Hello,
I wonder how many
people do not come to worship on Sunday morning because they fear the offering
basket. The way that we collect
offerings on Sunday mornings is a rather public display, and I wonder if
putting our offerings in a passed basket isn’t a bit intimidating, intimidating
enough to keep some away from worship.
True, we use envelopes so as to decrease the public-ness of the event,
but still the one who puts their envelope in the basket knows what has been
placed there.
I wonder if some
who find themselves unable to put much in the offering plate find the feelings
of their situation aversive enough to keep them from facing them. After all, who wants to feel like they aren’t
pulling their weight? Who wants to feel
the world’s judgment of failure for not having succeeded in the American Dream
of financial success? Who wants to look
into the dark abyss of debt that has had the gravitational pull of a black
hole? Who wants to have to justify to
themselves the priorities one has made in life?
I fear that these sorts of feelings well up in folks when they think
about coming to church and having to have that offering plate pass in front of
them.
Well, if you find
yourself thus deterred from coming to church, hear this: God does not want you for your money. God wants you. God is like a parent of a teenager who hasn’t
been seen in a couple of days and comes home. God wants to embrace you with a hug that comes
from the heart. God is like the parent of a newly licensed driver who receives
a phone call from that child saying that he’s been in an accident, and all that
parent is concerned about is that the child is okay. That is all that God has on his mind. God is like the parent who sees thugs
dragging off an adult child, and cries out, “Take me!”. That is the way God is.
God, because God
loves you, doesn’t want you for your money.
God wants you.
I believe with
all of my heart, that the church is not an institution that is trying to make
money, or even an institution that is trying to stay fiscally afloat. I believe that the church is the place where
God is at work changing lives with the power of God’s love. Love so powerful that it forgives even those
for whom the world has no forgiveness.
Love so powerful that it draws itself into the most fearful and scary
situations from which any sane person would turn and run away. Love so powerful that God invests himself
completely and fully no matter how often a person fails or how terrible that
failure might be. No church is perfect,
but I know that as the pastor of the church have been called to lead and serve,
this is the sort of perfection for which I believe God would have us strive.
God, because God
loves you, doesn’t want you for your money.
God wants you.
So what about
that offering plate that might feel so intimidating?
When I was just
starting out as a pastor, nearly 34 years ago, I went to a seminar on
congregational offerings that has impacted me and my ministry ever since. At that seminar, I learned that when the
Bible speaks of giving an offering, the Bible notes only one motivation: thanks.
Not duty. Not obligation. Not dues.
Not shared responsibility. Not
for a cause or concern. The only
motivation that the Bible notes for the giving of one’s offering is thanks.
Thanks to
God. Thanks for God’s love that God
would spare nothing so that God might embrace you with uncompromising,
unfaltering, unstoppable, unending, unyielding love. Because God loves you, all God wants is you. And God has tangibly given you all of his
love in Jesus. What you place in that
offering basket is the tangible way for you
to say “thank you”.
So, I hope that if
it is the case, that the offering basket has been an intimidating deterrent,
keeping you from experiencing the life changing love that God turns up the heat
on in Sunday morning worship, then know this.
God doesn’t want you for your money.
God wants you.
If you are in
worship on Sunday morning, I believe that God is very thankful. So come.
And when the offering plate comes by, may whatever you drop in it simply
be this, “Thank you, God.”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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