Micah 6:6 - Giving starts with receiving
"With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
This question in Micah 6:6 is framed as an entry requirement question, the person at the temple, asking, what will this cost me? How much does it take to get a blessing from God, protection from God, forgiveness from God?
This is one of those questions that has asked again and again down the centuries. All religions ask the question. They all expect that there is a cost to worship, a charge to enter a holy place. People also ask the question because they have inherited the expectation that access to the spiritual is through a system and the system requires funding. The temple or the priest wants your money.
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
In Micah 6:6,7 the questioner answers their question with offers of increasingly expensive gifts and sacrifices. They move from the costly to the ludicrous to the obscene. Thinking there must be some way of getting in, there must be a price, there must be a cost for dealing with my sin.
It is an arrogant assumption about God – that there can be any way in which we can buy Him off. It is the assumption that that if there is a price to be paid to get God on your side and that we can afford it. We have what it takes.
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
It’s the right question but the unexpected answer is that there is no entrance requirement that anyone can afford, but you are welcome because He has made a way.
Romans 3:23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came through Jesus Christ.
Our cheque book isn’t fat enough, our bank balance isn’t deep enough, our begging isn’t meaningful enough. We have no way of making a sufficient offering. But He has made a way. All He asks is that we are obedient to His commands, keeping our part of the covenant, following in Jesus’ footsteps.
which is to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
You see, God doesn’t need your money.
So, perversely you may think, I want to turn to talking about the money you give to the church!
Giving to the church is not an entrance requirement - giving to the church comes from an altogether different place.
Part of belonging to this community of faith (and indeed to any) is to give regularly. Why, if God doesn’t need your money?
Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t give:
- To buy favour – if I give God will appreciate me more. He might answer my prayers.
- Out of guilt – if I don’t give I am going to go to hell.
- It’s a religious tax – it’s just the price you pay for living as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.
- If I give I can spend – if I give I have done my bit, kept God happy and can go and do what I like with the rest.
- Gives control – if I give I can influence the church and what it does.
If you give for these reasons it will lead to an unhealthy relationship - with God, with the church and with your money. Result:
- Reluctance – you resent having to sacrifice some of your hard-earned cash.
- The amount becomes important – you become aware of numbers and percentages and what’s left over, what you can afford.
- Your heart ends up in the wrong place – it’s with your treasure, which remains in your spending plan not in your giving.
- You become dependent on money. You rely on what you have got and you are relying on what you think the giving is going to get you.
- You become selfish – it’s all about you and what you are paying and what you are giving. You take your eyes off God, walking humbly, loving kindness and doing justice.
That all sounds pretty rubbish to me. Money is hard enough to manage without it taking a hold over your life like that – just because you are giving for the wrong reasons.
Giving to the church comes from an altogether different place.
Giving starts with receiving
We came into this world with nothing and with nothing we will leave it.
In one of the first giving campaigns recorded, when the people of Israel had given hugely generously, King David prays this prayer:
1 Chronicles 29:14, But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you and we have given you only what comes from your hand.
“We love because he first loved us” says John, one of the disciples, and the same applies to giving: we give because he first gives to us. 1 John 4:9.
2 Corinthians 8:9, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
- Our giving comes from a place of thankfulness for what we have received.
- Our giving comes from a place of abundance – an overflowing of what has been given to us.
- Our giving comes from a place of having been saved from our sins, given a new life and a hope.
- Our giving comes from a relationship with the God who made us, who rescued and saved us, who provides our every need and who invites us into His kingdom today and forever.
- Our giving comes from a place of rescued intimacy with our creator and redeemer.
We lift our hands in awe and grateful wonder and say, “Thankyou Lord for your love and generosity to me. Out of all that you have given me, here is a token of my thanks.”
We gather as God’s designated community, His church, and His church is the primary recipient of our giving as we respond to God’s generosity. In so doing we provide funding for the kingdom ministry and mission to which He has called us.
