with by God. It is a firm understanding ourselves as stewards and Christ as King.

As part of working as responsible stewards, we have been organizing a number of committees in the past few months. One which met just met formally for the first time is our new stewardship committee under the leadership of Charles Peterson. He led us in a discussion of the values and direction for a Stewardship Committee here at RLC. We discussed stewardship education, providing a solid structure of support for the ministry God has entrusted us with here at Resurrection and how we might encourage people to deepen their commitment to the Body of Christ.

Part of this is planning for the future, talking about the kind of programs and ways of communicating with our congregation. But the need was also seen to do something this year as well. As we thought about being stewards of Christ the King it became evident that there could be no better day to celebrate our commitment than Christ the King Sunday.

During October and November we ask you to think about your commitment to Christ here at Resurrection. How are you involved? Should you volunteer a little more? There has been a wonderful response by people as we organize our new committee structure but just as I learned with the puppy these needs are a moving target. We also would like you to consider your giving. I realize that coming on the heels of one of the largest down days ever on Wall Street this comes a little hard, but we ask you to think in terms of a small percentage increase. Think two to five percent. For most of us that is less than twenty five dollars a month. Small percentages given by a lot of committed hearts make a big difference. Remember that our budget is not about dollars and cents; it is about the lives of the sixteen high school students who crammed themselves into our tiny youth room together this past Sunday to come together as a community in Christ and celebrate their faith.

Then on November 23, Christ the King Sunday lets make sure we invite everyone connected to the Body of Christ here at Resurrection to come and celebrate our stewardship under Christ and the ministry here at RLC with which we have been entrusted. Let us rejoice on that day as we pray together; “every thing in heaven and on earth belongs to you Lord, we joyfully return what you have first given to us and dedicate ourselves once again to this ministry to which we have been called.

Pastor Jim Bliss
October 2008