Churches celebrate God’s generosity this Harvest with new resources

02/09/2021

New core materials including nine daily podcasts are now available to enable congregations to take part in Generosity Week. The podcasts and week-long resource encourage people to focus on generosity while living out their daily lives.

Television presenter Gemma Hunt narrates the podcast series. Throughout the series we hear from different churches across the country about God’s generosity in action. The series covers acts of generosity in many forms, from mission projects across the world to small acts of generosity that can have a huge impact. In one episode we hear from Christ the King church in Leicestershire about the generous community that runs their foodbank and how they transformed the church space to meet unprecedented demand during the pandemic. In another episode Rev Andy Hartropp, rector of St Dennis Church in Ibstock, tells us about how, during the lockdown, one member of his congregation would read the order of service down the phone to another member of the church who is partially sighted. The podcasts are accompanied by a written reflection on generosity and a daily generosity activity to encourage us to take the steps to live more generous lives.

Father hugging his children

The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, commented:

“Our faith starts with the most generous gift of all–  God’s gift to us of life itself and new life and new hope in Jesus Christ. What we call ’generosity’ is just our response to these  great gifts. I’m therefore delighted to commend these resources that help us explore God’s amazing generosity. This is what Generosity Week is all about. The stories in these podcasts, reflections and resources are moving, inspiring and encouraging. Just like in the parable of the sower, where the seed that falls on good soil grows a crop a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown, we see that every generous act grows further generosity.”

Generosity Week can be adapted for all traditions of the Church of England and in addition to the podcast series, it includes the following resources:

  • Service content packs with a range of material for service leaders to include in two Sunday services, one focussing on Generosity and one on Gratitude
  • Liturgy for a week’s morning prayer services, to be used both in person and online
  • Living Faith materials, two new sessions that aim to help communities gain a deeper understanding of God’s generosity towards us
  • Guidance on engaging the wider community with generosity 

A marketing toolkit to help churches promote their Generosity Week including a customisable animated trailer, social media graphics and a customisable A5 flyer.

The resources are currently available to explore and download and churches are encouraged to run a ‘Generosity Week’ to coincide with their Harvest Festival. Whilst there is not a fixed national Generosity Week, there will be a national online Generosity Eucharist on 26 September led by St Gabriel’s Greystones with the Bishop of Chelmsford delivering the sermon.

Generosity Week is an initiative from the National Giving Team to support parishes in growing generosity in their churches. Some dioceses plan to run their own Generosity Weeks developing their own resources and activities alongside the national materials. Both Leeds Diocese and Newcastle Diocese plan to run their Generosity Weeks 26 September through to 3 October. 

The materials are free and available to download from the Church of England website. Podcasts are available to listen to on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts.