GIVING BACK

I want to take you back to the year 1953. when I was just starting the third grade. I was presented with what was then the most significant responsibility of my life. I was to receive an allowance of 50 cents a week. No strings were attached to the allowance, nothing I had to do for it – sort of like grace from God. To put things in perspective for those who think 50 cents was not very much, gas was 25 cents a gallon and a bottle of Coke was 5 cents.

This allowance also was my introduction to stewardship, as my parents suggested that I give 10 percent back to God each Sunday in the offering plate just as they did with their gifts from God. Tithing became an automatic thing with me, as each Sunday I put the first 5 cents of my allowance into the offering plate with great pride. Then I began to look at the things I was giving up for that 5 cents, and the soda that all my friends and I would buy each week became a symbol of my offering. I began to question my parents as to what became of my offering, and they gave me a breakdown of major church expenses, including the salary for the minister. I imagined the minister using my 5 cents each week to buy himself a Coke, and since my best friend was his son, I told Richard that I hoped his dad appreciated my offering.

As I began to earn money with a paper route, giving music lessons, working as a soda jerk and starting as a teacher, I tried to continue my commitment to give back to God what I thought I could not afford. I was still looking at my offering in terms of what I was giving up rather than what it was doing to further God’s work. The reality of living on a teacher’s salary and being married with small children put an end to my tithing, and I resigned myself to the fact that this was a sacrifice I was not willing to make. When I was divorced, I had to give the first portion to someone else, and any thought of tithing took a back seat to the reality of alimony.

I sat in my apartment in Chicago one evening and created a budget that would allow me to give a tenth of what was left in my salary back to God. It wasn’t very much, and it certainly wasn’t tithing, but it made me feel good about myself once again. As most of you know, there is a happy ending to this story, and I am blessed with many gifts that I gratefully use and return to God. What has made this cheerful giving possible is that I have long ago outgrown my view of stewardship in terms of the things I am giving up, and I now focus on the good that my gifts do for the church, the community and the work of God everywhere.

I would like to encourage parents that this is a good opportunity to teach the act of stewardship to your children. I want to see this congregation crowded with people each Sunday, the choir filled to overflowing and the work that we do here in the community and around the world be the work of God by the people of The Church of the Good Shepherd.

— Myron Hanke

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist