If an accountant has ever asked you to tally up your assets, he or she is looking for a list of everything you own.  

This should actually be problematic for any Christian because at the heart of our belief is that we don’t actually own anything.  Only God can claim ownership of what we typically call “our property.” Sadly, that won’t fly with most accountants!

Welcome to our Fall Stewardship Campaign for 2023.  Over the next few weeks we will be encouraging your giving to our church as a way of bolstering our ministries and continuing our faithful witness in Melrose and beyond.

“Stewardship” is the appropriate word.  A “steward” is someone who looks after that which belongs to someone else.  Someone else is the owner and the steward is charged with taking care of what is theirs.  “Stewardship” and “steward” are used outside of religious circles and can apply to, say, “stewardship of an organization.”    

This all hits home when you consider this question: Who owns First Congregational Church?

You might say that the members own FCC because, in the United Church of Christ, decisions of all kinds are made locally.  However, that’s true of decisions but not ownership.  

There is only one owner of First Congregational and that’s God.  All of the rest of us are stewards.  Our task is to take care of what belongs to God; in this case our church.  God tasks us with not only maintaining but growing what belongs to God (Jesus loved to tell parables about vineyards and money managers to hammer this point home).  

The thing is, it is not just the church that belongs to God.  It is everything else that we consider “ours”: our home, our car, our clothes, our food, our…lives.  All of it.  God owns it all because God created it all.  Our job is to take care of what we’ve been given and to recognize that it is a gift to take on this responsibility.

How can a responsibility be a gift?  The gift of being a good steward is that it places you in close proximity to the owner. You are drawn closer to God’s presence of love, wholeness, and abundance when you are actively taking care of what belongs to God.

As we plan for 2024’s budget during this 175^th year of celebrating both our legacy and our future, please give generously to build up that which belongs to God through First Congregational.  You’ll be amazed at how good it feels to partner with the owner to bring more goodness and healing into this world!  

Be a good steward!

See you in church,

–Rev. Dominic