Gifts: The Power of We | 10/19/25
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How does the story of the Israelites in Exodus 35 challenge or inspire your understanding of generosity?
Reflect on your own capacity to give—financially, spiritually, or through service. What is God inviting you to offer right now?
Are there areas in your life where fear, scarcity, or comparison hold you back from being generous? How might you address them?
How can you cultivate a “willing heart” in your daily life, beyond just financial giving?
How does considering what you have, rather than what you lack, shift your perspective on generosity and stewardship?
Transcript:
So the preacher, one Sunday morning, stood up to share with her congregation an update on their capital campaign. You see, the church had a growing ministry with children, and they needed some new space to be able to accommodate the needs of this ministry. And so they had crafted a plan. They had worked with an architect, and they were now underway with a campaign to be able to see it come to fruition.
When she stood up to begin her report that day, she started by saying, “Friends, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is we have all the money we need to be able to fulfill our plans for this capital campaign. The bad news is, most of it is still in your pockets.”
This morning, we focus our attention in our series Knowing Who We Are on gifts. It is the middle component of the five vows of membership that, when somebody joins the United Methodist Church, we say yes to prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Sometimes when we use the word gifts, we use it in a comprehensive, all-inclusive sort of way because there are many ways in which we can offer ourselves.
Marisa gave us a great example of that last week in talking about presence and the ministry of presence as a gift in and of itself. Next week, we'll talk about service—and when we serve and we share our time, our talents, our skills, and our spiritual gifts, we too are offering gifts. But in the nomenclature of “prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness,” since those things are covered under some of the other words, the word gifts really refers to our financial offerings or assets that have monetary value that can be turned into monetary offerings to fund the ministry and work of the church.
It’s about taking the things that are in our pockets and our portfolios and transferring or sharing them through plates, online portals, baskets, and boxes so that those can then be gathered up to make ministry happen.
Now, there is no shortage of Scripture passages that talk about money or wealth, or our relationship to money or wealth, or about the practice of generosity. We can go lots of places in the Bible and find guidance and helpful input on this subject. This morning, I want to point you to one of my favorite stories. It’s a fantastic story in the Hebrew Scriptures—in the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus. In this story, there is an example of what happens when collective generosity is practiced.
Let me set the stage for a moment by reminding us what happens just before this point in Exodus. Exodus tells the story of a people moving from slavery and bondage toward a promised land, and Moses is guiding them through the wilderness. You may recall that Moses made one trip up Mount Sinai, and when he came down, the people had gotten impatient waiting for him. They had constructed a golden calf. When Moses saw it, he was furious—so much so that he smashed the tablets he had just received, the instructions from God for how they were to live.
So Moses goes back up the mountain for version two of the tablets. When he brings them down, he begins to listen to what else God has to say that he is supposed to convey to the people. At the beginning of chapter 35 in Exodus, one of the things Moses shares with them is that God is calling them to construct a tabernacle.
Moses invites anyone who is of a willing heart to practice generosity by bringing something of value that can be utilized in the construction of the tabernacle. Then, a few verses later in that same chapter, we hear this about the congregation responding:
“Then all the congregation of the Israelites withdrew from the presence of Moses, and they came, every one whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and brought the Lord's offering to be used for the tent of meeting, and for all its service, and for the sacred vestments. So they came—both men and women—all who were of a willing heart. They brought brooches and earrings and signet rings and pendants, all sorts of gold objects, everyone bringing an offering of gold to the Lord. And everyone who possessed blue or purple or crimson yarn, or fine linen, or goat's hair, or tanned rams’ skins or fine leather, brought them. Everyone [Are you seeing a theme here?] who could make an offering of silver or bronze brought it as the Lord's offering. And everyone who possessed acacia wood of any use in the work brought it. All the skillful women spun with their hands and brought what they had spun in blue and purple and crimson yarns and fine linen. All the women whose hearts moved them to use their skill spun the goat's hair. The leaders brought onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and the breastpiece, and spices and oil for the light and for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense. All the Israelite men and women whose hearts made them willing to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a freewill offering to the Lord.”
This is the Word of God for the people of God. And God's people say, “Thanks be to God.”
Would you pray with me?
Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, that they might carry a word from you into our hearts and lives this morning. Amen.
