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October is our Season of Stewardship. We have dedicated this month to exploring the meaning of faithful stewardship.

Why devote an entire month to this theme? In order to expose misunderstandings of what stewardship is really all about.

One misunderstanding of stewardship limits the notion to “fundraising” in the church. This reduces the church to a nonprofit charity. It reduces the living God to a principle of philanthropy.

The call to faithful stewardship far transcends this notion. It involves an appreciation for covenantal context that provides its meaning. Scripture portrays the world as the creative work of God. We are created in the divine image for partnership with God.

Christ Jesus constitutes the human-divine partnership by his death on the cross. He seals this covenant relationship in the institution of the Eucharist, communion. (In the ancient world covenants were completed by the sharing of a meal.) Faith empowers our embrace of this covenant relationship which makes us partners with God, that is stewards who take responsibility for fulfilling God’s plan for the world.

In other words, Jesus calls us into relationship with God for a singular purpose.

This is the beginning and the end of the faithful life. One may be “a member of a church” and yet have little understanding of what it means to live as a covenant partner in relationship with God.

The reasons for this are many. But the primary reason is because somewhere along the way the church has lost it’s true identity as a “covenant community” – the community of those who have responded to live in covenant together as God’s partners.

Church-as-covenant community has been replaced by church-as-institution, or church-as-charitable organization. Once the church becomes a non-profit service provider, the call to faithful stewardship disappears. The steward becomes a “member,” or even worse, a “customer.”

Faithful stewardship is responsibility-taking. The faithful steward takes responsibility for God’s purpose, living out his life as a covenant partner in relationships of mutual care with others.