November 16, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Stewardship 2025: Mine!
My Choice
Genesis 13:5-12
Final week of Stewardship...Commitment Sunday! Towards the end of the service, you’ll have a chance to fill out the pledge card in your bulletin and bring it forward, as we make our financial commitments for the 2026 ministry year.
This is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. We get to celebrate the past year, look ahead to the next year, and we get to see how God might be inviting each of us to be a part of what is happening in our church and wider community. It’s a day when we get to choose what being part of God’s story is going to look like through the many ways we show up.
That's why we're wrapping up our “Mine!” series by looking at one more thing that we have—choice. If you think about it, our whole lives sort of revolve around the choices we make. Sometimes we make big choices that take a lot of thought and intentionality, sometimes it’s much smaller choices that feel more like reflexes. But big or small or in between, choices play an important role in shaping our lives.
One of the bigger choices I’ve made in my life, or I guess I should say Zack and I made, was where to have our wedding reception 15 years ago. We looked at MANY different venues and the whole process was kind of overwhelming to me—the info sheets, the package prices, all the sales pitches. And almost every place we looked was a really great option. Like, every venue was pretty! Every wedding coordinator was a great salesperson! Every brochure said we would have the “most memorable event anyone has ever been to”! And all those positives made this choice feel really difficult. We realized that we were going to need to figure out—what is the most important thing to us as we make this choice? What is the thing we want people to remember the most from this day?
For us, it came down to the food. We wanted to have the best possible meal for our guests and create something really memorable. And so we ended up going with a restaurant that had a large event space because we knew that by choosing that, the most important piece of the day would be taken care of and we wouldn’t have to worry about it. 15 years later, people who were at our wedding still talk about how good the food was, which makes me feel very proud of the choice we made!
If you think about your own life and the choices you’ve had to make, my guess is that you’ve been in a similar situation of letting your values guide whatever that choice is. Because (SLIDE) Our choices can reveal a lot about what matters most to us.
We see this play out in our Scripture today. It’s the story of Abraham and his nephew Lot, and a choice they make that has a huge impact on their future.
As we look at this story, it’s good for us to understand a little bit about who Abraham is. This is a man who has a special connection to God. God has made him this promise—that through him, an ordinary and probably fairly unlikely guy—God is going to build a nation. Abraham’s descendants will be so numerous, he won’t even be able to count them. And these people who come from Abraham will be known as “God’s people”, destined to have their own special connection to God that will span generations.
And that promise God makes is powerful...but it proves to also be really hard to trust. Because Abraham’s life doesn’t exactly seem set up for any of this to come true. He and his wife Sarah cannot have children, which goes against this whole “descendants as numerous as the stars” bit. They are a nomadic people, not necessarily being settled in any one place due to a lot of different challenges, which feels challenging for creating conditions for a giant group of people to flourish in. There are just so many obstacles to trusting God, and Abraham doesn’t always know how to do it well. We have a few very clear examples of him really getting it wrong as he tries to navigate all that his story holds.
But this story marks a change for Abraham. We find him here, traveling with his wife, workers, and animals and his nephew Lot is doing the same. Picture two large groups, all who are doing pretty well for themselves. The text tells us that: (SLIDE)
“...the land could not support both of them living together because their possessions were so great that they could not live together.” Genesis 13:6
Whatever challenges Abraham has faced, it’s clear that he has experienced some kind of abundance in his life. He has way MORE than he needs, and the same is true for Lot. And as great as that abundance is, it’s created a challenge—conflicts are beginning to break out among the two groups because there are not enough resources to go around to feed and take care of everyone. If they don’t choose a course of action soon, it’s possible that the relationship between these two groups is going to become broken beyond repair.
So Abraham takes it on himself to solve this problem, and make life better for the group as a whole. He tells Lot...look--we can’t keep doing what we’re doing and think we’re going to be ok. We have to split up. And how we DO that...we’re going to work together to figure that out.
And he offers Lot a choice of his own in this moment. There are two distinct areas of land, and Abraham lets Lot choose first to decide which one he will go to with his family. Just by setting this up the way he does, I think we see a value coming through in this choice, we see something that matters a lot to Abraham. Because for Abraham, as important as the land piece is, the thing that’s MOST important in this moment...is PEOPLE. [(SLIDE) Choose people.]
What I think is so remarkable about this story is the way that Abraham gives Lot the first choice in which way he will go. He absolutely does not need to do that. Abraham is the leader here. He's the patriarch, the guy in charge. But instead of acting from THAT place...he approaches this from a different angle. He doesn’t ask “what’s best for me, Abraham?” he asks, “what's best for US? What’s best, collectively, for this group of people that I care about?”
Now, Abraham isn’t the only one who makes a choice in this moment. Now that Abraham has given Lot the first go, it’s Lot’s turn to choose. And Lot, he takes a look to his left, then he looks to his right...and he sees a REMARKABLE contrast. One way is lush and green...and the other way is bleak desert. And when given the choice, Lot picks the obviously fertile land, leaving Abraham to deal with the desert.
I wonder when reading this, if there’s a moment that, despite God’s promises to him, despite the foundation of faith that he has, if there’s just a moment where Abraham feels a little “yikes” about the whole thing. Because on paper, he could have had the EASY choice. The OBVIOUS choice. Instead, he went and chose people over comfort and there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work out.
