From Scarcity to Abundance
by Mark Beckwith
From Scarcity to Abundance
is an outstanding resource for teaching stewardship in your annual pledge drive
for the entire congregation – or for assistance in bringing new vestry or stewardship
team members on board with a sound theology of Christian Stewardship!
“Whether intentional or not,
whenever there is the sense of scarcity there is the ingredient of misused or
misapplied power. Power is invariably in the hands of those who are perceived
to have more, and the corollary of that is that those in power have a self-interest
in maintaining the notion of scarcity.”
Utilizing the insight gained by over twenty years as a parish priest, Mark Beckwith
gives a reflection on the miracle of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. The author
gives us a gift of deeper understanding of the relationship between scarcity and
abundance, and of the realization that abundance truly opens us up to mystery
and freedom.
“The disciples were reacting
to the problem, offering a quick fix in the hope that the problem – and the
crowd – would go away. Jesus responded to each reaction with a challenge for
the disciples to act out of their abundance. His was a challenge fraught with
risks: the risk that they just wouldn’t get it or that the tension Jesus introduced
would cause the disciples to turn on him. Jesus continually took this risk of
drawing people into abundance and challenging them to move from a cash economy
to a kingdom economy. In this challenge he sought to reframe reality for the
disciples and for all of us.”
This conveniently-sized resource (3-3/4 ” x 8-1/2 ”) can be easily mailed to all
parish households in standard #10 envelopes. $1.50 each, discounted in quantities.
for merchandise (donations & memberships excepted) 