“Show me your calendar and your checkbook and I’ll show you your priorities.”

I honestly can’t remember the first time I heard some version of that statement.  It’s been attributed to so many people that I have no idea who said it first.  But I know it’s true. It’s true for my life.  It’s true for yours.  And it’s true for our church.

It’s something I think about a lot for us at Restoration City.  It’s easy to talk about our values, come up with a nice website and sprinkle some vision into a sermon every now and again.  But it’s how we spend our resources – both time and money – that shows us our priorities.  

That’s why I love knowing that last year we gave slightly over $58,000 as a church to partners outside of our own walls.  For the record, that doesn’t include money raised or given through short term mission teams.  We gave to church plants, to local partners and to international partners.  We’re participating in God’s work in DC, Brooklyn, Kenya, Tanzania, Nicaragua and many other places.

That’s why I love knowing that ServeDC starts tonight and runs through this weekend.  We’ll be serving with nine different partners all over our city.  We’ll have Restoration City people cleaning up parks, working on Gunston Middle School, distributing meals and participating in many other tangible expressions of love for our city.

Could we do more?  Absolutely!  Am I satisfied with where we are? No!  But I love what God is building through this church.  I love measuring our success by how much we give away – in time and money.  By God’s grace, we’ll continue to give away more of both.  I want our calendar and checkbook as a church to be pleasing to God and to reflect His priority, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.“(Lk.19:10)