What Message Does Your Giving Send?

“Increase my pledge? Why?” The list of reasons often is very long and frequently includes: Pastor did not visit me when I was sick and has never visited our house. I’m not sure I like all of those liturgies and traditional hymns. There is not enough energy in the worship service. Cultivating more members, not more money could solve our problem. Evangelism is the answer and that is not something I can do. The money will take care of itself.

As consumers of goods and services in our world it is easy for us to become consumers of religious goods and services. It is easy for us to ask if we are getting value for our dollar and to use our dollars to “send messages” to those who do not seem to be listening.

But isn’t it interesting that “message sending” almost always has to do with sending less, or withholding rather than sending more, even when we are pleased. Has it ever been said, “that was a wonderful worship service or a good series, I’ll be increasing my pledge for the year?”

We have become accustomed to using our dollars to purchase, to communicate, to save for a rainy day, to use as a sign of individual success, by spending conspicuously. It is our way of life and it reflects the world in which we live. If we have stock in Home Depot, we are likely to purchase things there rather than the local home improvement center or we might purchase at the mom and pop hardware store because we would rather they have the profit than the corporate giants of the world.

It is true; we can influence government and others by how we spend our money. Indeed, Stewardship itself is using money to influence — influence God. Many stories told by Jesus have to do with persons who are given an opportunity to manage resources on behalf of another. They start with the premise that the manager has little or nothing except talent and uses the property of another to succeed. Sooner or later the owner returns and asks for an accounting of what has happened. Increase in the value of the asset is expected and when that does not happen the owner is disappointed.

So using the basic stewardship premise that all that we have comes from God and that we simply manage it in this life, if we are trying to send a message by curtailing giving, how might God feel about that? It is important for us to remember we are always sending a message when using the resources entrusted to us, a message to God.

So when we want to send a message to the leadership of the church it might be better to try the telephone and avoid the collateral damage that will likely occur with the real owner of the resources — God. If it is true that everything we have belongs to God and that we are temporary caretakers of it, should we not be thinking of our gift as a gift to God and not to the budget or to the trustees or to the pastor or building committee? It has been said, God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7). What might God think about your gift? Most importantly what do you think God thinks about your stewardship skills?

True Christian generosity is founded on the premise that all that we have and all that we are, have been given to us by God and that one day God will ask how we have done with what he has given us. The Bible abounds with texts that suggest, sometimes in very clear terms, that those who have should give to those who do not. The early church cared for the widows, not because they were emotionally deprived, but rather because they were starving and were not being taken care of by the economic system of the day.

Matthew 25 lays down clear guidelines for stewardship. The servants who were rewarded were those who saw needs and used the gifts that God has given them to help meet those needs. They did not ask if the hungry would use the gifts to purchase nutritional food, they just responded. The naked were clothed, with practicality in mind, not the latest trends. None were expected to write thank you notes as a result, although some did so. The appreciation of the recipient was not something about which God was concerned. He seems to simply say, “when you helped cloth the naked and provided a drink for the thirsty and fed the hungry you might have thought you were doing this for them, but in reality you were responding to my son Jesus.”

The basic stewardship principle is defined by John 3:16 “…God so loved that he gave his only son …” Stewardship is using what we have to demonstrate God’s love to the world. If God’s love to us is made clear in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a gift God gives because of love; then we as recipients of the greatest gift of all should do as God has done to us, give of ourselves, our resources, our time — indeed everything we have — because in so doing we are being productive stewards of God’s abundant gift to us.

No, stewardship is not about budgets, or church boards, or pastors, or building funds, or even tithing, but it is about a God who loves and who gives abundantly. Can we do any less?