This is our mission statement:
We believe God has called us to establish a growing, regional, biblically based community of faith in Leeds. We will worship God, communicate His love and mercy to all people and commit to living out our faith in Jesus in a creative and contemporary way, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We believe that there is good news for this generation in the Kingdom of God and we long to share that news, particularly in Leeds and the North.
We aim to make, train and equip followers of Jesus to be effective in the extending of God's Kingdom, to develop leaders, to plant new churches, to contribute to the blessing of the whole church and to minister with the poor in practical ways
We have put in a place a robust system that can administer the money you give and ensure it is used for God’s purposes.
I want to present to you a summary of the church’s finances over the last year. This community pays its way almost entirely by what you give. Whatever you/we give dictates what we do and where we go. I will soon be writing to everyone who gives regularly with this information and some more.
Income
- Regular income - mainly paid by monthly standing order.
- One off gifts – people giving lump sums, maybe when they get a bonus from work or make a profit on selling their house or if they receive an inheritance. Alison and I, and no doubt many of you, have written a bequest into our will so eventually there will be income from that source.
- Tax refund through Gift Aid (please make a gift aid declaration if you are a tax payer).
- There are some miscellaneous gifts and sources of income – small. For example another church uses the Vineyard Centre on a Sunday afternoon and they give us a regular contribution.
Spending
With anything of this size and complexity it is a bit of a challenge to present it in a simple way but here are the bullet points:
Wages
We try and keep our wage bill to 50% of our income. In a small business you would expect the wage bill to be somewhat higher but in churches 50% is generally about right.
The people who are currently paid are:
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David
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3 days
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Preaching and leading
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Alison
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1 day
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Leading
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Kate
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2 days
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Associate to D&A, housegroups
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Anne
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4 days
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Administration, finance. Trustees support
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Erik
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4 days
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BGOP, teaching, pastoral support
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Hannah
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3 days
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Families support
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Helen
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1 day
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Administration
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Nik
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5 days
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Small groups, pastoral, prayer, worship support
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Much more than that and you end up with a community where everything is being done by paid people rather than volunteers. One of our values is “everyone gets to play” and part of that is enabling what we do to be done by everyone as far as possible.
If you spend less on wages you end up with too little pastoral care. You find that that either the staff are stretched too far or that people simply don’t have enough pastoral care –for responding to major life events as well as developing an environment where people (adults and children) are discipled, taught, cared for.
Support
Computers, Telephones, Internet, Finance and Risk Management, CRB checks, Vineyard Centre upkeep and bills, Stationery, Website.
Mortgage payments
The mortgage on the Vineyard Centre. The mortgage is around £300,000 and falling and the value of the building is around £500,000.
BGOP
Big Groups of People - weekly worship, Carol Service, Easter Celebration, Worship, PA & AV equipment and development, resources desk, logistics.
SGOP
Small Groups of People - Housegroups, Bob (men), Women Rock, Leadership School, Pastoral care, Cameo, Prayer, Welcome, School of Ministry.
Families
Belly Buttons, Vineyard Kids, T4:12, FNP, Deeper, Radish.
Leadership & Development
My budget - Developing Leaders, Equipping Days, Evangelical Alliance membership, Leeds Churches links, Staff Development, Trustee's Meeting expenses, Training conferences. Books, preaching resources. Hospitality.
Reach Out
We budget to give up to 10% of our income to projects and activites outside of the Wharfedale Vineyard, out in the community. OTS, Acts of Kindness, Decorating, Gardening, Fusion, Alpha, LICC, The Store, Reach Out Global - South Africa, Latvia, Bangladesh, Mission Direct.This is one area where we are ready and waiting to spend money. If you can pull together a team to do AoK or want to run an Alpha course – or anything that we are set up to do already – you will find you are pushing at an open door.
VCUK&I
As part of the family of Vineyard Churches UK & Ireland we give 5% to them. This is used to pay for John and Ele and their support. It is also used to provide a buffer for emergencies and to help the Areas in their development of existing churches. The main use of the money though is to enable church planting both here and overseas.
