Stewardship Theme
Rooted in Christ — Living Generously
We are people who are Rooted In Christ. We say it in our liturgy every Sunday. In our Baptismal Covenant, we dedicate ourselves to living like Jesus.
This fall, we are asking: What does it mean to live generously, to have a posture of generosity like Jesus, in whom we are rooted?
We gathered more than two dozen parishioners this fall for a day of conversation about those questions. We shared our stories of generosity: how we were changed by someone else’s generosity and how we show generosity to others. Below are a few of those stories, from members of our own parish community.
Fill His Tank Up
“I try to live my life in a way that is giving back to other people who are having a hard time.”
When I think about receiving generosity, I usually think back to a time in my life when I was not doing so well. It’s been about 20 years ago now, but I was in active addiction and low on money, just making things work day by day. I was in a gas station one day counting change on the counter, trying to put like $5 in my car, and a woman walked up behind me and handed a credit card to the clerk and said, “Fill his tank up.” I’ll never forget that. I think it was because I was in such a bad place, and she obviously sensed it. She did something that really helped me a lot in that situation.
I also think about that time period, when things were going so poorly, and how supportive my parents were. They really never gave up on me. They were always there for me. They loved me through those really hard days, and they remain, to this day, incredibly generous with me.
When I think about giving generosity, I really think about what I do for a living now. I work as a therapist. I’m a licensed clinical social worker, and I went into that field to help other people who were having mental health struggles like I had when I was younger. So I try to live my life in a way that is giving back to other people who are having a hard time.
The Gift of Time
“He gave me the gift of time so that I could think, I could figure it out.”
When I was trying to be an adult, when I had finished college and decided to go off on my own, I was very determined not to take anything from my parents to make it on my own. So I set myself my little budget of about $35 a week. And of course, things happen.
I was out in California and going to school, and the clutch in my car went out. I was very dependent on that car, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay for a $350 clutch. When the man at the gas station told me it was going to be $350, I burst into tears. He said, “It’s okay. Take a minute. Sit down. I’ll go get you a drink.”
I sat there in his gas station office. In a few minutes he came back with a cold drink. I sat, he stood, and I drank some of the drink, and I figured out how I could rearrange things to pay him. He didn’t give me any discount or anything. He said, “That’s how much it is. That’s how much I have to do it for.” But he gave me the gift of time, so that I could think, I could figure it out.
That kind of generosity is really important to offer: just to give people the time that they need.
Seeds of Leadership
"But what you can do is live your life in such a way that you help other people, and you don’t ask for anything in return.”
When I was 14 years old, my mother was dying. I was the oldest of three at the time. A woman across the street, maybe 30, came over and helped us. She was really like a big sister, like a mentor, holding our hands while we went through this. I remember asking her, “How can I ever repay you?” And she said, “Well, you can’t. But what you can do is live your life in such a way that you help other people, and you don’t ask for anything in return.”
I have found that to be very, very valuable, and I’ve passed that on to my students and to my children. I told them, sometimes we have to give and not expect anything in return. That was an incredible gift. I don’t even remember her name, but I remember her legacy, which was really important because I shared it with so many people in my life.
I had the privilege of teaching at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, a community college, when it was brand new. My husband and I decided we wanted to start a scholarship because education is a really important value to us. I had students from all over the world, students coming back to school, working hard, and many of them were struggling. We wanted to make it a little easier for them.
I was teaching group communication one semester, and the proposal for the class was that the students would create a scholarship. They had to create all the objectives, the purpose, and the process for how students would be selected. They came up with the Seeds of Leadership Scholarship, which is at the Alamo Colleges Foundation. We have funded it, and it is endowed, so it operates today.
After a number of birthdays, people start thinking about what is my legacy, what is going to live on after I am gone. Both Travis and I taught leadership and worked in developing young leaders, and that’s a really important thing for us, as well as education. It’s a very tender piece of my heart, because you want to have something left behind that people will know you made a difference in this world, and I think that’s a connection to God.
I never knew the students who were selected, but I hope the Seeds of Leadership Scholarship makes a difference in the lives of students in this community, because giving and creating the scholarship has meant a lot to us.
One Day, One Letter
“To be generous doesn’t make you less. You don’t lose anything by being a generous person. That comes from a bottomless well.”
I recall when I was first inducted into the military, I qualified for OCS, having been trained in armored reconnaissance. This was during the Vietnam War. I got about halfway through and had gotten a belly full of it and wanted to drop it and get out. I realized that in leaving OCS, they were going to kick me back into my old MOS, armored reconnaissance, and that position usually resulted in an immediate deployment to Vietnam and being assigned as a door gunner on helicopter gunships. But I was willing to give up what I was going through for that, and I submitted a quit letter.
