Do the Word

Should ‘steward’ be the principle biblical category we use when describing the Christian, especially with regard to his or her giving?

My answer is no, though by answering in the negative I certainly don’t intend to imply that Christians should think of themselves as ‘not-stewards’.

Rather, my point is simply that I am not a proponent of the kind of thinking one encounters in the movement we might call ‘Christian stewardship’–well represented in books like Wes Wilmer’s A Revolution in Generosity: Transforming Stewards to be Rich Towards God or in the comments from Dave, a Mission Increase Foundation workshop attendee, in our previous post. 

(Not that the two would consider themselves identical or even similar. That estimation is totally my own.)

More today from Dave, for whom I have tremendous respect but am taking this opportunity to respectfully disagree in the hope of stimulating all of us, myself included, to new insights.

In Dave’s conversation with Mission Increase Foundation Colorado Giving and Training Officer Suzanne Dubois, Dave wrote: 

If there is any cause in the Bible that is obvious, it is those who are disadvantaged (the poor, widows, and orphans).  But for some reason, there are very few stories about people who are poor.  Most of them are about how we are supposed to care for those people and each other, which in essence is being rich toward God.  Why else would there be over 2,300 verses dealing with money and possessions?  It’s because that is part of God’s nature, and He wants us to be like His example, Jesus, the best example of being generous toward God. 

Please understand here that I do not go out and teach people that they are stingy, as mentioned in Mr. Foley’s blog. [Editor’s note: the post that Dave is referencing can be found here.]  The job of conviction belongs to the Holy Spirit, but it is also certain that today’s average Christian doesn’t understand his or her obligation as God’s steward, basically because the church has avoided teaching that, and as is readily admitted at some seminaries, pastors haven’t been taught that either.  If you don’t understand that you are obligated to steward everything you have and are, then you really don’t have the whole counsel of God.  Our stewardship has to involve our relationship with God, with our self, with our neighbors, and with that part of our creation over which we have influence.  If we avoid that, then stewardship is just a church word for ‘the church wants more of my money.’

I find so much to like in what Dave is written, but I love the quote from the rabbi in Spangler and Tverberg’s Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, who, exasperated when no one would say anything to rebut his teaching, groaned, ‘Come on, people! Somebody disagree with me! How can we learn anything if no one will disagree?’

So I owe Dave the courtesy of disagreeing with him.

That steward is a helpful and important concept I wholeheartedly agree (as do Luke 16, 1 Corinthians 4:1-3, Titus 1:6-8, and 1 Peter 4:9-11, several of which are especially interesting in that they refer explicitly to stewarding the ‘mysteries of God’  and the ‘manifold grace’ of God).

That steward is the fundamental concept around which you want to build your approach to giving I have the severest reservations. Four, to wit:

1. Jesus is primarily identified in the scriptures as God’s son, rather than God’s steward. That he stewards both the mysteries and things of God is without question. That son is a better descriptor than steward ought to be equally so. Same with us. We are best understood as the sons and daughters of God, gradually being conformed to the image of His son. The overwhelming corpus of scripture treats discipleship in this way rather than in a stewardship context.
2. Steward is typically understood as an individual image. That is, I am stewarding what has been given to me. But a major, major (and, in our day, wildly underrepresented) part of the biblical framework about giving is corporate, that is, body oriented. And by this we mean something more than ‘I am giving to the church’. This is why TG talks about personal and corporate assets. Our network, our body, our sphere of influence–biblically, we give embedded in a framework greater than the individual. (The emergence of giving circles in secular fundraising attests to the naturalness of thinking in these terms.) The image of the steward obscures that reality.
3. Of the 2,300 verses dealing with money and possessions, it’s interesting in how few of those Jesus holds up the image of the steward when he refers to our purpose and role. When he admonishes care for the poor, he uses the images of neighbor, brother, friend, and even shepherd. This creates a far more compelling, direct, and personal relationship than is necessitated by the stewardship language that Jesus does not use. You’d almost think he was doing this on purpose.
4. The importation of steward language (I say ‘importation’ because stewardship is only explicitly referenced in the New Testament in the scripture passages I noted above, though certainly the concept is not alien to other scriptural allusions) as the primary identifier of the Christian runs the risk of overlooking the reality of the Lord’s indwelling presence within us. We are not stewarding the Lord’s time, talent, and treasure in his absence; rather, we are embodying him corporately because he is present. That’s why images and phrases like ‘body’ and ‘temple’ and ‘living stones’ appear much more frequently than the image of the steward. 

Jesus clearly makes much of our relationship with money, and so should we as we are mutually accountable to each other before him. But when I buy shoes for my son, I would hope my actions are not best characterized as me stewarding my time, talent, and treasure. Rather, I would suggest that I am best understood as doing what a father does when he loves his son (which reminds me of a certain verse that contains the word ‘gave’ but somehow omits the word ‘steward’…).

