The Practice of Generosity
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
When we abide with Jesus, we become like Jesus. This is the premise behind our desire to grow in spiritual practices. These practices mold us to be more like Jesus and they bear fruit.
We recently explored the practice of generosity and discovered that it is about giving our stuff and ourselves away. I’m curious what fruit has come from our giving. I’m not sure how to measure the giving of our stuff but I heard a number of stories about sharing. If measuring the fruit of giving ourselves, I’d measure time given.
For the month of June, I asked leaders to share the number of volunteers and the number of hours they served. (I asked them to estimate – conservatively.) The fruit results blew me away. By our conservative estimate, more than 370 people donated more than 1,766 hours!
Well done good and faithful servants!
Broken into categories it looks like this:
- Leadership Ministries – 52 people donated 130 hours.
- Discipleship Ministries – 111 people donated 724 hours.
- Worship Ministries – 69 people donated 195 hours.
- Outreach ministries – 138 people donated 717 hours.
Of course, it’s challenging to pin down the exact category of these donated hours because so much ministry overlaps and bears fruit in multiple ways but my main take away was this – YOUR GENEROSITY IS A HUGE BLESSING!
Thanks
Kent Landhuis
Pastor of Teaching & Leadership
