For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son - John 3:16
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Introducing Generous God, Generous Disciples
Following its launch in Advent 2021, Generous God, Generous Disciples provides stewardship and giving support for parishes in Chelmsford Diocese.
Key themes
At the heart of Generous God, Generous Disciples are three key themes:
Understanding giving as part of our discipleship
We have organised online services and webinars, sharing reflections and producing resources to help us consider giving as part of our Christian discipleship. Giving in response to God’s gift of love to us.
What does it mean to the Church of England in East London and Essex?
We give as part of our Christian discipleship. We give to the Church, to charities, to people and organisations. We give our money, our time and our talents. We celebrate the difference our giving makes across our diocese and beyond and we reflect on how we can better build a sense of family and encourage mutual support?
Resourcing parishes to enable and encourage giving
Through Generous God, Generous Disciples, we provide resources to help parishes encourage and enable giving, communicate, pray and reflect. We help equip parishes with practical stewardship tools such as the Parish Giving Scheme and digital giving. Click the button below to access the resources.
View the generosity and giving resources
Generous God, Generous Disciples webinar programme.
Between January and March 2021, we delivered a series of webinars to support parish giving as part of Generous God, Generous Disciples.
Recordings of the webinars are available below.
10 things I wish I’d known when I became a parish treasurer
In this practical webinar we were joined by Terry Gray from Colchester, who will be known to many across the diocese and has provided advice to many of our treasurers.
Spirituality and Giving
In this webinar, the now former Dean of Chelmsford, Nicholas Henshall led a reflection on spirituality and giving.
Nicholas writes: “Although we easily focus on the practicalities of financial giving and its outcomes, in the New Testament giving is always a spiritual issue. Jesus talks about giving again and again – and his focus is always on the need of the giver to give. In this webinar we will be exploring these themes, and above all how we understand our generosity as a response to the generosity of the God we know in Jesus Christ, who fed thousands from a few loaves of bread and turned hundreds of gallons of water into hundreds of gallons of wine.”
The Parish Giving Scheme
In this webinar we explained how the Parish Giving Scheme can help you to encourage and enable giving in your parish.
We were joined by Richard Jones who is the Lead Parish Giving Adviser for the Diocese of Hereford. Richard explained how the scheme works and how you can get started. Richard's Powerpoint slides are available here.
Stewardship Resources
In this webinar, our Mission and Ministry Advisor Revd Canon Philip Ritchie highligted some key resources that have been developed across the country to support stewardship and giving. The Revd Sue Lucas talked about Giving in Grace from her time in Liverpool Diocese and the Revd Canon Tim Ball talked about the Generous God, Generous People initiative from the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. We also heard about resources from the Church of England.
The resources from the webinar can be found in the accordian links below.
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Giving in Grace
A set of comprehensive resources that will enable clergy and lay leaders to create over time a culture of stewardship in the local church and release Christians to "excel in the grace of giving" (2 Cor 8:7). All resources are free and fully accessible to all users.
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Generous God Generous People
A set of resources developed by St Eds & Ips Diocese designed to help churches ‘Grow Deeper’. It has been written to help churches reflect on what it means to live as generous Christians for use in bible study as individuals and in groups.
www.cofesuffolk.org/for-parishes/making-your-parish-sustainable/how-to-encourage-giving-
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Giving for Life
Giving for Life helps parishes review their approach to issues of stewardship and generosity, within a context of discipleship. Following a survey of more than 1100 parishes, it is clear that most parishes have made real progress in adopting proven good practice over the past few years.
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The Generosity Week
(Church of England Generosity Week pages)
We believe in a generous God, a God who gave us everything. Giving and generosity are inextricably linked with the living out of our Christian faith. As a church we need to encourage generosity whenever we can, and to help parishes focus on generous giving, we’ve created The Generosity Week: Eight days of service and worship materials for churches to use whatever the time of the year to encourage people to live generously.
www.churchofengland.org/resources/building-generous-church/generosity-resources/generosity-week
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Building a Generous Church
(Church of England giving resource pages)
Generosity is at the heart of our faith, we believe in a generous God and our own generosity is a testament and hallmark of our faith in action. The ministry and mission of The Church of England is largely funded through the incredible generosity of those who give to it. Here you will find a wide variety of resources, guidance and inspiration for encouraging giving to your church and for growing generosity within your church.
Marketplace
This webinar signposts some of the commercial opportunities that are available to parishes to help generate additional income. We were joined by Ama Lawrence from the Parish Buying Scheme, Roisin Lyons from Easy Fundraising, Nicola Satterford from Ecclesiastical Insurance and Sarah Mohammed from Quadient.
The Parish Buying Scheme have also provdied some further guidance relating to audio visual equipment which can be downloaded here.
Lent Bible Studies
During Lent we hosted weekly bible studies on the themes of stewardship and giving. The bible studies took place on Zoom and provided an opportunity for people across the diocese to meet and study together.
Please make use of the recordings and other resources to support your own bible studies.
Week 1 - Generous God – John 3:11-21.
Led by Bishop Peter
Download the Powerpoint Presentation
Week 2: Generous Disciples – Romans 11:33-12:8
Led by Archdeacon Vanessa.
Download breakout group questions, closing prayer and link to music video based on the prayer
Download the Powerpoint Presentation
Week 3: Generous Giving – 2 Corinthians 8:1-15.
Led by Bishop John.
Download the Powerpoint Presentation (includes questions for breakout groups)
Week 4: Generous Loving – James 2:8-17
Led by Archdeacon Ruth.
Download the Powerpoint Presentation (includes questions for breakout groups)
Week 5: Generous Living – 1 Peter 4:7-11
Led by Bishop Roger
Download the Powerpoint Presentation (includes questons for breakout groups)
Practical Stewardship and Giving Resources for Parishes
A key feature of Generous God, Generous Disciples is support for parishes to enable and encourage giving.
View the generosity and giving resources
