Stewardship, however, is a spiritual discipline, not a fund-raising exercise, and it focuses on the subject that dominated Jesus’ teaching and probably cost him his life.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but this is the year to move from “charitable giving” to “harvest giving.”
In charitable giving, the usual form church stewardship takes, church members look at available funds after bills are paid, make an assessment of value (comparing church to other charitable interests), and give accordingly. Church ends up competing with dozens of causes, from symphony to cancer research, and given the muddy and conflictive nature of the Christian enterprise, often compares poorly.
Harvest giving, by contrast, starts within the basic Biblical principle that what we have comes from God and that it is our solemn obligation, for the good of our souls, to give the first portion of the year’s harvest back to God.
Before anything, even housing and food, comes our obligation to God.
As our harvest changes, so does our giving change. If these are lean times for constituents, then their giving might be lean, too. When harvests improve, their giving will improve.
The congregation, in turn, gears its ministries to harvest realities. Just as many families are setting aside discretionary spending and even cutting deep into necessities, so must churches adapt to the harvest.
Harvest giving is simple: look at last year’s income, and give 10% of it to God. Some years that 10% will be large, some years it will be small.
Charitable giving tends to yield guilt and reluctant giving. Congregations end up depending on a few deep-pocket givers, while the vast majority gives less than 1% of their income to God. That level of giving distorts one’s relationship with God.
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant, and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of On a Journey, and the founder of the Church Wellness Project www.churchwellness.com.