I was permitted to eavesdrop on a stimulating conversation this week between Mission Increase Foundation Colorado Giving and Training Office Suzanne Dubois and Dave, one of her favorite attendees at her training events.

Not having had the conversation, I don’t want to (mis)represent Dave but rather want to share a portion of what he had to say, since Dave’s view seems to me to be similar to that shared by folks like Wes Wilmer in his book, A Revolution in Generosity: Transforming Stewards to Be Rich Toward God. It is a position with which I ultimately respectfully disagree (hence why I myself do not recommend the Wilmer book or approach), but with a disagreement that I hope may lead to some new insights for all of us, myself included.

First, an excerpt from Dave’s correspondence. Dave felt that Mission Increase Foundation‘s recent workshop on transforming major donor development (moving from soliciting donors to coaching champions) downplayed the importance of solicitation:

My goal is to grow donors to be rich toward God, regardless of whether they give money to us or some other cause. Yes, I ask donors about their passion and will suggest a way to help them along that path if possible, but ultimately, I am concerned with their relationship with God and what He is saying to them. As part of that I believe we are called to ask people for what we want them to do. Moses certainly did that in the first capital campaign, and so did Paul. I didn’t hear anything about asking in this week’s class….

I’m sure we agree that all those verses are there because God is concerned about money and possessions being a proxy for the state of our hearts. So doesn’t it make sense to help donors understand that? The Word tells us that where our money is, there our heart will be also. Many people don’t notice the order of that. First the money; then the heart. I think that may even be how God leads us to causes that He wants us to advance, not the other way around. I do think God is honored when people get more actively involved as well. But of course, that is another reflection of their developing Biblical stewardship – over their time and talents.

The more I thought about Dave’s perspective, the more I felt Transformational Giving was at deep variance with it. I was particularly struck today by 2 Peter 1:5-8:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice that Peter does not begin by addressing the Christian’s finances and suggesting that if one’s finances are in order, the rest will of necessity follow. Nor does Peter put finances in the middle nor at the end.

Why? Is Peter leaving finances out?

No. It’s because finances are involved at each step in the process. Dave’s approach treats financial giving as a distinct and separable act, and one that initiates a process–and certainly this is a popular Christian fundraiser view.

• Pastors and seminaries who don’t like to talk about money look at ‘Where your treasure is, your heart is also’ and they think, ‘Let’s cultivate the heart; then the treasure will follow.’

• The stewardship movement looks at ‘Where your treasure is, your heart is also’ and they think, ‘Let’s cultivate the giving of the treasure; then the heart will follow.’

• But TG is a comprehensive discipleship approach that seeks to enable Christlike growth in the champion in relation to the cause you both share. We look at ‘Where your treasure is, your heart is also’, and we think, ‘Treasure and heart are inextricably linked. For maximum impact, we need to coach the champion on both.’

For us, the giving of a financial gift is not the watershed moment, nor the increase in giving or multiple gifts. Those are irreplaceable steps on the wider and taller ladder of discipleship, of which there are many other steps as well. Recognizing the existence of many steps on a ladder does not demean the importance of any particular step, as anyone walking up a ladder carrying a can of paint knows full well!

The ladder is comprehensive Christlikeness in relation to the cause, and that is our goal–not only richness toward God. The watershed moments for us fall across the full range of the heart.

More on the difference between TG and Christian Stewardship in our next post, as the Lord permits.

P/E/O—comprehensive discipleship that moves the champion into initial Participation with the cause, and then from Participation through Engagement into Ownership of the cause in his/her sphere of influence—is the warp and woof of Transformational Giving.

Check out the following nifty chart from Matt Bates, SoCal Regional Giving and Training Officer for Mission Increase Foundation. He notes with great modesty that it’s still in draft form, but I’d say it’s already the best comparison/contrast chart for understanding how P, E, and O differ in kind rather than in degree.

(When people hear about P/E/O for the first time, they have a tendency to think that we’re talking small/medium/large, good/better/best, or lukewarm/warm/red hot for the cause, and nothing could be further from the truth. There are as many large/best Ps red hot for the cause as there are Es—almost certainly more, in fact—and a P can be tremendously committed at the P level for years. So check out Matt’s chart and git yerself a first class education in P/E/O.)

peo-descriptions (Click that to download the file)

Seems like every day I see a new post from a different nonprofit blogger extolling ‘donor experience’. ‘Donor experience’ typically translates to a series of P level involvement opportunities—great for newbies, but hardly the kind of diet you’ll want to feed your Es and Os. (Reminds one of the milk/meat comeuppance offered in Hebrews 5:12-14.) As Bates demonstrates in his chart, it’s not enough to give champions ‘experiences’. In Christian development practice we need to collaborate with our champions by equipping them to munch on experiences designed to grow them to maturity in a given P/E/O category while drawing them on to the next one.