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Growing Generous Souls: Becoming Grace-Filled Stewards
Growing Generous Souls reminds church leaders and inquiring individuals of their God-given identities; helps them experience the freedom of generous-hearted, gratitude-based living that Christ offers; and equips them to embrace a life lived in alignment with God's design. Challenging the ethic of scarcity, it invites people to adopt an ethic of enough and find a deeper sense of contentment. The book reorients stewardship from a church program to a way of life that nurtures grateful people. It identifies unbridled consumerism as a spiritual challenge. The book prompts readers to reconsider the use of money, relationships, and ways of caring for one another as spiritual issues that can instead be powerful tools. Vital, passionate generosity can become the key to "soul making," as part of a sparkling, lifelong, whole-life adventure.
370 pages, Paperback
Published March 5, 2019
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June 19, 2019
Generosity as a Spiritual Quality
Growing Generous Souls by Betsy Schwarzentraub challenges the notion of stewardship as fundraising and instead focuses on the importance of generosity as a spiritual quality that can be nurtured and developed but is always a response to the grace of a generous God. This book is both comprehensive and practical in its approach to stewardship as soul work. It gives examples and offers suggestions for the personal practice of generosity in many areas of life, including caring for our bodies, fostering forgiveness in relationships, focusing on “being” rather than “doing,” developing an “ethic of enough,” and practicing environmental stewardship. This book abounds in stories and suggestions to help congregations foster generosity among its members and take communal actions of generosity based on Jesus’ teachings to love God and neighbor and to reach out to anyone who has need. This book outlines a way of life based on gratitude for the “amazing grace” offered to us by God, a grace that flows to us in forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love, but also flows through us for the sake of the world.
Growing Generous Souls by Betsy Schwarzentraub challenges the notion of stewardship as fundraising and instead focuses on the importance of generosity as a spiritual quality that can be nurtured and developed but is always a response to the grace of a generous God. This book is both comprehensive and practical in its approach to stewardship as soul work. It gives examples and offers suggestions for the personal practice of generosity in many areas of life, including caring for our bodies, fostering forgiveness in relationships, focusing on “being” rather than “doing,” developing an “ethic of enough,” and practicing environmental stewardship. This book abounds in stories and suggestions to help congregations foster generosity among its members and take communal actions of generosity based on Jesus’ teachings to love God and neighbor and to reach out to anyone who has need. This book outlines a way of life based on gratitude for the “amazing grace” offered to us by God, a grace that flows to us in forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love, but also flows through us for the sake of the world.
December 14, 2023
This book is for all seeking answers to religious thoughts and questions. It is an ecumenical writing concerning our Creator, the sharing of thoughts about a "soul", the paths to more generosity among people, and church recognition of "doing" for what reasons. Betsy describes how church must be an inside-outside community. It should bring people together and ask questions of our relationship with God.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews