by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Every day I receive several advertisements by email, and several more in the mailbox for programs and products that promise SPECTACULAR!!! results: Double the size of your church! Triple the size of your building! Become a better preacher in one short week! Profoundly alter people’s spiritual lives with one video! Exclamation marks are the order of the day for these ads, and generally disappointment is the result of the products.

I confess- I’m tired of the eternal quest for the spectacular. Our culture is saturated in it, people are hungry for it, lives are ruined by it. I’m far more interested in faithfulness.

Eugene Peterson’s book title from 1980 “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction” increasingly captivates me. It calls forth those plodding but sure-footed words like consistent, steady, dependable, faithful.

What does it mean to be faithful to Jesus? To be a faithful friend, a faithful follower? It means worrying less about the exclamation marks, and more about the next thought, the next step, the next action.

It’s November, and at Bethany that means our elders and staff on Session are hard at work preparing a financial budget for 2010. They are praying, talking, dreaming and listening for what God has in store for Bethany in the next year and beyond, and what financial resources can support the ministries that we are called to.

This means that in the coming weeks you will receive some communication about our Stewardship Campaign.

• It will be unabashed, straight forward and clear.
• It will remind us all of God’s call to be good stewards of our finances, as well as other areas of our lives.
• It will acknowledge the many requests we all get for money, but also the crucial importance of each one of us tithing- giving first rather than what’s leftover.

Stewardship Sunday is November 22 , and we will have the chance that day in worship to bring forward written pledges (estimated commitments) towards the ministries of Bethany in 2010.

Giving financially is one part of our worship of God. So watch your mailbox, and your bulletin.

The Stewardship communication won’t be a slick four-color, glossy brochure that promises you the moon or something equally spectacular. But as each one of us faithfully contributes, and 2010 unfolds, and the ministries of our community take concrete shape, and the Holy Spirit moves, lives will be changed.

And that IS spectacular!!