Stewardship: it’s about belonging, participating, sharing

In his book No Future without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes the concept of ubuntu, which he says helped the people of South Africa move beyond the horrors of apartheid into forgiveness.

When a person has ubuntu, he says, “Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have.

“It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’

“We belong to a bundle of life. We say, ‘a person is a person through other persons.’

“It is not, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ It says, rather, ‘I am human because I belong, I participate, I share.’”

Ubuntu sounds remarkably close to the kind of thinking that should underpin a good theology of stewardship.

The Rev. Niall Reid, Moderator of the New South Wales Synod, shares a story from one of the congregations where he served as minister. The congregation decided to embark on an ambitious stewardship campaign, but one of the congregation members, a widow on the pension who had raised five children in a two-bedroom house, made it known she would not support the campaign.

“I went to see her to talk about it because she was a person who had the respect of many people,” said Mr Reid. “I was expecting that the line I would get from her was the usual ‘the church shouldn’t pressure people into giving money’, but it wasn’t.

“She told me that she gave 10 per cent of her pension and that she and her husband had always given 10 per cent, even when raising five children and paying off a mortgage. I knew she also gave to other charitable causes over and above this, but she didn’t divulge anything about those.

“Her view was that anyone who is part of the church surely knows that their Christian responsibility is to give in such a way, and so why does a congregation need a stewardship campaign?

“She was shocked when I told her that not everyone thought the same way as she did, and the offerings received by the church were testimony to this reality.”

Mr Reid said that, while the figure of 10 per cent need not be seen as sacrosanct, the woman’s spirit of grace and generosity was something to be emulated.

“This widow’s 10 per cent giving was undoubtedly sacrificial, but she had been doing it for so long that she didn’t really notice. She was not begrudging of her giving, but so happy to give as part of her Christian commitment that she could see no reason why she would do it any differently.”

Spiritual maturity

Much writing on financial stewardship emphasises that it should be a “way of life”, a joyful outpouring of the spirit and based on an individual’s urge to give, rather than the church’s need to receive.

But fostering this kind of attitude, both individually and at a congregational level, seems to be neither an easy nor an organic process — particularly when talking about money is so often something of a taboo in churches.

Research by Stewardship, a UK charity which offers support to churches, Christian charities and individuals in their giving and administration, found a strong correlation between spiritual maturity and regular giving.

For most of the people surveyed (55 per cent), the decision to start giving in a planned and regular way was the result of ongoing Christian development and/or church teaching on giving.

Almost half the people surveyed (48 per cent) had been a Christian for five years or more before they started to give regularly.

So regular preaching and education is crucial if Christians are to make considered, sustainable decisions about their stewardship.

Divine generosity

The Rev. Bill Loader, Research Professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, says that of the biblical passages dealing with stewardship of money — and there are many — he finds 2 Corinthians 8 particularly useful.

In this passage, Paul doesn’t talk about stewardship as a way of paying back God’s generosity with financial gifts, or worshipping God with money, or trying to ensure personal prosperity.

Rather, he describes it in the context of large theological concepts like grace and fellowship.

“For Paul the same grace — divine generosity — which embraces us in our failure and sin also generates action as we become companions of this grace,” says Mr Loader.

“Generous financial giving does not belong to another department. It is part of the outworking of compassion, the fruit of the Spirit.

“The stewardship invitation is not about moral obligations to pay God back or even to express gratitude, but to engage with God in love in the world. That includes acts of love with our whole being, including our financial resources, for others.”

Look to the future

Paul also appeals to the Corinthians’ fundamental sense of fairness when it comes to financial stewardship: those with abundant resources should be sharing them with those in need.

Late last year, Sydney North Presbytery offered $200,000 from the sale of one of its church properties to help fund the employment of two new rural chaplains. The decision was a direct response to the New South Wales Synod’s decision to appoint two more chaplains to deal with the ongoing crisis in rural areas.

This was a landmark step for many reasons, not least because it was grounded in these notions of fairness, justice and the sharing of resources.

The presbytery’s standing committee said the decision was made “recognising our Synod’s vision to be moving with God, transforming communities, and aware of a responsibility to share the resources that have been built up in the church here with new mission ventures and other places of need, where such resources are unavailable.”

A theology of stewardship looks to the future. In all its forms — including stewardship of the earth’s resources, of our time, energy, talents and money — stewardship is about how we live our lives in the world as God’s people.