Over the last six weeks, several of Grace's members have invited your 2019 pledge in support of Grace Church. They've offered reflections about why they give generously month by month and week by week. Today, with ten days left in our annual giving campaign, I want to share a bit about why I give.
Grace is a community that shapes the essential aspects of our lives as we grow together in relationship, worship, discovery, and service. I place a check in our offering basket each month because I am convinced that everything we give to God at Grace is taken, blessed, shared, and given for the life of the world. While the gifts we offer God at Grace strengthen our community of faith and allow us to care for one another, our gifts do not remain on Day Road or on Bainbridge Island.
From my vantage, the most distinct sign of our gifts bringing life to the world is enacted as you leave Grace’s property on Sundays. I pray each week as I watch you go. While you walk away, I imagine the places your cars or bikes take you during the week: onto a ferry to an office building or hospital in Seattle, to a community center in Port Townsend, to a school in Suquamish, to neighborhoods and apartment complexes spread out over several counties. When you leave Grace each week, you carry gifts of creativity, commitment, nurturing, and physical support to people near and far. You come to Grace to worship and to find strength and companionship as you serve the world in vital and faithful ways. I give because nourishing you and sending you out into the world is at the heart of our life together.
Gifts we offer at Grace’s altar are given for the life of the world other ways. This Sunday, our children will ask us to support immigrants who've recently moved to Kitsap County. Last month, gifts were sent from Grace to nourish children in Bremerton, adults in need in Seattle, and kindergarten students in Vietnam as our Outreach Committee mailed generous checks to organizations including North Kitsap Fishline, the Bremerton Backpack Brigade, Housing Resources Bainbridge, Episcopal Relief and Development, PeaceTrees Vietnam, Kossoye (Ethiopia), Edible Hope (Seattle), and Chaplains on the Harbor in Aberdeen. In a few weeks, Grace's members will distribute sack lunches in Seattle, will serve homeless men and women in a parking lot under an I-5 overpass, and will spend time stocking shelves at Fishline.
Finally, I give because I believe that I am transformed by giving regularly and generously. A commitment to offering some of what I’ve been given month after month (even on days when church life isn't comfortable or easy) extends ours family’s roots of faith, and draws us more deeply into relationship with our brothers and sisters at Grace and around the world.
