So - I have two sermons here, and i wonder which one you would like me to preach? Here I have a really creative one (hold it up) - I promise you none of you will ever have heard a sermon on giving like this. The other one (hold it up) it is a bit more boring and ordinary.
Which would you like?
You are not sure?
Let me unpack them
My less exciting sermon - we start with celebration. There is an amazing amount of generosity going on in St Barnabas. It’s not like we are starting from scratch because actually people do give really well. So this sermon {hold it up} is all about starting where we are and celebrating the giving that is already going on.
In my really brilliant creative sermon - this sermon is absolutely guaranteed to lead to a spectacular increase in our giving as a church. what we do is the churchwardens rush out, spend what little money we have left as a church on AK47s - then we lock the doors, and we don’t let anyone else out until you have transferred over the deeds to your house and the entire contents of your bank account to st Barnabas.
So which one would you like? The trad one or the creative ? What really ? OK
As I said, I have spent my first 6 months discovering the wonderful things of generosity already going on here. Take the Fun Day last week. The cost of closing the road was £325 . of that £140 was already paid before the day started - not because one person wrote an enormous cheque but because a significant number of people very kindly contributed. Then there was the day itself. The day wasn’t a fund raising day. It was about building relationships with the local community. Yet surprisingly it ran a huge surplus, £829, enough to cover the entire costs of next years day. How was that money raised? Well a lot it was because so many of you donated things. Take for example - the Tombola - that not only provided a lot of fun, it also raised a lot of money. If we had had to go to Tescos and buy the bottle of wine, it would not have raised so much. But so many of you donated. Again, it wasn’t one person donating 100 bottles. Rather, it was lots of you donating a bottle here, a bottle there. Then there were so many people donating their time making the day work. I could go on.
What I would like you do is get into groups of 4 or 5 and share examples of where you have experienced generosity in this community. If you are an introvert and don’t like talking - make sure you join a big enough group so that the other people can do the talking and you can just listen. It may be examples of people being generous to the church. It may be examples of people being generous to individuals within this church. It may be examples of people who have been generous or kind to you. You don’t have to mention them by name - just share (if you are ok doing so) about the act of generosity
[take feedback]
Thank you so much. those of you who preferred to listen - what you will notice is that there are no machine guns pointing at you.
At the end of this sermon, for those of you who are happy to do it, I am going to ask you to do something. Now obviously I am hoping quite a few people will do it, but if you prefer not, there’s no machine guns pointed at you. Every bit of this Stewardship campaign you sign up to as much as you are happy to and no more.
Actually what I am going to ask you to do is two fold. This sermon is about celebrating the generosity that is already going on in St Barnabas. The second sermon on Sunday 31st May will be about God’s giving of himself. I’d like you to pick from the list of choices what you would like the third sermon on Sunday 21st June to be on, so I can speak on what you would find helpful.
The second thing I would like you to do is enter your “safe amount”. This is a generous parish. Compared with the church of England, people in this parish give significantly more than the national average. And I know that at the end of this giving campaign many of you will increase your giving, and some of you will increase your giving very significantly.
Before you can do that, you will need to look at your bank statement and check how much money you have got. You may need to talk to husband or wife to check you are both singing from the same hymn sheet. You may want to pray about. So at the end of this sermon you are NOT going to be able to come up with the final amount that you can increase your giving by.
The “safe amount” is not your final figure. It is the much smaller figure that you can give without having to look at your bank statement or talk to your spouse. So for example- there might be someone here who after going away , looking at bank statement, talking to husband, decides they can increase their personal giving by £19.50. But as she is sitting here now, she is not totally sure they can manage that, but she knows she could give an extra £2.50, so that is her safe amount. For someone else here, when he has gone away looked at his bank statement, talked to his wife, can increase his giving by £5.40 a week. But for now - he is not sure of that. But he knows he could manage an extra pound a week. So that is his safe amount.
And remember - whatever figure you write down - God will be happy with you.
In our Gospel reading - the prodigal son limps home after having made a complete mess of his life. He is desperately hoping that his father will forgive him enough to give him a job in the kitchens so he won’t starve. And what does the father do - he comes running down the road to meet his son, his arms stretched out to hug him. He doesn’t let the son get his grovelling out. No, he just hugs him and kills the fatted calf and starts the bbq and gets the party going. This is God’s abundance.
You know, one the things I like about St Barnabas is this -[hold up a nice mug]. I was watching “home fires” on TV - and in 1939 in the Women’s Institute - they had these cups [hold up picture] Now these were clearly these were the hight of fashion in 1939 - the problem is there are still some churches using them today. And that to me does not speak of the God who comes running out to hug the prodigal son and kill the fatted calf. That’s why I like these Barnabas mugs, because they are nice mugs like we might have in our home, and they speak of a God who is head over heals in love with you.
Say you fill in your “safe amount” and you write down £1 - God isn’t thinking “huh - the person next to you wrote down a £5”. God doesn’t think like that. God thinks “With all that stuff going on in your life, that the vicar doesn’t even know about - and without even going away to think about it, you’ve managed to increase your giving by a £1 a week? That’s fantastic!”
Because that may not be the way I am - but that is the way God is.
Over the three Sundays of today, 31st May and 21st June - we are going to be asking you to think about raising your giving - because that’s what you do in a giving campaign. But you know, I know of at least one person in this congregation who’s about to lose their job. There might be several of you in that situation. If you have just lost your job or just been given your notice - you might be thinking “Until I get a new job, I can’t raise my giving. In fact, until I get a new job, I need to cut my giving” And you know - that is what God wants you to do. I might not want you to do that because I want us to raise as much money as possible, but God is not like that.
Though you know, it’s often the least well off who give the most. Many of you have family in Africa or the third world, and you will have experienced the generosity of people there. I remember when I was out in South Africa, one Sunday we visited a tiny village church - these were the people too poor to travel in to the main town to church. Most of them had no proper job. But the end of the service they had prepared the most amazing feast. It wasn’t a parish lunch. They had prepared it just for me and my family. I was so embarressed - but they were so generous.
Northolt is not the wealthiest place in England. People here struggle. Yet St Barnabas is far more generous than the average in the Church of England. If you take not just those signed up for planned giving, but the whole electoral roll, the average giving in the church of england is £6.70 a week. The average giving at St Barnabas is £8.22 a week - almost £2 more. If you take those who have signed up for planned giving - be it standing orders or the envelope scheme - the church of England figure is £11.10 a week. The average at St Barnabas is £12.97 a week. Again, almost two pounds more.
Our generosity comes out of the fact that God is generous to us. Our Leviticus reading is the origins of the harvest festival. In a subsistence culture like ancient Israel - it was very easy to see that everything they had depended on God’s blessing. A good harvest meant food on the table. It’s slightly harder for us to see it - because we don’t necessarily see any connection between the blessings the company we work for receives and how big our pay check is. And then because a pay check is cash rather than a bag of corn, we don’t always notice that God has provided us with what we need for our life. But in ancient Israel they were very aware of that - just like people in Africa are today. So they had two harvest festivals. They had the first fruits. When the first grains appear - rather than eating them, they would take them and offer them to God to say thank you. And then later, they would have a second harvest festival and make an offering to say thank you for blessings in the belly.
And you know - giving that back to God felt good for the Israelites. I can let you into a secret because you are a generous congregation. When some of my colleagues have preached on giving in other places- sometimes they have encountered negativity, because people want to hold on to what they have. But holding on to things doesn’t make us happy. I’m sure you’ll agree - but I have never met anyone who has been generous who has afterwards thought “I wish I hadn’t given that” - because as we all know, giving actually makes us happy. According to one newspaper - when you give to church or charity - the same thing happens in your brain as when you have sex or eat chocolate- a part of your brain likes up. Because giving makes us happy.
And then there was the bit in Leviticus about gleaning - people in ancient Israel weren’t to take everything from their fields. They were to leave a bit of the crop for the poor to come and gather so they wouldn’t starve.
There are nay sayers out there who sometimes say - “you shouldn’t ask people to give to church, because they won’t give to charities”. But the opposite is in fact true. People who give to church are far more likely to give to charity.
I mentioned how the giving per person in St Barnabas at £12.97 per person is about £2 higher than the church of England as a whole. The other thing we need to celebrate is how many people are signed up to our planned giving scheme. Once you include people who give as couples as well as people who give as individuals, At least 79 people are signed up either by standing order or through the envelope scheme. I don’t know how that compares with the rest of the Church of England - but if you look around you at the size of the congregation, so far (and it does take effort) 79 of you made the effort to sign up for a standing order or the envelope scheme. 79 out of a congregation this size.
So we have an enormous amount to celebrate - you shared stories of people in this church being generous. I have shared some of the figures about generous people are in their giving.
Now of course, not everyone can - but if you can you can we are hoping you will increase your giving. Not only are there exciting projects we would like to do, but although your giving has held up, when we lost rise we lost £5,000 and inflation keeps going up, so those of you who can afford increase your giving we need it.
We are going to sing a song now - and then there will be a little bit of space to fill out the form - what you would like the 3rd stewardship sermon to be on, and what your safe amount is - not the big generous amount you can give when you’ve looked at your bank statement and talked to your husband or wife, but the small amount £5, £2, £1, 50p that you can (if you can) increase your giving by safely without needing to check - and we will collect them now at the offertory.
