Noah Lay Witness to Stewardship Hello everyone! For those who don’t know me, I’m Karl Noah and this is my wife Kathy. The Noah family became a member of the St. Joseph parish 14 years ago in 2002. Our children have been (and currently are) Altar Servers, I serve as the Altar Server Coordinator and Mass Coordinator and Kathy serves the Faith Formation Ministry in the area of RCIA and Vacation Bible School and serves on the Country Fair Committee. Kathy and I were asked to talk to you today, not about your Time and Talent, but about sharing your treasure with the Church as part of being a good Christian Steward. Like you, we come to Church every Sunday to hear about Christ’s love, mercy, and sacrifice. We want to hear about how to grow in grace, and how to improve our relationship with Christ and with others. Nobody wants to hear about money. Somehow talking about money seemed unholy … earthly…undignified….and it takes away from the message that we come to hear every week. But here we are – up here to talk about money. However, we are not up here to guilt you into why you should give of “your treasure”, but Kathy and I are here to share with you our story on how and why we are committed to our Christian Stewardship responsibility of treasure. Early on in our active parish life, the response Kathy and I would experience when hearing about the stewardship campaigns was defensiveness. Any talk of giving, for us, was a turn‐off. However, it was through the grace of Christ that we came to understand that this defensiveness was, in fact, the false belief that we had no “spare” treasure to give. How many of you can relate to that? I believe being defensive is a natural response to something that you would like to do but can’t (or think you can’t). The source of this belief of no “spare treasure” came after our first child, Cameron, was born. We went from a dual income family with each contributor making almost the same yearly salary – we were doing pretty well – to a single income family so Kathy could stay home to raise Cameron (and soon our other three children Shannon, Sean and Colleen). That’s right…our income was cut in half! We have come to understand that giving is a free response to God’s love. It is a natural result of knowing His deep and unending love for us. We do this naturally in our earthly relationships. When someone does something wonderful for us, we want to give back. We naturally want to thank them and show our appreciation by doing something for them. It is never a one‐way street. And our relationship with God should be no different. Stewardship 2016 Page 1
Noah Lay Witness to Stewardship Our lack of giving was a concern to us, but not enough to break away from our insecurity and belief we needed to keep what we have and therefore, not trusting freely in God. That is, until one day. What changed this idea of NOT having spare treasure came in 1998. St. Francis of Assisi in Derwood (our parish while living in Gaithersburg) was having a capital campaign – imagine that – a capital campaign! We weren’t really surprised…after all, the real certainties of life are death, taxes and capital campaigns! Anyway, because of our wanting to give, we agreed to give $5 a week. It wasn’t much, but I can NOT stress enough how scary it was just to commit to $5 a week…it was more than that…it was $20 a month…it was $260 a year! At the time, we had three kids, a mortgage, a car payment and we just started college funds – all on just one salary – $260 a year was a lot of money! However, “giving changes the giver”. Giving became a habit and soon, we were giving God a raise when I received a raise. Every year, we gave just a little more. It wasn’t much, but how great the gratification and the blessings that we have received because of it. God has blessed us in so many ways that I am afraid to number them in fear that they will be withdrawn. Everything we have is His. I am entrusted with resources. Health. Time. Talent. Money. And I know we will be asked to account at the end of time for our choices with these gifts. To be honest, our Stewardship is challenged almost weekly if not daily. The biggest challenge in our lives today is we have kids in college! For the last two years, we’ve had two kids in college and for the next two years, we’ll have two kids in college with a four year grace period with only one child in college! I can’t express enough the joy that Kathy and I are looking forward to that day when there will only be one college tuition to pay! Never thought I’d hear myself say that! Naturally, we are worried about whether we could still support the church, pay for college and continue to increase our annual giving. We keep thinking that this might be the year we finally hit our limit and be forced to cut back on our giving in support of college or any other emergency that life throws our way, like financially supporting unexpected medical bills like Kathy’s cancer treatment. But by the grace of God and prayer, not only have we continued our giving to the Church, but we were able to increase it as well! Stewardship puts money into perspective. Money isn’t good or evil. It is neutral. It becomes good when it is used for good. Giving away funds is a form of trusting God. So, Kathy and I had to step out in faith. Stewardship 2016 Page 2
Noah Lay Witness to Stewardship Our life has blossomed: my work life, our family life and our parish life. I can’t think of an area that isn’t richer and better. Being generous is like fertilizer: allowing everything to grow. If you are, like what Kathy and I were, and not committed to regular giving, we especially want to talk to you. Whatever is holding you back on this might well be holding you back in other areas of your faith life. God can do a lot when you say “yes” to His call. But He will never force it. Are you embarrassed to give just a token? But that is exactly how we started! You must keep in mind that no amount of giving is too small! You need only to jump in! Are you hurting, indifferent, defensive, stuck, turned off by our story and the focus on treasure? My friends, Jesus plus one is an army! Jesus can fix anything but He needs a “yes” or two to work with! Open up! Let the offertory pledge process be a “yes” vote from you. Let the Spirit hold your hand. Walk with Him as He helps you experience the true joy of giving. That is what Christian Stewardship is really about. And that is part of our journey to become a Disciple of Jesus. Thank you for your time and for making this a loving, faith‐filled parish. God Bless You Stewardship 2016 Page 3
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