Oakhurst, as a faith community, is committed to breaking down the boundaries that limit the expressions of grace individually and communally. This commitment has moved the community repeatedly over the past 30 years to risk our security to expand our vision of what God, through us as a community, can accomplish.
Our understanding and practice of stewardship has joined a long list of world views that we have turned upside down. Stewardship for us is wisely using the resources of time, energy, talent, and money to give meaning and life to our passionate belief that we are not here by chance. It is not by chance that our definition of stewardship does not include meeting a church budget.
We have refused to accept self-imposed limitations that build walls against the threatening other, whether it is women in leadership, sexual orientation, race, or physical disability. Likewise, we refuse to limit ourselves by the fear of not having enough, and resorting to the traditional approach of yearly begging under the guise of stewardship.
As a church community we approach stewardship by identifying throughout the year what ministries and activities engage the passion of the congregation and build community; among ourselves, within the local community in which we live, and within the world community. From this starting point we are intentional in communicating what is being accomplished, how our activities are expressing God’s grace, and the availability of resources to accomplish what we set out to accomplish. If what we do has value, and there is passion behind that value, the resources will be available.
We stand against the tide of 21st century America that reduces life to material symbols, along with all the attendant fears and anxieties of always needing more. The major part of our lives are spent working, and those hours of real living and breathing are replaced with an abstraction of worth expressed in pieces of paper money or electronic digits in a financial institution’s electronic spreadsheet.
Stewardship within this community is a stand against such dehumanizing abstractions. It is consciously using all aspects of our lives; money, talent and energy, to create great worth, the worth of a community and a life that is a conduit for grace. We know that the needs of daily living create demands and pressures. But we also know that breaking down walls and boundaries through grace is a life experienced in full.
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