DISCIPLESHIP
AND GENEROSITY
I’m continuing my conversation on discipleship,
by talking about how interwoven it has to be in generosity and in the lives of
pastors.
When we talk about intentional discipleship
plans or pathways, doesn’t the focus always seem to be on the congregation. We
have to intentionally lay out how we disciple others. We leave the pastor out
of the discipleship pathway, other than as the person who helps create the
plan.
Last week, I talked about how stewardship
and discipleship are intertwined. More important than that, though, is that
generosity and discipleship are intertwined. So…here’s where the pastor is
going to come into it. “Pastors must have a passion for giving and believe in developing
a generosity journey as an important statement about discipleship.”[1]
While we talk about preaching and
teaching about stewardship and generosity, being an example of generosity and
modeling it genuinely is more powerful than the best series of sermons could ever
hope to be.
But the pastor can’t do it alone.
Staff need to be involved. Leadership needs to be involved. Both staff and
leadership also need to cultivate their own giving journey, just as we are
asking our congregation to do the same. The pastor also needs to cultivate his
or her own giving journey and be able to articulate it and model it.
Sometimes it’s difficult to have the
conversations about it, but we can avoid them. If we have our own giving
journey cultivated, we have something to talk about.
What is your giving journey? How
would you talk about generosity in your own life?
Please
feel free to contact me at (315) 427-3668 or susanranous@unyumc.org if you’d like to talk about this and
how stewardship at your church can work together with discipleship and the
intentionality of it all!
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