No more weak orange squash

As a community of disciples our aim is to become ‘formed into the likeness of Jesus’ – sounds fancy but simply means becoming like Jesus. The simple truth is that you can’t get more generous than Jesus and it’s going to be tough us measuring up to his standard… Still that’s what we are about and we know that this is going to affect our wallets just as much as any other area of our lives. We want to be generous – from the inside out – naturally so…

In ancient times, setting out a plan to help his people learn how to become naturally generous, God laid out all kinds of ways for his people to avoid getting stuck on holding onto stuff and forgetting everything is actually a gift. There were several ‘tithes‘ that every Jew was accustomed to giving and of course there was the rule about the Sabbath – which was about not working and having at least one day off a week to rest and enjoy God. All in all the idea was to help his people to be generous.

We are not tied to these same ‘rules’ (which began to become fixed as identity markers for God’s people and started getting twisted into boundaries that kept people out rather than simply ways of being faithful to him) but we remain wholeheartedly committed to the principles behind them all. We want to be generous people – not just generous to each other, but generous to strangers, friends, even enemies.

When I was a kid I went to church and at the end of the service we were given orange squash. It was horrid… because it was diluted too much… water would have been better. Weak orange squash and church became synonymous for me and I didn’t like it much. Christians seemed tight.

We don’t want to be like that any more! We have had enough of weak orange squash. We have had enough of doing everything on the cheap. We have a God who gives us all that we need. We want to learn how to be generous.

And as a community we don’t push a bag under people’s noses when they come to our services. We don’t take collections. But we do still need to pay the bills. It currently costs us about £1000 per week to keep out of the red. As well as each of us giving stuff away to people or charities individually, we also commit ourselves to giving 10% of our collections away too. Some of us commit ourselves to giving 10% of our pay to the church. Others of us give more. Others give less. Others give in other ways other than money. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. What matters is between us and God… what comes out from our hearts.

If you want to give to the church one of the best ways is to fill in a Standing Order form and get your bank to send us the money each month and send it into us by post. This helps us in our budgeting.

If you are a taxpayer do please fill out a Gift Aid form as this means that for every £1 we receive the tax man gives us an extra 28p… Nice… Click here to download one.

Whatever you decide, the main thing is to make sure that you get into the joy of giving. Giving is a disciple we chose to take up. and sometimes it hurts a little when we give sacrificially. But we are realising that it make us happy. It makes us smile. We feel good.