Dear PPPC,

There’s a fig tree in our backyard. Well, it’s actually a bit more of a fig bush (Who knew fig trees aren’t really trees? Not me. Now I do.)

I absolutely love it! In the winter, it looks like someone has assembled an arrangement of sticks, but come fall, it produces huge leaves and so much fruit (see photo).

Since early August, I’ve been watching, waiting for the figs to be ready to pick. I had grand dreams of canning a fig spread or jam. Putting them on early fall salads. Eating figs right off the vine. So imagine my dismay when I realized that yes, every once in a while, I manage to get a perfectly ripe one right off the vine…but most of the time, they go from green (not ready) to split open or already eaten by the birds (ready) by the time I remember to check the plant.

I suppose that’s why most gardeners, farmers, and all those in between talk about tending the land. Tending is to watch over, to apply oneself to the care of something. It requires vigilance, checking the crop everyday. Attention to detail. Farmers tend the land. Gardeners tend their gardens. Pastors tend their flocks. The church…well, it is my hope the church is a place where God tends to our souls. “The church is a starting place, not a stopping place, for discerning God’s presence in the world” (Barbara Brown Taylor).

Most would argue that tending is not all that different from stewarding, at least in definition. Stewardship is defined as “the responsibility of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or a property” (Oxford Languages). Our stewardship decisions throughout the year are made by the Session and Deacons, the elected spiritual leadership of our church. How might we most faithfully address this need in our church or community? Who can commit to caring for something or overseeing it? Should we spend money to update this? What is the vision for the church? What resources do we need in for ministry? So in that way, yes, stewardship is defined correctly.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to offer you 5 things to wrestle, think, and pray about related to your understanding of stewardship (both of your own and the church’s).

As we begin our Stewardship Season, here are the first two things I would like for you to be thinking about and praying on:

1) The first is what I believe to be a significantly better understanding of stewardship, as people of faith. Stewardship is “the multiplicity of ways that the people of God live out God’s mission in the world using all of the abundance that God has entrusted to them” (Charles Lane and Grace Pomroy).

If this was our understanding of faithful stewardship, how might our generosity change?

2) I’d like for you to think about/wrestle with/consider that as people of faith, faithful stewardship is actually NOT:
A once-a-year event
About meeting a budget
The same as fundraising
About money in and of itself

You’re going to hear a good bit about stewardship as part of the Christian faith this month. My prayer is that you would not immediately tune it out. The Stewardship Committee has good and important things to share. My prayer is that you might stay open to wrestling with what it means to be a generous giver, what might it look like to tithe, to give away 10% of your household income, however you and your family feel called to be generous.

We tend (see what I did there?) to shut down when conversations begin about stewardship. Keep your heart open, this time. May those who have ears to hear, hear.

See you in church!

Yours for the journey,
Pastor Molly

PS. I’ve signed up for my appointment to give blood at our Blood Drive on Monday…have you? See the announcement below for how to sign up!