We all know that it takes the right ingredients to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie or chicken piccata.  Singular items mixed together in the right balance and you get the ultimate results – results your tastebuds appreciate, your brain cheers for, and your body gains from.  Generosity is a mixing of the right ingredients producing many things in our world.  The scriptures remind us that we are to give cheerfully, liberally, regularly, and sacrificially.  These ingredients combined produce faith, hope, and love in service to the common good for the world.  Our vision for this year’s stewardship focus is to first give thanks for all that you have and continue to do to support the ministries and missions of St. John’s.  Second, to bring in from the margins those who are not using the ingredients of generosity in the balance God calls us to.  Finally, to encourage us to expand the ingredients in our individual and communal generosity recipe.  Our common desire is to be a blessing to all the world because we have been blessed, often beyond measure.  From that, let us listen to God who desires for us to bless others through the right mix of ingredients that make up extravagant generosity. ~Rev. Dr. Jim Hoffman