Preston Meadow Lutheran Church

joyful generosity

At Preston Meadow Lutheran, we are a Joyfully Generous congregation who believes we're blessed to be a blessing. God takes care of us so that we can take care of others.

Generosity is more than what's in your wallet. Generosity is about putting our whole lives in service to God -- our time, talents, relationships, service, and treasure.

Joyful Generosity is multi-dimensional. It includes how we welcome others in our lives, how we serve others and their needs, how we give gifts to show our care and concern, the finances we give, and the emotional and relational support we provide to others.

This year, we are putting words into action and faith into service with our latest giving event. We're calling it: JOYFUL GENEROSITY +

(You can read about this special event in a post at the Dallas Morning News here.)

"The greatest among you

Are ones who serve." -- Jesus

Jesus said that the greatest in the world are ones who serve, taking up the towel of service to tend to the needs of those around us. This means rolling up our sleeves, getting dirty, and doing the hard work of lifting up those who are brought low.

Jesus was unafraid to do the dirty work of helping others,

and it wasn’t mainly lip service for him.

We don’t count the cost of service (how much time, effort, and resources this will take) because we’re concerned about what will happen if we don’t get involved with the situations that others find themselves in. A congregation of Joyful Generosity is a congregation that is not focused on its level of status but its level of service.

Our aim with this latest Joyful Generosity event is to activate the tremendous creativity and effort of our congregation in getting involved with the causes that deeply move them. Besides the "blank checks" we gave away to members and visitors in early October with the simple encouragement to forward them on to a worthy cause or need, we plan to “pay” participants for their effort by sending an extra contribution to the groups they choose to serve.

Faith, it’s said, is caught more than its taught. By seeing parents and other adults commit time, effort, and finances to a cause, children and youth see what is most important to their role models of the faith.

recording hours served

We asked congregation members to keep a tally of their hours served and send them to us. The survey for the reporting of hours is now closed, but we're happy to report that our members put in 1,100 hours of service in the months of October and November!

They also designated 51 organizations to receive contributions, and we have an additional $75,000 beyond the checks that were given out from which to pay for these hours. That means an hour of service will be approximately $70/hour.

(It's actually $68/hour, but it's good to round up when being joyfully generous!)

The Dimensions of Joyful Generosity

In the summer of 2022, we filmed five videos to showcase the different dimensions of Joyful Generosity. The stories and acting were done by members of the congregation, who had a blast telling the story of generosity in a new way. Enjoy!