Stewardship as a Spiritual Discipline
How a Pastor Reframed the Annual Campaign, and Why It Worked
By Rev. Dr. David Abbott
“Everyone should give whatever they have decided in their heart.” — 2 Corinthians 9:7 (CEB)
As Rev. Victoria Volker of First UMC in Lincoln, Maine, participated in the Foundation’s Generous Church Leadership Program, she was also preparing for her congregation’s annual spring finance campaign. Prayerfully blending her own reflections on generosity with the program’s readings and conversations, she wrote a stewardship letter that began with an unusual confession:
“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been excited to write this year’s stewardship letter?”
For many churches, stewardship season is something to endure for the sake of the budget. The annual campaign can feel like the church’s largest fundraiser: numbers are presented, financial needs are explained, and people are invited—or perhaps implored, guilted, or cajoled—to help meet the bottom line.
But where is God in that process? What if stewardship is about more than funding a budget? What if stewardship can be a conversion moment deepening one’s faith?
Rev. Volker challenged her congregation to consider a different perspective. “It seems to me that we have an upside-down relationship with money,” she wrote. “Both personally and as a church, we are letting money lead the way. As Christians, we are called to a different kind of relationship with money.”
Along those lines, Rev. Volker asked her congregation—and now asks us: Are we willing to change our relationship with money to deepen our relationship with God?
Stewardship is not a program to meet a monetary goal or something that we should be guilted into doing. At its core, stewardship is the outward and visible sign of our inner and personal relationship with God. It encompasses everything we are, do, have, and give. It is reflected in the decisions we make and in the ways we love ourselves and justly care for others. Stewardship is discipleship and discipleship is stewardship.
Our stewardship reflects the value that we place on the relationship that God offers us through Christ and the Holy Spirit. How we use our time, talent, treasures, and temperament reveals what guides our lives.
In the line above from Paul’s second letter to the church of Corinth, he is not asking them to look at their checkbooks to see where they give their money but rather to look within their hearts to see how their stewardship of their resources reflects the love that they have for God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. One might say that Paul is asking them, and us, a very serious question, “Why do we give?”
And, so, you might be wondering, what happened at First UMC?
Financial commitments increased by 17 percent. More importantly, the congregation developed a growing understanding that stewardship is a vital spiritual discipline, much like prayer, study, and worship. When we respond to God’s generosity through sacred stewardship, we are invited into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the Divine.
If you’d like to find out about the next Generous Church Leadership program and explore how the Foundation can support your ministry of stewardship, contact David Abbott at dabbott@umfne.org
Rev. Dr. David Abbott is UMFNE’s Director of Stewardship and Leadership Development