The Season of Stewardship is well underway here. My goal this year is to awaken people to the possibility that the popular understanding of stewardship in the church is incomplete.

I’m still having conversations with people who want to talk about the parish budget – as if the parish budget is the “problem” that gets “fixed” through a “stewardship campaign.” I’m not sure people believe me yet when I say that I don’t really care about the budget.

I need to be careful here. As an administrator I do care about the budget. But this is a simple matter of cash management. As a steward of the Word, as an evangelist and a disciple-maker, the budget merely registers the Response Ability of the parish. It matters as a measurement of parish faithfulness, and as a tool of management.

If people in a parish have not risen up as faithful stewards who take responsibility for ministry, a parish budget is, frankly, useless.

Maybe I should say more about this.

When our Lord commissioned his disciples he gave us authority to proclaim the Gospel. He made us stewards of the Kingdom of God. This is the responsibility of faith. But, as stewards of the Kingdom, we can only fulfill our responsibility in so far as we are able. Faith increases our Response Ability – that is our ability to be faithful stewards of the Kingdom.

The Response Ability of a parish is directly tied to the Response Ability of individual parishioners. Where faith is strong, a people rise to embrace the tithe – the standard of faithful financial giving. Where faith is weak, a people struggle to release the financial power God has given them to advance his Kingdom through the ministry of the church.

The stewardship issue in the church is never about the budget. To draw attention to a parish budget misdirects people’s focus. The challenge in faithful stewardship is to keep one’s eyes on Jesus whose own Response Ability he demonstrated by giving up his life on the cross.

No matter how much money I give to the church, I have not yet given to the point of shedding my blood. I encourage people to tithe, not to raise money in the church, but to raise faith in the church. As someone once said:

The tithe is not God’s way of raising money; it is God way of raising children. I know this is a difficult concept for people to wrap their heads around. That’s okay. We have a life-time to figure it. Those who learn the power and joy of practicing a faithful financial discipline are not more saved than those who don’t. They are just more joyful.

Long experience has taught us that there are four reasons people give money to a church.

1. Some people give money out of a sense of guilt. They give as little as they can in order to avoid feeling the guilt that comes from knowing your fellow parishioners are carrying you.

2. Some people give money out of a willingness to pay their “fair share” or their “dues.” They try to calculate what is an appropriate pledge based on whatever matrix seems to work for them.

3. Some people give money out of a desire to support a specific program. Someone might give money to support a music program. Another might give money to support a homeless shelter. Still someone else might give money to support youth ministry.

4. Some people give money in a joyful spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude expressing their desire to live in covenant partnership with God.

These people are tithers.

The challenge of a stewardship campaign is not to raise money. It is to raise faith. Without faith, money is useless. With faith, more than enough money is always available to advance the purpose of God at work in the lives of his faithful stewards.