It was a Sunday morning in the late 1990s in Atlanta, Georgia. Catherine and I, along with the youth group we were working with at a church in Durham, North Carolina, had come to Atlanta for MLK weekend. We were spending the weekend on retreat, exploring the city and learning more about the great history of Atlanta. As part of that trip, we decided that on Sunday morning, we would worship with the people of Ben Hill United Methodist Church, a historically Black congregation in southwest Atlanta with a rich history of being a pillar in their community and doing vital work for the people around them.
When we walked in that morning, the house was packed—it was standing room only at the back for some folks who came in right as the service was beginning. There was a sense of anticipation in the room that was palpable. Something was happening there that day. We saw banners hanging, but weren’t quite sure what they were about. As the service began, we realized what was going on: this was a Sunday of commitment.
They were in a season of visioning—discerning where God was leading them in their next chapter as a congregation and what the future would look like. On that Sunday, they would all commit, as they were able, to participate in fulfilling that vision.
At one moment early in the service, the pastor invited two people up to thank them for their participation in this effort. He invited up Cliff, a recently retired professional athlete who had been part of that congregation for many years, and Jackie, a young woman who, due to her disabilities, had limited employment options and had been hired by the church as one of their kitchen workers.
The pastor celebrated that morning the gifts that both Cliff and Jackie were ready and prepared to offer as part of the effort that the whole congregation would then be invited into. It was this beautiful, all-inclusive moment.
Later in the service, after the message, there was a moment when the congregation as a whole was invited to come forward, carrying cards that signified their commitment to being a part of the work. We watched as person after person, family after family, went up to the altar to lay those cards down as a sign of their participation and investment.
As I think about that Sunday at Ben Hill, it always connects for me to this story in the book of Exodus—both powerful examples of what happens when people decide together to lean into the choice of generosity. It’s about the power of we. Looking at the story from Scripture and at the way it was modeled that Sunday at Ben Hill, there are a couple of key lessons for us to learn.
The first lesson is this: generosity is always a choice.
God, in God’s grace and goodness, gives us the gift of free will in many ways—and one of them is in how we choose to use our resources. Generosity is a choice. We hear that in Moses’ invitation to the people in Exodus 35: “Whoever is of a willing heart, come and present your offerings.” In the passage we read this morning, we hear that hearts were stirred, spirits were willing, and then the gifts began to be brought. All of them participated in what was described as a freewill offering.
Generosity is a choice. This idea is picked up again in the New Testament. In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 7, Paul says, “Everyone should give whatever they have decided in their heart to give—not reluctantly or under compulsion—for God loves a cheerful giver.”
Now, in our lives, we are all on journeys of faith and life. Part of that journey is thinking about how we will share what has been entrusted to us. Looking back over my story—which is part of our story, mine and Catherine’s together in almost 40 years of marriage—one of the things we’ve tried to lean into is how we will be generous first in our response to the church: offering a tithe of our resources back to support the church’s work.
Then we think of ways to be generous beyond the church with other organizations and causes we believe in. We don’t do that perfectly—none of us do. We all have blind spots when it comes to how we share what’s entrusted to us. But we’ve really tried to pay attention and pray about those things.
Here’s one thing I’ve found to be true: when I look back, there has never been a time when we chose generosity that we regretted it. Never.
Many times, we have seen God at work through that choice—both in our lives and in the lives of others. We have found blessing in our own lives as we’ve witnessed what generosity can do, and sometimes that has led us into deeper generosity. We’ve seen how God can use whatever we have available to make a difference for others.
The choice to be generous, my friends, can be one of the most liberating and satisfying choices we make in life—and it is a choice.
The other lesson I see in this passage is that generosity is meant to flow from what we have, not from what we don’t have.
Hear that again: generosity is meant to flow from what we have, not from what we don’t have. No one should ever be made to feel guilty or ashamed or “less than” because they sense they don’t have as much to offer as someone else. There’s a scriptural foundation for this, too. In 2 Corinthians 8:12, Paul writes, “If the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have.”
We give out of the resources we have. We give proportionally according to our capacity to give.
This is part of the beauty of the story in Exodus. Did you notice that list of all the different things? They were living in a time when the economy wasn’t based on cash or credit but on goods. Each of them brought something of value to be used in constructing the tabernacle. If you were to put a price tag on those things, there would be a wide range—but all of those gifts mattered. Every one of them was important for the work they had been called to do together.
And I love how the narrator lists all the offerings, and then says, “And the leaders brought the onyx stones and gems and spices…” Those who had greater capacity brought accordingly. Their gifts were added to the others so that together, the work could be completed.
