MNO Synod - Stewardship Thots


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Stewardship Thots	Stewardship Thots
In a recent article "U.S. Christians and the Riddle of Stingy Giving", Chick Lane, Director of the Center for Stewardship Leaders, says that unlike the old good news-bad news jokes, the story of giving by U.S. Christians is a bad news-worse news story. The bad news is that the average U.S. Christian contributes 2.9 percent of their income to charitable causes. The worse news is that because a few people give a very high percentage of their income to charitable causes, the median U.S. Christian gives just 0.6 percent of income to charities. I don’t know what the stats are for Canadian Christians as a whole, but I expect it may be less than the 2.9% statistic of our sisters and brothers in the U.S. A recent stat that was quoted for Canadian Lutherans is that on average, we give about 1.1 % of our income to charitable causes. "Why are we so stingy?" and "What can be done about it?" Chick Lane comments that the number one in reason for why we in North America are stingy is because of our institutionalized mass consumerism. We are inundated with the message (some experts say up to 5000 times a day) that happiness comes through having more stuff. As many have observed, enough is never enough. To give anything away in this consumerist culture creates a conflict with the desire to have as much as possible for self. Another reason has to do with the reluctance of the church to talk openly about money or give biblical teaching about money. While some of this reluctance is warranted since the church has often been criticized “that the only time the church cares about me is when they want some money”, the reality is that Jesus talked more about the faithful use of money as a sign of discipleship than he talked about “love” as a sign of being a faithful disciple. The Scriptures have a good word for our consumer society, not just in terms of what we “give away”, but what it means to be faithful stewards of our resources for all of life. What can the church do? Two things: Why not plan a fall session that offers some Biblical teaching on “bringing sanity to personal budgets” or “ helping our children gain a balanced perspective on handling money, that encourages them to share, save, spend instead of blindly embracing the consumer culture of spend, spend, spend?” (Your Synod office has wonderful resources to help you with this) Why not work in your congregation toward a "live the vision" culture, instead of a "pay the bills" culture? This "live the vision" culture focuses "on nurturing members' Christian spiritual lives," "on serving the world," "on opportunities for faith-guided change" and "on Christian discipleship as a transformation of the self and community", which is a much more wholesome reason to “give” than to pay the bills.

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