Faith Works 8-5-17

Faith Works 8-5-17

Jeff Gill

 

Stewardship preparation and a question

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We were talking recently about worship styles and "engagement," and that subject carries over to something that many of our church leaders are starting the behind-the-scenes preparation for in this month of August: stewardship and giving campaigns.

 

For (too) many of us, stewardship and budget and a vague but pernicious concept of "paying your dues" comes into the picture when we think about and plan these annual fall churchwide pushes.

 

In my own congregation, our stewardship chair is always very intentional about pushing the teams and committees and working groups to develop their financial requests as soon as possible for educational purposes, but we do our stewardship education and commitment campaign before the budget is assembled.

 

We are far from alone in wanting to remind all the members and friends in our church family that giving is a spiritual discipline, a faith practice that helps us get over our earthly assumptions and material needs. We can put the spiritual first in our hearts in no small part by making our faith a priority in our spending and giving.

 

Proportional giving is key to this, in my opinion; books have been written on the question of what the Bible really means to tell us today about "tithing," and people of good will can debate whether that means ten percent of our gross, a tenth of our net after taxes are taken off the top, or a simple calculation that we hold to through other ups and downs.

 

I will say that I do believe that tithing (however you calculate it) can be a blessing to the giver, and is a building block to provident and prudent living in all of your other giving, saving, and spending. Note that I'm putting spending last: learning to do that is the key. And some of us are surely called to give more than ten percent, so I simply commend the value of having sat down, figured out your incomes and outgoes, and knowing what percent you give, and working to grow that percentage.

 

Meanwhile, we struggle, we congregations do, through the late summer, where the bills still come in but giving is often lagging. Another reason for some form of stewardship education and/or campaign is to promote the regularity of giving, so it's not just the leftovers at the end of each pay period, or a mere lump gift at year's end. Hard to plan and prepare around that sort of pattern for a church!

 

Many healthy, active, giving congregations go years without any sort of stewardship campaign at all. The process of reminding the membership about needs and opportunities for expanded ministries is ongoing through the year, and the only campaigns are capital related, for building new facility space.

 

That's an idea that's downright shocking to some church leaders, I know. Part of that is related to the mainline/oldline decline of the last few decades, where the ongoing downward pressure on church budgets, locally and on the wider front, have given rise to annual urging to the fellowship just to keep up, even as membership figures drop and staff positions are cut.

 

The flip side, though, is that when there's not a couple of weeks to defer to on stewardship and giving as a spiritual discipline, there's more implicit pressure on everyone to do that kind of teaching and discipleship all the year round.

 

How do you do stewardship promotion and education in your congregation? And what would a change mean to how your membership approaches the question of money and faithfulness?

 

On a completely different subject, if you are out at the Hartford Fair tomorrow, Sunday morning, at 8:30 am there's an ecumenical worship service I'll be helping lead up at the Natural Resources Pavilion. Come join us! Thirty minutes of re-centering and celebration before the week really gets rolling, and the sound of bleating lambs in the background . . . I really look forward to this every year.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he really loves that outdoor worship, and you will, too! Tell him about your outdoor services you've attended this summer at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.