The Theology of Stewardship

The reason the Lord bids you and me to make an offering of our money is for one reason alone – so that we can fall in love with the Lord. It has to do with where our treasure is, and where we want our hearts to be.

Stewardship is the belief that all that we have, and the entire creation in which we live is truly “on loan” to us and that, eventually, we will be called to give an accounting of whether we have used God’s gifts for God’s purposes.

Inherent in this is the belief that such giving is “thanks giving”:  Giving can only proceed from our sense of gratitude for all that God has done and is doing for us and for all people.  This is not a giving out of obligation but to organize everything around the principle of Thanks-living.  Every one of us needs ways to say thanks to the God who is the source of all that we are and all that we have.  Money and its use is central to this process. The question for us is not “how much of my money does God demand?” but “how much of all God has given to me do I have any right to keep for myself?”

Biblical understanding of stewardship

The Church’s understanding of stewardship has too often been relegated to paying the parish bills and maintaining the church property.  However, the Church (Church universal as well as individual congregations) will never be successful in its calling as the Church unless it understands the biblical concept of the “steward.”  The root meaning of “steward” is house keeper.  Stewardship is a vocation and notes a position of power – to have oversight on behalf of another person.  The steward has authority and power but not ownership.  We are the “house keepers” accountable for God’s creation and responsible for the work God has given us to do.  Biblically, the steward becomes a metaphor for humanity, and the Bible is an account of humanity’s successes failure as a steward of God.  The Bible contains over 1400 references to “servant” or “steward”.  As stewards, we are co-creators with God to bring about God’s kingdom.

Clearly, the Bible references the concept of tithing and defines tithing as 10%.  However, Jesus clearly talks about 100%.  Christ was the chief steward.  We are to consider all that we have as a gift of God and to be instruments for bringing about God’s kingdom.

We are invited into stewardship with God through the grace of Christ and we enter into a shared stewardship community.  However, we have allowed stewardship to be privatized so that giving is independent of our relationship with God and with fellow Christians.

Stewardship is more than a duty

The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer tells us that the duty of all Christians is to “follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.”  However, stewardship is much more than duty.

Stewardship is a thankful response to God’s graciousness to us. As such, it is an opportunity to praise God with our lives in thanksgiving: for the blessings of creation; for the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and our redemption; for the gift of the Spirit for the word, sacraments, and fellowship that sustain and transform us as the Church.

Stewardship is an adventure, an expedition into the kingdom where we find our lives through losing them for the sake of the gospel. It is an invitation to offer our gifts for the purpose for which we were created – the only purpose that will fulfill us. It is a challenge to refocus our lives by designing our budgets around tithing. It offers us away to begin breaking the bonds of consumption that involve us, often unwittingly, in perpetuating injustice and oppression.

All of God’s people, within and without the Church, can learn that to be held accountable for our lives as stewards of God’s gifts is to discover our own true great worth before God. We believe that discovery, too, is a gift, a gift that brings unspeakable joy. The main work of the Church is to bring its people, and through them all people, to this joyful knowledge, which will “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

The business of being a steward involves every aspect of each person’s life – twenty-four hours a day; seven days a week. And the same is true of the life of every local church as well. How we think about and how we deal with the things that God has given us says everything about whose we think we are. If we see ourselves as independent, autonomous beings without any relationship or obligations to the One who created us then there’s no need to even talk about stewardship. Individuals may decide on their own to “support the church” but that’s not stewardship.

Stewardship can only proceed from a conviction that we belong to God. The One who made us has given into our hands a wonderful challenge. To work with God as co-creators who can decide how best to utilize this world’s resources to achieve the purposes that we and God are seeking.

What are those purposes? Our Bible and prayer book tell us about reconciliation, healing, unifying, and celebrating. We are given a picture of a God who wills and works to bring all people and all things together; to put an end to walls, war, and want.  If we are God’s own people then we, like Jesus, must “be about the Father’s business.”  So, no matter what aspect of life you want to talk about – how you spend your money, what kind of a job you do for your employer, the raising of kids, recycling trash, deciding how to vote, or how much time you volunteer for others – it is precisely in these ordinary, everyday things of life that we signal our allegiance either to God or to our own personal comfort and convenience. “You can’t serve both God and mammon”, scripture tells us. “No one can serve two masters” is the simple truth.

Stewardship encompasses and embraces everything we do and say. It’s not just a once-a-year fund drive to support your local church. The scope of stewardship is infinity; an issue with literally eternal dimensions, both here on earth and forever in God’s Kingdom. Unless we’re clear about that reality, our view of stewardship will always be too small.

No amount of “good works” will ever earn God’s acceptance and love. That’s a free gift – just for the asking. But our disciplined effort to live worthy of God’s love is our only way of showing our appreciation and, incidentally, of leading others to know the truth that we have discovered.

Stewardship Principles

The following principles should guide any parish stewardship process:

• I am responsible for all that God has given me, and all that I am or have is from God.
• I am motivated to be a good steward by my faith in Jesus Christ.
• I will seek a place that is doing God’s work to make my offerings
• The tithe is the norm for personal stewardship
• I must make my own stewardship decisions, and I must allow others to make their own decisions.