In my first weblog publish for Church Anew, I laid out a number of critiques of the language of “stewards” and “stewardship” for describing what we do throughout fundraising season. In short: stewardship narrows the church’s theology of cash by lowering discipleship to managerial accountability. Stewardship–popping out of colonialism, capitalism, and embraced by robber-barons like Rockefeller–is a extremely individualistic, localist, and pro-wealth strategy to cash.
The “good steward” additionally sits uneasily alongside the New Testomony’s portrayal of stewards (take into account the Unjust Steward or the steward on the wedding ceremony in Cana). Its valuing of the prudent development of wealth is disconnected from Jesus’ recurring name to surrender wealth and his assertion that one can not serve God and wealth (Luke 16:13).
Lastly, stewardship language dangers obscuring the bigger witness of Christ relating to cash. Reinhold Niebuhr warned that stewardship is a naïve framework that excuses the exploitation of the wealthy supplied they donate generously in the course of the pledge drive.1 Niebuhr illustrated this with the placing instance of a rich manufacturing facility proprietor who exploits his employees. Stewardship, he factors out, does nothing to problem this businessman’s assumption that he has been positioned in cost by God. The truth is, it reinforces his self-image as a prudent supervisor of God’s assets based mostly solely on his willingness to contribute to the church. I’ll return to this instance towards the top of this publish.
All that mentioned, critiquing stewardship is the straightforward half. The more durable job is discovering new (or maybe higher mentioned, historic) methods of speaking about cash that extra absolutely replicate the witness of scripture and the practices of the early church. That’s the work I search to start right here. I don’t declare to have a single substitute prepared, however I do wish to sketch avenues rooted extra intently within the language and practices of the earliest Christians.
Providing
The primary and most quick different is a deepening of the language of providing. This time period is already embedded within the lifetime of the church by way of the offertory–that central second within the Sunday Eucharist after we deliver ahead items of bread, wine, and cash. The language of providing is not only liturgically sensible however theologically-rooted; it reconnects Christians to the temple traditions Jesus knew and to the sacrificial imagery that runs all through the New Testomony, and in my Episcopal custom types the premise of the offertory sentences within the E book of Frequent Prayer.
As well as, by way of my present ebook challenge exploring cash within the ultimate week of Jesus’ life, I’ve been struck by the theme of trustworthy providing towards the backdrop of corruption. One of the vital poignant examples is Mary of Bethany’s extravagant pouring out fragrance value a 12 months’s wages on Jesus’ toes (John 12:1–8). Her providing, a model of which seems in all 4 Gospels, is ready towards Judas’ betrayal for thirty silver cash (Matthew 26:14–16). What does it imply to make a trustworthy providing of time, expertise, and treasure within the midst of a corrupt world?
To reframe church giving as providing fairly than stewardship is to attach our items to worship, gratitude, and sacrifice. Providing is a way more scripturally-rooted picture for what we’re doing, and in Jesus’ final week alone we see the extraordinary choices of the widow’s mite (Mark 12:41–44), to Mary’s fragrance, and Christ’s personal self-offering on the cross.
Girls’s Patronage
A second strategy is to reclaim the position of patronage, particularly as embodied by girls within the early church. Lydia, the vendor of purple material, is essentially the most well-known instance, however personally I discover essentially the most intriguing to be Phoebe, talked about briefly in Romans 16:1-2. There Paul commends her each as a diakonos–a deacon of the church in Cenchreae–and as a prostatis, a benefactor or patron not solely of many others however of Paul himself.
This mix is placing. On one hand, Phoebe is described as a deacon, a title of service. On the opposite, she is offered as a patron, a task in Roman society related to wealth, affect, and public honor. Paul’s use of each phrases means that early Christians had been already grappling with how one can combine wealthier patrons into assemblies in any other case made up of the poor.2
Like many congregations, the church I serve is majority girls. Highlighting girls’s monetary management is a technique of encouraging trustworthy choices in a brand new gentle. What if we appeared once more at girls like Phoebe or Lydia of Thyatira (Acts 16:11–15) and allowed their examples (fairly than the prudent steward) to border our creativeness as a church?
