October 2012

The title of this article, above, is not the pious and churchly word for fund-raising, although, frankly, that is a com-mon though debased usage. The stew-ardship of money is just one facet of a much broader concern, namely, the ex-ercise of responsibility for that which is fundamentally not our own. Contrary to the American cultural norms, which tell us that we either earn or deserve what-ever we have, Christianity teaches that everything we have comes as a gift. Ev-erything. Everything we have is funda-mentally not our own—the gift of cre-ation itself, life, love, work, possessions, relationships, and money, to name a few examples. One way to engage spiritual development lies in a deepening aware-ness that all we have in life comes from God, and comes as sheer gift. As stew-ards, we have responsibility for all these things, fundamentally not our own.

This being the customary season for parishes and people to consider their stewardship of money, I think it worth-while to focus on this narrow but im-portant strand. It is crucial to the spiri-tual well-being of believers in developed Western nations like ours, but it needs attention elsewhere, also. In December 2009, Dan Handschy and I had the chal-lenge of teaching about the stewardship of money to a group of pastors in Lui Diocese, in South Sudan. It is daunting, to say the least, even to talk about money and sacrificial giving in a culture where there is precious little cash, and where most of the clergy make their living as subsistence farmers.

The need for sacrifice, however, is hard-wired into human life, or so the scriptures of the Old and New Testa-ments would have us understand. Rich or poor, we all have that spiritual need to give up, to give away, and to give over. The details and demands of sacrifice weave an important thread in the Bible, the cross of Jesus bringing these details and demands together. Jesus himself says to anyone who would believe in him: Take up your cross and follow me.

For the good of our souls, as persons and as communities, we must sacrifice from the good and beautiful gifts in our lives, those things over which we have responsibility as stewards. And for the good of our souls, again, as persons and as communities of faith, we must engage in God’s mission. You will notice here that even that which we “do,” in the work of mission is fundamentally not our own. Even this belongs to God.

The stewardship of money is that place where the need for sacrifice and the work of mission connect. For our life to-gether in the presence of God, I can think of no more crucial spiritual, and practi-cal, connection than this one.

Stewardship

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