The Generosity Movement

Sitting in this office chair right now piecing together the chapters and content for this book, I’m twenty-six years old and aside from four years I spent in College, I have lived in the Southern part of Wisconsin for my entire life, which of course means I love cheese and probably should love beer, but I am a Pastor and the one sip I had when I was eight years old kept me away from it.

Even though I am still pretty young when I look back at the scale of life, I have somehow been miraculously blessed with incredibly generous people in my life. I have had some great gifts given to me at Christmas time (Nintendo 64 and Power Rangers Deluxe Megazord I am talking to you)! Maybe this is true for you too. Maybe it was a raise from your job that you have been working hard at. Maybe it was the Savings Bonds you received for your birthdays (which didn’t seem generous at the time because you couldn’t spend them, but you realized within ten years that they were). Generosity is something that we all can get pretty used to!

Contrary to that though, I have also had my fair share of run-ins with people who were not exactly generous or they were generous in ways I wish they weren’t. Maybe you have had that moment where you accidentally cut someone off changing lanes and were presented with a “you’re number one” from the car you cut off. Maybe it was looking into the freezer and realizing that your favorite pint of Ben and Jerry’s that you marked with your name to indicate your ownership was eaten generously by someone else. (I mean they did save you the calories!) When generosity is lacking, often times our patience can begin to be lacking as well.

Generosity is something that we all very much enjoy being the recipients of. I have many memorable moments that have been made out of another person’s generosity towards me. But that is exactly it. I don’t really remember the type of chocolate milk stocked in the fridge that I would get hyped up on, but I do remember I could always find it at my Grandmas. I don’t really play with my Nintendo 64 much anymore or take apart and rebuild my Power Rangers Megazord in my spare time, but I was the recipient of those things by my parents who wanted to bless me not only with stuff, but to also show me love and keep me cool! The difference-making power of their generosity was not in any product or price tag, but in the purposefulness of a person giving it!

What I love about generosity is that it is for everyone. Whether you are reading this and are a youth pastor, head volunteer at your Church, superstar high school athlete, manager at a department store, or maybe just someone who was in the bookstore and grabbed this because the cover was cool, generosity is totally in you! If God decided to be generous towards everyone by sending His son for everyone, then that means that anyone of us can and should be living generously. Acts 20:35 says “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” I hope from this book you get the opportunity to have a few laughs, gain some ideas for how you can spread generosity in your community and the wider area that you live in, as well as get some good insight and “aha” moments that push you to activate your personal generosity like never before.