Stewardship on November 20

Since we have spent a lot of “church time” over the past four weeks talking about stewardship, it seemed we ought to spend a little time on the topic in class, especially since I have not paused at this topic often over the six years Claire and I have been teaching this class. I would like to talk about three important themes that have shaped my own commitments relative to stewardship.

My first understanding of stewardship was developed in the home of my childhood, in a family in which tithing was understood to be one of the most important ways that Christians would serve their God. My father was always eager for my brother and I to earn money, and he kept a list of chores that could be completed for the princely sum of 20 cents an hour. When payday came I was always careful to sequester 2 cents per hour to carry to church the next Sunday. Thus tithing became a habit and continued to be the way Claire and I did things from the first year of marriage when we lived in a mobile home and I earned $3500 a year as a teaching assistant at University of Virginia to later days when my take home pay was more substantial. I am very grateful to my family of origin for this practice and would commend it to any family with young children. It has been a good way to support God’s work in the churches I have attended, but it has had another important effect. In a society in which nearly everyone needs to make 10% more than their paycheck, just to break even, it has been a very powerful thing to live on 90% of that paycheck. This power has given us flexibility and options when making some of life’s hard decisions.

Though tithing has continued to be a guideline for our family, as I became an adult, it no longer functioned as the law I had understood it to be as a child. I needed another principle to help me understand how I was to give. I understood this principle while listening to a miscellaneous devotional on stewardship some years ago. The speaker showed up with an armload of shoe boxes, nine of which were wrapped in black paper and one of which was wrapped in white. After he arranged the boxes across the front of the room, he addressed the group with this question, “Imagine that these ten boxes represent all your worldly possessions, the funds in your bank account, your cars, boats and houses, the contents of your 401K. Which part of this wealth belongs to God?” Given my tithing inclination, my eyes focused on the one white box, but the speaker swept his hand across all ten boxes. “All that you possess, you possess only because God made it available to you. All you think of as yours is rightfully God’s. You are a good steward when the contents of all ten boxes are used in a way that glorifies God.”

This gave me a whole new perspective on stewardship. It was not just about the 10%; it was about a life style and a way of being in the world. As I have attempted to follow God’s leadership on this matter, the per cents of giving have changed. 10% has not always been large enough for my family,but I can imagine many family circumstances in which a much small per cent than 10% would be understood by God as giving from the heart. The more important issue is that the remainder also be used to God’s glory.

The third important theme in my giving came as my reading of New Testament and Old Testament convinced me that it is the special responsibility of Christians to be attentive to the needs of the poor. This realization has led me to give special attention in my giving to ministries of the church that minister to the physical needs of others. In circumstances when my church was not heavily involved with this kind of ministry, it has led me to find and support Christian ministries in both community and world that give “a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name”

Thanks for letting fillibuster a bit about the Wheeler view of stewardship.