The Timothy Group

Are We Having Fun Yet

The Challenge of Teaching Stewardship

In my experience the greatest education of constituents about stewardship, as opposed to focusing on the amount of the gift or request, has been in church campaigns as opposed to para-church contexts. I believe this is because churches have greater opportunities to teach their members/attenders about the spiritual aspect of giving than para-churches do. Churches can communicate weekly with their (attending) constituents using both the senses of sight and hearing for anywhere from a few moments to the entire sermon. Most para-churches use a quarterly newsletter as their best vehicle for communication, where the attention span for one article might be seconds, or a few minutes at best.

When we lead a church through a capital campaign, a process which we call Stewardship Life, we work with church leaders to unfold an educational program that teaches what the Bible has to say about stewardship to members/attenders. Teaching formats can include: multiple worship services, adult education classes, Sunday School lessons, small group presentations, an audio or audio/visual communication from the pastor, and use of a personal Stewardship Growth Inventory. The Inventory asks people to reflect on what they keep for themselves and what they give away with regard to time, talent and treasure. It asks people to set measurable goals to move closer to the Biblical stewardship standard. Only after reflecting on this biblical perspective are people asked to consider a gift amount for the campaign.

In my opinion Christian para-church ministries have an opportunity and challenge to do more to teach their constituents about stewardship and to lessen the focus on dollars to be raised or to be spent. How to do that is the question. How do you get and keep the attention of constituents long enough to alter the way they have been thinking about money, and the use of time and talents, from the way the world has influenced that thinking?

One way is for para-church ministries to teach the members of their Boards of Directors about Stewardship. Since communicating ideas about stewardship will take time, and it is difficult to get more than a few seconds or minutes of most donors attention, at least with the Board of Directors people come together and their time can be focused partly on education about stewardship. Board members are already contributing their time, and talents and often treasure. Teaching them about stewardship would be a service to them. By their resulting example, they can be a teacher of employees and constituents. What a difficult negative lesson it is when a ministry has to report that less than 100% of its Board members made a gift commitment to the campaign

Employees too are candidates for stewardship education. They devote more time out of their lives to the ministry than any other group. If part of that time was devoted to stewardship education, employees too could teach others. If the CEO demonstrates a serious stewardship consideration in making a commitment to a campaign, other people will have the opportunity to follow the leader. By contrast, when the CEO makes a minimal commitment, a different lesson is being taught. Employees who have made serious stewardship decisions are more likely to be concerned that the gifts given to the campaign are used in a stewardly fashion. The chances for misrepresentation, and manipulation of donors will be lessened.

Ministries communicate with their donors regularly. Creating ways to have donors reflect on stewardship is needed. In our approach to what some people call fund raising dinners, we replace the typical "outside" speaker with a presentation about the ministry and teaching about stewardship. In a New Friends Dinner event donors have about one hour to "hear the story".

When Board members, employees and donors begin to respond out of stewardly motives, ministries must share this with others. How often don't ministries highlight a Board member who has given years of service, or a faithful employee, or a particular donor for their gift. Why not in public relations materials focus on the stewardship motivations of their donors. In Stewardship Life (church) campaigns we ask our clients to arrange a series of personal testimonies of what the ministry of the church has meant in their lives. Some of the most memorable and moving testimonies have come from these genuine personal stories, rather than drawings of buildings, or construction budgets. I remember a young lady who talked about what a privilege her father considered it to be asked late in life to give of his time to serve as a deacon. Many campers or Christian school students can talk about how their life came to a pivotal moment when a counselor or teacher spent time with them at a critical junction in their life.

Unfortunately when ministries have tried to teach stewardship by focusing on such things as tithing, or giving from assets as well as income, their efforts have been perceived as a thinly veiled way to get people to give more money, rather than to teach stewardship. We strive in our work with churches and para-churches to teach a whole range of thoughts including: tithing; giving gifts and offerings above tithing; considering time, talent and treasure; reflecting on what we keep and what we give away; and focusing on gratitude as the motivation for giving, not seeking public recognition as the motivation to give. Granted it works to varying degrees in different contexts. Since the most powerful communication tool seems to be "human interest stories", this is perhaps the thing we have to do more of. I remember vividly, though it happened over 20 years ago, a minister talking about how he and his wife were reflecting on how much they should give to their church capital campaign. As he reported the amount they were considering going higher and higher, he said he asked the question "Are we having fun yet?" He was of course trying to teach the lesson that giving should be joyful.

Many ministries do not report information to their constituents that encourages giving. A church that I used to be a member of rarely reported annual giving compared to budget, except of course when money was short. The church I am now a member of reports every Sunday in the worship folder on actual versus budgeted giving to date. Right below the figures there is always a verse from Scripture teaching some aspect of stewardship. Donors are not discouraged from giving as the actual amount given catches up to and then bypasses the budgeted amount as the year goes by, as opposed to only in the last week or two of the year as I hear some churches report. How many churches do not even do the minimal job of receipting their donor's giving, much less use this as an opportunity to teach gratitude as the motivation for giving.

When the campaign dollar goal has been reached it is easy to quickly turn attention to other things. We seek in each of our capital campaign client relationships to leave the ministry with a plan for fulfillment that lasts for the three years of pledge collection. This plan continues to promote stewardship, and reports on the ministry benefits of facility changes made as a result of the contributions to the campaign. It also continues the educational process, begun during the campaign, about planning one’s estate and can lead to one-to-one personal advising to implement a stewardly estate plan.

The heart of the matter is that we have to teach people what God says in His word about the consequences of robbing God. If we were to design a reward system, would we reward someone who did not give even the tithe back, or would we not increasingly reward someone who gives increasingly more each year and reports how he cannot fathom why God has blessed him so. A local businessman recently reported to a group of business colleagues how he and his wife now give away 50% of their annual income. It started with a tithe as taught by their parents. And then it grew every year. The business leaders got very quiet as they sat in amazement that someone would actually give away so much money.

God's Word has been written, It contains all we need to know about stewardship. But we need to understand it better and communicate that understanding more effectively to others. Christian ministries can and must do a better job of teaching stewardship, or the work of the ministries will be starved for financial resources. We can do better.