Since the announcement was made last month, we've heard from many churches and Christian charities who will be impacted by the closure of BT MyDonate. If you currently rely on MyDonate, there is an alternative.
I confess I’m a bargain hunter, whatever the time of year. I can walk into a shop and find my feet tracking their way to the stickered items before I’ve consciously registered their existence. I’m like the Bisto kid of the reduced-item retail world – that is, until the January sales, which bring out a very different reaction in me.
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5: 11
If someone came to your home and cheerfully presented you with a bag of used tea bags as a gift, I suspect – like me – you’d be taken aback. Whatever your view on the double-use teabag strategy, I doubt it would be your first thought as a gift when you popped round to a neighbour’s for coffee or turned up at someone’s birthday bash.
The mission worker who’d been on the receiving end of this ‘unusual’ gift didn’t bat an eyelid. "Was it all the person could afford?" I asked. "Unlikely," they replied with a smile.
We have released a number of improvements and fixes to the new-look Stewardship Giving Account (NLGA). This patch contained a number of bug fixes, security updates and feature enhancements.
It’s that time again, the office party or works’ dinner out looms, and someone has come up with the bright scheme of having a Secret Santa. The idea (in case you are unfamiliar) is that each person in the organisation buys a gift for one other person, whose name is drawn randomly from a top hat, if done properly, but an old Jiffy bag if not. The end result is that everyone receives a present at the event, with no one left out.
Humility and pride are difficult things to pin down. We tend to think of pride as an arrogance about our own abilities or status, and therefore think that if we put ourselves down, or maintain a sense of our own insignificance, we must be being humble. Yet look at Mary’s song in Luke 1:46-55. In verse 48 she declares both that God has seen her humility and that all nations will honour her:
… he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed…
Total humility, and total self-assurance at the same time. How did she achieve this balance? Because she knew it was all about God:
…for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name (v 49).
If you joined us for the December Quarterly Dial-In for Treasurers, you might like to download the slides from today's call, along with the additional resources.
A recent review by the Charity Commission suggests that around half of all charities fail to demonstrate public benefit, in other words they fail to “tell their story well”. Using your Trustees’ Annual Report (or TAR for short) to explain the work and purpose of your church has never been more important.
In many ways the nativity story is a story about readiness. After 400 years of silence between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, why was Jesus born now? It must have been because the time was right, and the world was ready to receive him.
Mary was certainly ready – we’ve already seen the speed of her response in Luke 1:26-38. She asked one question (“How will this be?”), but then was ready to surrender her body and her life.
Have you ever noticed that the Bible doesn’t actually tell us that the Magi ‘followed’ the star to Jerusalem? Look closely at Matthew 2:1-2:
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose [some versions: in the east] and have come to worship him.”
blogs by the Stewardship team and selected guest writers.
Stewardship is the operating name of Stewardship Services (UKET) Limited. Established in 1906.
Registered charity no. 234714, and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England no. 90305.
Registered office: 1 Lamb's Passage, London EC1Y 8AB
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