I had a TAC officer who had been on my case since day one. I didn’t really like him much, and I was really terrified of him. But nonetheless, he came to me the day I submitted my quit letter and said, “Doug, I understand you’ve submitted a quit letter. I think you need to have that rescinded.” He went into a number of reasons why he felt I would make a good officer. He said he’d be willing to step up and go retrieve that quit letter off the commanding officer’s desk if I promised I’d continue in the program and excel.
That was a challenge I felt like I could accept. It was also an act of generosity from someone who had no reason to do that. I went on, I did graduate, I was commissioned, and ultimately I left after four years as a captain. That was a profound influence on my life, a profound change in how my life went, just because of that one day he stepped up and generously offered to do something out of character for what he was trained to do and what you would have expected of him.
Conversely, there have been a number of occasions where I’ve had an opportunity to be generous to other people. What I’ve learned in my years on this earth is that to be generous doesn’t make you less. You don’t lose anything by being a generous person. That comes from a bottomless well. How little I have given has resulted in tremendous returns to me. I don’t practice generosity because I expect something in return, but I’m always pleasantly surprised by the results, because any small act of generosity I can do comes back tenfold, a hundredfold, in other ways during the course of the day or the month.
I’ve come to believe that not only is it what God would like us to do and teaches us to do, but the practicality of doing it results in a quality of life that I don’t think you can experience in any other way. For that, I’m truly grateful.
Face to Face
"You never know when you might be face to face with God or when the person to whom you speak hears the voice of God through you.”
When we were in Salisbury with the choir tour, we celebrated the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene and heard the Scripture read where Mary arrives at the tomb early in the morning, finds the stone rolled back and the angel there, and asks where they’ve taken the body of Jesus. The angel says he’s not here. She turns and sees the person she takes to be the gardener, and she says, “Where have they taken my Lord?” He speaks her name, and she sees him for the first time and recognizes him.
Recently we heard the Scripture where Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They respond with John the Baptist, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or some of the other prophets. Then he looks straight at them and says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter responds, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
It’s often crossed my mind to wonder how many times I might have been face to face with God and not recognized him.
I spend a lot of my time mediating legal disputes among family members. Often the root of those disputes is years of history, hurt feelings, perceived slights. But they need to tell their stories. I sit and listen a lot as they talk about their life and the things that have happened and how they wound up in this circumstance. It’s important for them to feel that they have been heard.
In the context of generosity, it’s important to share financial resources, but it’s even more important to share your time: to spend time with people and actually listen to them, actually see them and hear what they have to say. In thinking about that, I thought, well, Polly, you also like to talk to people a whole lot, and you love to hear what they have to say. So perhaps they too are sharing generosity with you, not only you with them. It’s a gift that we can all give to each other.
Living Generously
Enjoy this conversation we had in fall 2025, in which we discussed our overall Stewardship theme. We gathered the Rev. Beth Knowlton, our rector, and four parishioners to hear how being a steward connects to our entire Christian life.
What are the Pledge Ingathering and Annual Parish Meeting?
Jesus calls us to be givers: generous with our time, our love, our gifts, our talents, all our resources. It is in giving that we practice being like Jesus.
At St. Mark’s, we pool our financial resources to do the ministries of Jesus. Each fall, we ask members to make a financial pledge for the following calendar year. The focus of that action is Ingathering Sunday, when we bring our completed pledge cards to the worship service, carry them (as we are able) to the front of the church together and place them as offerings to God.
Pledging has multiple layers and purposes:
The spiritual aspect is that we orient ourselves to being a giver in an intentional way, not just “when I am moved” but as a planned statement to ourselves that it is important.
The practical aspect is that we tell the parish financial staff of our intention. This lets the staff make appropriate plans for how we allocate the parochial funds. Remember, we are pooling our resources, and this lets the combined parish be better stewards of our resources.
Putting those together, the fall financial pledge campaign is the method we use to orient ourselves, as individuals and collectively as a parish, to living generously as the rooted body of Christ.
During the formation time between the two worship services, we have our Annual Parish Meeting. This is a valuable time for as many of us as possible to gather, remember what we have done in the previous year, assess what that means for our common lives and envision where we are heading. We conduct some of the necessary business, such as electing our lay leadership (vestry members) for three-year terms, reviewing our financial and business status and celebrating our ministries.