Choosing people is usually a risky endeavor. There’s a lot we can’t control, we have to do things like embrace change and uncertainty and people themselves. But that risk...can also lead to some amazing reward. We can open ourselves up to so many ways for God to work when we just lean into it.
In 2026, here at the Midtown Campus, we are going to get to make this kind of choice: to choose people and take a bit of a risk as we do it. Our community has seen some absolutely incredible growth in 2025. Every week, we have new guests...and soon enough, those new guests become familiar faces. Our serving teams are expanding as more people say yes to doing God’s work through our church. And...we are getting COZY in this room. Some weeks, we’re a little uncomfortably full. Soon enough, it’s going to get hard to provide a truly welcoming experience to our new guests. And we ALWAYS want to make sure that if someone shows up to this place that they know we are expecting them, that there is room for them and that we are so excited to see every person who walks through these doors.
And so, here’s how WE are choosing people in 2026—(SLIDE) on February 1, we're going to move to having TWO services on a Sunday: at 9am and 11am.
I’m blown away that we are in the position to make this choice. We started with 75 people who said yes to creating something new together. And now we are reaching almost 300 people through this community. Over and over, I’ve witnesses you all making choices that have built this church—you choose to introduce yourself to the person you don’t yet know; you choose to share life in small groups; you choose to serve our neighbors; you choose to hold babies and open doors and serve donuts. In every way that you show up in this place, you choose people. And I am so grateful.
So we’re going to choose people together in the coming year, and we’re going to go on this adventure together. We’re going to learn things, we’re going to ask questions, and we’re going to probably have moments where a change like this feels like change always does: a little uncomfortable and uncertain, and a lot of exciting.
We’re going to have A LOT more conversation around this and we are going to create a launch team of about 50 people to start this second service. You might want to be part of it. I want to encourage you to stop by the Worship/Second Service table at Ministry Fair to learn more and chat after the service.
When we make a choice like this, in many ways we model the kind of faith that Abraham had. Because when we make this kind of choice, we get to (SLIDE) choose with God’s promise in mind.
As Abraham turns towards the desert, with all of his people and his possessions...literally with EVERYTHING HE OWNS, he does so choosing to operate on God’s promise ALONE. He cannot see how this will work out. He knows that GOD HAS SAID good things are coming his way; He knows that GOD HAS SAID that God is going to do something through him. But the how? The logistics of the whole thing? Abraham doesn’t have any of that figured out. There’s no five year plan, there’s no spreadsheet. He just has faith to go on. As someone who really LIKES a plan...that’s scary. That’s not a comfortable way to live life.
Even though he doesn’t have a roadmap, what he does have is a God who says it’s possible to trust even when we can’t see what’s next. And Abraham’s ability to do just that in this moment is one of the most powerful pieces of his legacy. His willingness to step out in faith as the first in a long line of people who will do that generation after generation. This trust in what God is able to do is going to become a cornerstone of his people’s collective story...and that’s a story that we carry forward in our own faith today.
Abraham’s ability to choose based on faith over certainty sets him apart. It stands in direct contrast to how Lot is able to choose. He can only see what’s in front of him. He can only choose based on what he perceives as concrete evidence. And that’s logical, yes, but it also turns out to be an incredible limitation for him.
Lot’s story doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. That choice he makes here doesn’t lead to what he hopes it will. In many ways, his choice ends up destroying him and his family and many of the things that matter to him.
It kind of reminds me of that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (and this is not a spoiler because this movie is 36 years old—you've had your chance). Indiana Jones is with this group searching for the Holy Grail and in the big climactic scene, the bad guy is going to drink from the Holy Grail because doing so will give him eternal life.
But to do that...they have to choose which cup is the right one. There is an array of cups in front of them, and the cup that is chosen is this ornate goblet, that looks “Fit for a king”. It’s this big dramatic moment where he takes the beautiful cup and dips it in the water and takes a drinks...and THEN...he turns into a skeleton before everyone’s eyes and bursts into a cloud of dust, with some very impressive special effects for the 1980s.
The correct cup, it turns out, is not the one that looks the best on the surface. It’s actually a simple cup made of wood. A cup that reflects the humility of Christ and doesn’t look like what anyone expect.
The way that Abraham ends up going probably doesn’t look like what anyone expects to lead to anything worthwhile. But it’s Abraham’s legacy that lives on. It’s through Abraham’s faithful choice in this moment that God continues to move. Because Faith invites us to something much less sure, much less obvious, but faith also invites us into something that is somehow much more trustworthy.
We’ve got so many chances to choose to act in faith. To choose to be a part of what God is doing. And this moment that happens every year, is just one of those times. But it’s a really special time, because we get to do it together as a community. When we pledge, we don’t know what the next year is going to bring...but we can trust that God is going to work. And we can commit to being part of it. We can show up with our time and our resources, because we are building something together.
And we can know that whatever we have to give...God WILL use it.
If you need a reminder of how God has shown up and what God has done through these gifts in the past, take a look a this video where we can see some highlights of the past year in ministry:
PLAY VIDEO
Invite to fill out card and bring forward.
· A word for our guests—no expectation to give, but would you maybe say a prayer for us? We’re on the cusp of some big things and your prayers would mean everything.
· NEW Commitments
· RENEWED Commitments
Pray