“As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” – 1 Peter 4:10
Dear Disciple of Christ,
We pastors don’t live in a vacuum (at least, not most of us or most of the time). We are aware of and connected to brother and sister pastors who are seeking the same goals that we have; being an effective and faithful leader of a community of believers. We read books and go to conferences and speak with colleagues and partners in ministry. We do that to try to learn from successes and failures. Yes, even failed attempts to develop community life and witness can be helpful to us so we know something needs to be tweaked or changed or ignored if it didn’t work elsewhere. It might be that our personal situation in our congregation is different than other churches but that is certainly the exception and not the rule. We ought to act differently only with “fear and trepidation,” assuming we are not different or having our own insights that no one has had before us.
That being said, faithful pastors need to be centered in on faithful leadership. What does that mean (“faithful leadership”)? I’d suggest it is a leadership based on and flowing from the Word of God. There are times we can read and be encouraged to lead from business models (isn’t the congregation just like a small business?) or from sociology (the way people act toward one another is guided by our modern culture) or from the day in which we live (making the proclamation and actions derive from, or be created to speak to, our current day and age). If the Word is not the driving force, we are likely to leave God out of the equation. If there is anything more faithless, I can’t think of it.
I’ve really spent my ministry in garnering as much information as I can about church life and development as well as continuing in study of the Word to guide my actions and reactions to those developments. Those issues led me to leave one seminary and complete my studies at a “seminary in exile” with the result that following my eight years of study to be a pastor, it took another seven months for me to receive a call and be ordained. That reflection on the Word and what faithfulness as a pastor meant led me to leave three different synods (national church body) over my forty-eight plus years in ministry. That is not a small matter for a pastor since our certification flows from a synod and the synod gives identity to our ministries.
So it is always with that fear and trepidation that a pastor disagrees with previous practices or advice of the learned (professors in seminary days or pastors once out in ministry). That is what I felt when I shared my perspectives of stewardship with the church council at my church in Queens. The challenge we were addressing was the participation of the members in the stewardship work of the church. That is not directly translated as “having difficulty having a balanced budget. Budgeting is hard work with the goal I’ve always used to have a “balanced budget” (with income covering expected expenses). Stewardship is a “God thing,” the work of the Spirit leading us to respond the way Peter describes it above; “employing the gifts we receive from God for the good of one another.”
But the focus of concern for the council was the lack of pledging.
Their feeling was that if we could just get people to pledge, our budget problems would be solved. I suggested this was less about stewardship and more about a budget issue. It was like the horrible practice of doing evangelism (getting more new members) in order to balance a budget. There is a correlation, of course, but if the focus and drive for sharing the good news is not sharing the good news but balancing a budget, we should be ashamed. It was quite possible to judge the income based on previous year’s giving. Some might increase and some might decrease but the best guide is a comparison of year to year increase or decrease in member giving. We shouldn’t, in my view, design a budget based on a “program” that might or might not have an impact on the giving of the members. Our focus needed to be on improving the stewardship understanding of our members.
Instead, the council had heard somehow that the assistant to the bishop had stewardship ideas from his practice in ministry at his much larger church out on Long Island. They invited him to come and explain the program. He assured us, if we followed his advice, we would have just about everyone pledging. There was no discussion of ways to improve members understanding of stewardship, of recognizing all we have is a gift from God to be used to accomplish the mission He has given us. The program was simple. The pastor writes a letter asking members to pledge. A week later, the president of the congregation writes his or her own call for pledges to those who had not yet pledged. The next week it was the treasurer’s turn to those who had not yet pledged. Then the secretary and so on until, as predicted by the bishop’s assistant, nearly every member had pledged.
Success? As I’ve often mentioned, the goal is really important. What was the goal? To encourage members to be stewards of time, talent and resources? No! The stated goal was to get members to pledge and it was accomplished when many more pledged than in previous years! But clearly the response of at least some was to stop the church from sending any more letters. It was not because they understood stewardship as a response to God’s blessings. Most of the letters described the importance of pledging to benefit the budget of the church. But, the bottom line was the “bottom line” and the bottom line income didn’t move at all. There was no increase in giving. The total amount received that year actually decreased (as was the trend in previous years).
By the next year, with that experience behind us (with the results known), we were able to focus on stewardship, believing that God would provide what we needed to accomplish the mission He had given us (would it be otherwise?). It was a slow and steady improvement in understanding of stewardship and what the mission of the church was in Queens that brought about improved income. But that improved income was a side effect of stewardship education and not the focus of the “stewardship appeal.” We focused on understanding the importance of seeing our blessings from God and using them for the good of others.
That remains a core principle of mine and of our church in Florida: “All we have is a gift from God to be used for the cause of Christ.” We have been blessed in order to be a blessing!
Peace in His service,
Pastor Johnson