“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” — Proverbs 3:9-10

Supporting a church, any church, is a community effort. Few people like to talk about giving, or tithing, to a church. More people leave over giving to a church than leave for political reasons. In fact, many people believe that a church should never ask for money.

As a community who has intentionally chosen to gather to worship God, to support one another, and to shine God’s light and love on a shadowed world, we are called to share our gifts with the community, and there are as many ways to share our gifts as there are people in the world.

Traditionally, when we discuss stewardship, people jump to giving money. That is wonderful, and we certainly need to offer money—because like it or not—there are bills and expenses that the church incurs every day. But offering our money is not the only way to give.

We can offer our talent of time. Believe it or not, not everyone has time, or at least a decent amount of time, to offer the church, for a variety of reasons. Many of our ministries require the time people can offer. Cleaning the kitchen, planning Anniversary parties, working with youth and children, teaching Faith Formation, decorating the Fellowship Hall, planning, cooking, serving, etc. for Share-A-Meal and Hope at the Brick House, serving on the Board, to name just a few.

These things would not happen without the support of all of your gifts. But again, there is another way to thank God by being a good steward, and that is through your physical donations. These include the meat and cheese for sandwiches, for diapers and backpacks, cookies and desserts, oil and gas for the mowers and snow blowers.

It is amazing how much is donated to Faith First Community Church in terms of non-monetary gifts!

Many years ago, we decided that we wanted a more accurate picture of how much was being donated to the various ministries of the church. We wanted to figure out what it actually cost for us to support our missions financially, in the event that, one day, we would have to add them to the budget because we couldn’t get donations.

So we asked people to turn in receipts for what they donated. If someone bought paper plates for the kitchen, they turned a receipt into Martha with their name and the words “In kind”.

The purpose for this is twofold. First, it gives us a more accurate picture on what is being given back to God. Second, when Martha gets these receipts, she records them so they show up on your giving statements, and you can claim them on your taxes, if you so choose.

This is what we are asking each of you to do. If you give something physical—that is an item or items rather than money—then please bring the receipt to Martha for her to record. It doesn’t matter how much or how little, we want to know what you have lovingly donated to this church community.

Just to let you know, for the first quarter of the year, In Kind giving totaled $687.74.

Always Peace,  Pastor Heidi