I saw this same example that day at Ben Hill, where both Cliff's and Jackie’s gifts were celebrated—different capacities, same significance. Each card laid on that altar represented someone’s faithful choice, and together they became the offering.
I also think about my friend Tom. When Catherine and I were pastoring a church called Harvest many years ago, Tom was a teenager growing up in that church. One day, he came to me and said, “Steve, can I share my testimony with the church?”
I asked what his testimony was, and he told me how excited he was to finally have a job—working at Panera Bread—and how, as a 16-year-old, he wanted to give a tithe from every paycheck back to the church. A teenager giving, not out of what he didn’t have, but cheerfully giving out of what he did have, setting an example for all of us in the process.
Generosity is a choice, and generosity is meant to flow out of what we have, not what we don’t have.
Now, one caveat: what we have is sometimes impacted by the choices we make. Not always, but sometimes. Our capacity to give can be affected by the choices we make that influence what we have or don’t have.
So part of our work as people of faith is to prayerfully listen and pay attention for guidance in how we manage what we keep, what we spend, and what we share. From my own experience, I can say that whenever we choose generosity first, it helps put everything else in the right perspective.
In our story from Exodus this morning, the people of Israel chose generosity. Multiple times, we hear that everyone brought the gift they were able to bring, and all gave out of what they had. As they brought their gifts forward, the workers began their work—the artisans, the craftsmen, the builders. People saw the construction happening, the tabernacle taking shape, and it excited them. They got caught up in the vision. They kept bringing gifts.
Then comes this moment in the story:
“They received from Moses all the freewill offerings that the Israelites had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept bringing freewill offerings every morning, so that all the artisans doing every sort of task came and said to Moses, ‘The people are bringing much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do.’ So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp: ‘No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.’ So the people were restrained from bringing, for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work.”
This is the power of we. The power of all working together to make it happen.
When everyone makes the generosity choice, the results accomplished together wildly exceed—W.E.—wildly exceed—anything we could imagine on our own.
And this is true whether we’re talking about the people of Israel, the congregation of Ben Hill, or a community called Trinity. Our collective gifts make ministry possible.
Right now, in this very moment, our collective gifts are making a mobile food pantry possible—one that shows up monthly in three different places to help make sure people have food to eat. Our collective gifts send children and youth to camp and support ministries on both our main campus and Faith Mission, helping them feel cared for, loved, and connected in the love of Christ.
Our collective gifts make it possible for us to gather in this space for worship on Sunday mornings, where there’s bread and juice on the table, lights turned on, and yes—the AC feels pretty good too, right? There’s a music director, and people serving and leading, so that we can offer ourselves fully in worship.
Our collective gifts support the work United Methodists do across Florida—like campus ministries where college students can connect, get a free meal, and share life and faith with one another.
Our collective gifts sustain programs like Circles, where we walk alongside people moving from economic survival to economic thriving. They support our visitation ministry and parish visitor program, helping us connect with those who can’t be with us in person.
Our collective gifts mean we have an amazing campus where we can extend hospitality every day—people walking the grounds, enjoying the beauty, meeting in classrooms, in the chapel, and in this sacred space.
It is the power of we.
Next month, we’ll have the opportunity to gather and make commitments for how we will share something of ours—something entrusted to us—to be part of the work God invites us to in the coming year. As we look toward that moment, I invite you to begin praying and preparing now.
Pray first. Be attentive to how God might lead you in your response. Read this story from Exodus again and again—about the power of God at work in a people who choose to show up and share together.
Look at your budget. See what you have, not what you don’t have. Ask if there’s any place God might be inviting you to reprioritize so that you have more to share. Again—look at what you have, not what you don’t have.
Can you imagine if the story of Trinity in the coming year were like the story of the people of Israel in Exodus—that we wildly exceeded what we actually need to fund the ministries for next year?
Can you imagine the opportunities, the choices we might be able to make together for new possibilities, new ways to bless our community and beyond? It happens through the power of we, when we realize that every one of us matters, and every one of us has a gift to offer, and that when we put it all together, we could wildly exceed anything we could ask or imagine.
Will you pray with me?
Gracious God, we give you thanks first for your example of abundance and generosity. I give you thanks for the long and rich history of generosity that exists within this congregation, and for the ways that generosity has flowed into opportunities for ministry and service that help build your kingdom in our present moment.
As this body of Christ, I pray that you would stir our hearts and make our spirits willing—to be surprised by what you might do when we choose generosity, and when we all offer something out of what we have, not what we do not have.
For your kingdom’s sake, may it be. Amen.