Vineyard National Celebration
Next Saturday we are hosting the Northern venue for the VNC at St George’s. It promises to be an historic day in the life of the Vineyard and I would love you all to go. People will be traveling from the other Northern Vineyards in Liverpool, the Lake District, Newcastle and Hull. We are fortunate to just have a 15 minute bus ride!
We are being connected to 9 other venues via the interweb. There will be times of worship, stories, testimonies, prayer and an offering. It will also be a chance to catch up with friends in the Vineyard family.
There is child care and a packed lunch. If you haven’t done so please go on the website and make a booking asap. Entrance is free but you do need a ticket (there is a charge for the packed lunch).
The two main purposes of this day are to help you capture the vision for the next decade and to provide an opportunity for an offering. John Mumford will be sharing a really exciting vision for the future involving planting many churches and growing the ones we have. We believe that the most effective way to share the gospel of Jesus is by planting churches and we are going for a big vision to grow the Vineyard in the UK.
I don’t want anyone to go on Saturday and feel bad about not being able to give – or worse, not to go because they can’t give. It is much more than just that.
The church here will make a generous gift. You may wish to make an additional gift yourself and that would be great. But if you can’t or don’t feel that the Lord has prompted you to do so in addition to your giving to the Vineyard here, that’s fine.
The May Invitation
During May I am making an invitation to you to become part of the Wharfedale Vineyard. Some of you are already and to you the invitation is, “do you want to do this for another year?” To those of you who are not the invitation is, “would you like to join in?” What does that mean?
Last week I introduced our theme for the coming year from Micah 6.
I invited you to re-align with God. He has saved us and calls us into a covenant relationship with him in which our part is to do what is good, to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. That is what this church is going for. Do you want to join in?
This week, giving starts with receiving. I am making an invitation to give money.
We are recipients of His extraordinary grace and generosity and part of our response is to give by giving to His church for the fulfilment of the mission He has given us.
It is really important that you understand that there are two separate giving opportunities before you at this time:
1. To the Vineyard family nationally – to see us reach out for the vision God has given us of growing his kingdom across the country and overseas. This is a one-off gift which you are invited to make next Saturday.
2. To the Wharfedale Vineyard – to see us continue in what we have been called to. This is mainly regular giving as a proportionate of your income.
Next week I am going to invite you to walk the walk. To live lives which demonstrate justice, kindness and walking humbly.
In the fourth week (22 May) we will gather it all together and provide you with an opportunity to respond to the invitation. By then I would love you to have prayed and pondered on what the Lord has called you to. In what ways do you want to join in with the life of this community? Do you wish to carry on exactly as before? Do you wish to do something different?
I would like you to sit down and prayerfully consider your resources. How much energy, time and money will you have during the next year? Thank God for His provision and ask Him how you can join in.
When it comes to giving I suggest you start at 10% of your income but you may feel called to give less or more.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, and changing. Some can give more or less. Others can do more, some less. Some have more time than others. That’s OK.
We will then all make our responses (which can be anonymous of course). We can then measure what we are heading into next year, what our budget will look like, where there is passion to minister, how people are going to pray for this family.
I believe God has called Alison and me to lead and grow this community of faith. We love being part of the Vineyard, a movement that celebrates the coming of the kingdom and expects to us to live natural lives supernaturally. We want to grow a vibrant, strong, exciting church of all ages and types of people. A church which is known as a place where we love God, love people and put love into action.
- We will worship together – mainly on Sundays at weekly worship.
- We will care for each other – mainly through housegroups.
- We will reach out to others – through our lives and a variety of activities and missions.
Alison and I have committed ourselves to giving time and energy and money to this expression of God’s kingdom. On 22 May we will be responding to the invitation by pledging to give sacrificially, to serve enthusiastically and to pray constantly.
If this is the community of faith to which God has called you for this season then we invite you to join us.
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
We will do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.
David Flowers, 08/05/2011