Stewardship 101: What's it all for?

A new semester has begun at LTS (the Lutheran School of Theology in Hong Kong) and Wayne and I have been busy preparing for classes!  He's the full time professor, teaching Marriage and Family Care as well as Christian Counseling and Spiritual Discernment.  He also has a boatload of students to counsel, meetings to attend, and student papers and theses proposals to guide & edit.

I'm a part-time lecturer at LTS. This semester I've been asked to teach a course on Stewardship, so my first lectures have been on stewardship in service of God's Mysteries. Here are some of the mysteries we get to take part in here in Hong Kong:

The Lutheran parish Wayne serves as sacramental pastor is located in an area of Hong Kong sometimes referred to as "the City of Tears" because of the  poverty, unemployment, familial disruptions, and suicides which take place there. This Lutheran church reaches out to families and special needs adults to give a new vision of God's kingdom, where Jesus teaches us that the least among us is is actually the greatest.

Meanwhile, at the church where I serve as sacramental minister, we are beginning to lay down plans for a deeper inreach to the Lutheran Primary School (where the church is located), through in-school and after-school English and Bible Story programs.  The school has a reputation for serving special needs children and children who commute from Mainland China, so we at the Lutheran church which meets at the school have a unique opportunity... and unique challenges.


What's it all for, the good stewardship of all the resources with which God has blessed us?

To serve those whom many in the world consider to be small and insignificant, and to be part of God's mysterious way of making them, and our relationships with them,  the most important and significant of all.

"Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries."
            -- St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians 4:1