Dreaming God's Dream

Seneca Presbyterian Church is engaged in its annual stewardship campaign. Perhaps that strikes you as odd coming in the spring of the year. It's a bit new for us, too, since we are transitioning to a July/June budget cycle and away from a typical calendar year. The reason is simple. When our dedicated volunteer treasurer says he would like to have his Christmas and New Year holidays back, I say let's move to a July/June budget year! I want to thank everyone at Seneca Pres for bearing with us. Your cooperation is evidence of your openness to change, which is a good thing.

This spring finds my family in a new house, one that I love. I serve a congregation of amazing people who truly believe in serving God through serving others. Our youngest child is about to graduate from college. Our oldest son has a good job and a good wife. Our daughter is about to begin medical school. God is good and I am grateful - two affirmations that lie at the heart of faithful stewardship.

But am I called to give back to God simply because I am grateful? If we at Seneca Pres truly aspire to be a sailboat church - if we truly want to risk capturing the wind of the Spirit and soaring with the power of God's calling for us, then stewardship is about more than just simple gratitude. It's about partnership with God. It means being open to directions that may lead us to uncharted seas and daring challenges. When that happens, we will have to trust God to lead us in the right way, even if we don't know the outcome and can't see the destination. It means trusting that God can do more than we can even dare to imagine.

Faithful stewardship is one of those sailing skills. Do we trust God even with our resources? Are we willing to put action behind that trust?

I care about the outcome of our stewardship campaign for lots of reasons. The obvious one is that we need to maintain the ministries we already have. Beyond that, we need to expand the ministries we already have - we need to dream bigger and dare deeper.

But the most important reason I care about our stewardship campaign is more pastoral and personal. There is no stronger indicator of our devotion to God than how we use the resources God has given us - our time, our talent, and our treasure.

On Sunday, we will catch a glimpse of God's dream for our world. That dream is found throughout scripture, but for me the most complete image is found in Isaiah 65:17-25. Partnering with God to enable that dream to become reality is our calling and our ultimate destination. It is a partnership well worth the investment of our time, our talent, our treasure, and our lives.