Generous Giving

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Transforming our giving in response to God’s generosity.

The Diocese of Salisbury and the churches in the Beaminster Team begin a four-week campaign on 12th September to help us all engage with stewardship of the resources God gives us. This is not just a focus on giving more money, although money is part of this, but acknowledging how much we receive from God and how generous we can be in return.

The first week focuses on prayer. We pray for how to engage with the concepts of generosity, of giving, of giving thanks for all we have. We pray about the financial stability of the local church and the diocese. We pray for the communities we live in, the charities we give to, the churches we are part of. We perhaps ask God to change our hearts, to increase our compassion and to make us more generous.

The diocese has provided a range of resources which can be found on its website.

We have distributed the Generous giving leaflet in our churches and a pdf version can be found here.

We will be preaching on generous giving in our services for the next four weeks and praying for the campaign too. If you would like to talk more about giving to our team churches please do get in touch.

Finally, a short story about the power of prayer. A number of years ago the treasurer of St Mary’s Beaminster attended some Diocesan training about encouraging people to leave legacies to the church in their wills. We talked on her return about how we might broach the subject in our church communities. We committed to pray about it, asking God to prompt people to feel confident enough to talk about the option of a legacy and asking God to encourage people to leave a legacy. Recently the church in Beaminster has received several generous donations following legacies. I don’t think it is a coincidence that following our commitment to pray a few years back we have now been the beneficiaries of such generosity. Thank you God and thank you to those who were so generous towards the church.