RoboPreacher

that i feel now A sermon on stewardship from a portion of the Sermon on the Mount   The legend goes that when John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world at the time, was asked how much is enough, he replied, “just a little bit more .” It’s a breathtaking answer. But not for how crass it is. It’s breathtaking for how honest it is. The truth is, to various degrees, we are all caught up in this same rat race. We, too, think the missing ingredient to our satisfaction is just a little bit more .   And that’s the rub , isn’t it? A little bit more is always just a little out of reach. No sooner do we amass a little more than we realize it’s still not enough! That we have to gain a little more still before we will finally have enough . None of us ever set out to become greedy . It’s just something that happens to us. After years of chasing that allusive enough that never seems to come, the light in our eyes becomes darkness , as Jesus says. One day, suddenly, everythin...

...if i could i would no longer be barren When I was just starting here, I asked a pastor-friend what was the biggest challenge to ministry. The answer he gave, surprised me. His answer was “affluence.”  When he told me that, I retorted, ‘it’s not like you’re not serving in some wealthy suburb or anything like that.’ The truth was, he was serving a congregation that was probably less well off than we are. He just looked at me and asked, ‘do you know how much it costs to corrupt a youth? You can do it for as little as $200, or so.” Then he said something that has always stuck with me, ‘the churches I’ve served, seem to have a remarkable inability to deal with the ambiguity, the moral dilemmas of money.’ And as much as we’re loath to admit it, he’s probably right… We like to pretend we’re perfectly capable of handling our money on our own, on managing our assets ourselves, on spending and saving for our self; but the truth is, we know better . I’m not advocating ...