Giving

“Fund-raising is all about non-profit management practices, and goals which are quantifiable and, therefore, measureable.  Consequently, fund-raising does not concern itself with faith and grace....  Stewardship, by contrast, is a matter of living out our vocation as Christians.  The values which underlie Christian Stewardship are grounded on the idea of gratitude for our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, and [of] the inherent dignity which belongs to every human being.” Michael O’Hurley-Pitts

When I did this Stewardship job in the Diocese 20 or so years ago, our little committee set about producing a small booklet on how to do Stewardship Campaigns and Increased Giving Campaigns.  It was not rocket science, but perhaps a pointer and encouragement to congregations trying to gear themselves up for the effort, usually prompted by financial difficulties or challenges.

My successor produced an updated booklet a few years later.  The Province has recently produced a course on Stewardship, “Charis”, part of The Journey of the Baptised.  Revisiting the Diocesan Stewardship Convener slot over the last 4 years our committee decided that enough was enough in literature terms - there is a mountain of excellent literature throughout the UK churches on stewardship, campaigns, and giving - and that we might look more carefully at what Stewardship was about. 

So, going back to the quotation, why do people back away when Stewardship or the idea of a Stewardship Campaign is raised?  What is our problem with our vocation as Christians?  What is our problem with gratitude for our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer?

We have, I suggest, become so secularised in our outlook on life, so consumed by consumerism and the material world, that Giving too has become secularised and entangled in fund-raising – quantifiable, measurable, demanding of value for money, often reduced to a fair exchange – if I give you this, what do I get for it?  This has nothing to do with Christian Giving, nothing to do with our stewardship of all that God has given us.

If stewardship is not about fund-raising, then what is it about?  It is about

1. the proper and generous use of our Time, our Talent and our Treasure
2. about what we do with our lives after reciting our baptismal promises
3. and, most importantly, about joyfully and generously returning to God a portion of that bounty which God has with boundless generosity bestowed on us.

Talk of giving Time, Talent and Treasure most easily concentrates on Time and Talent.  It is strange, because giving those two things often involves us in considerable inconvenience and considerable effort.  Giving of our Treasure, on the other hand, is pretty straight-forward – reaching into our pockets [or, better, writing out a Banker’s Order form and filling in the Gift Aid form].

So what is it about Treasure that causes us problems?  It centres on our relationship with money.  That relationship is formed from our first encounters with it – pocket money, or money earned from paper-rounds.  How many of us were taught that giving a proportion of that first money to God, perhaps to church or perhaps to some Christian charity, was the right and proper thing to do?  And if we had been taught about giving at that stage, would we not find it second nature now to give in a true Christian vocational manner?

There is much talk in Christian Giving of tithing, the 10% standard.  I think that this alarms some people, and it is not helpful for everyone.  It is an Old Testament concept, not a Jesus demand.  It hangs there as a sort of bench mark, but true Christian proportionate giving is about generosity and joy, not about percentages.  Having said that, there is more than a pinch of truth in one vestry member’s observation that:  “Oh yes, we tithe in our congregation:  we give about 10% of what we should!”

The course “Seasons of Giving” which I have come across and been studying is based on the story of the Selfish Giant whose garden is always in winter until he learns that sharing it is what brings spring and summer to the garden and joy and peace to him.  The course explores our relationship to money, which so often tends to be a relationship of captivity and enslavement;  breaking free from that captivity requires us, like the Giant, to learn of the joy and the contentment and the peace that come from generous giving – not for anything measurable or quantifiable, not for personal gain or acclaim, but because we know that by doing so we are acting as God intends us to act.

Jesus relied on the support of others for his life of ministry and mission.  Now his church relies on exactly the same support from us for the continuation of that mission and ministry.  It is up to us to be stewards of our Treasure, as well as our Time and our Talents, not as an obligation but as a vocation.  Christian giving does not start with need:  it starts with knowing that what we have is from God and that giving it back generously is the only honest response that we can make to God’s infinite generosity.  Sometimes our church might have a very clear vision of what it wants to do in its ministry and mission;  sometimes it does not become clear until the funds are there and things become possible.  We can help frame that vision, but without Treasure vision will remain just that, vision not reality.

St Paul, in 1 Corinthians, explained clearly what God expects of our giving:  it can be summed up as Paul’s 5 Ps:

• a priority – up with the mortgage and the housekeeping, put aside at the beginning of the week or month, not what is left at the end
• planned – in good time and using Banker’s Order and Gift Aid, so that we can plan our finances and the church can plan its mission
• personal – does your partner/spouse give too, or do you let someone else do the giving?
• practical – God does not want us to go into debt through our giving, nor should we doubt that God provides us with all we need;  and the practical side of giving is that it enables – mission, ministry, St John’s Dumfries, the clergy
• and proportionate – a fair portion, one that releases us from the tyranny of money, one that means we do not feel guilty when giving to the church is talked about

My favourite story about Giving is of a wealthy woman, probably a banker, who found herself in church one Sunday.  The Rector impressed her, and at coffee afterwards she thanked him for his inspiration and wrote out a cheque for £100 and gave it to him.   He took it without significant comment, and she, slightly taken aback, asked if it was acceptable.  “”If that is what you feel in your heart you should give, then it is entirely acceptable, he replied.   She thought for a moment, and then changed the cheque to £500.  The same result – “If that is what you feel in your heart that you should give, then of course that is acceptable – to God”.  Again she changed it, this time to £1000.  Before she left, she had given £5000 and promised to return and give regularly.

The feeling of guilt about our giving is a widespread experience.  The more we really engage with the concept of Christian Giving, the more we know we should give.  If nothing is ours, and we sure know that we can’t take it with us, then giving it back to God becomes the natural way.  When we do give, in proper proportion, then we are freed from guilt and the captivity of money and find joy and contentment.  When preparing material for Christ Church in Lanark, I Google-imaged “GIVING”:  the most striking feature of the images that came up was that everyone involved with giving, both givers and recipients, were smiling broadly:  there was a sense of joy in every picture!

Stewardship, in so far as it entails a generous and total self-offering of love, flows most naturally and creatively from a state of grace.  It follows, therefore, that someone who is alienated from grace is unable fully to exercise the perfection of grace in free and cheerful self-giving.

This whole different (for me) perspective on what giving is about appealed to me immediately as a really compelling concept.  The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.  Once you get over this hurdle of understanding, then instead of reacting to the mention of stewardship with a whole lot of negatives – “I can’t give more because of my mortgage or my children or my job or whatever” – you begin to see it for what it is:  a nudge to remember where all we have has come from, and how we can honestly respond to the challenge of giving in line with Paul’s 5 Ps of Priority, Planned, Personal, Practical and Proportionate, and how we then feel the freedom and joy and contentment that comes from generous giving.

It is, genuinely, a freedom that we experience when we give;  giving brings us nearer that state of grace that comes from closeness to God and his love of each one of us.

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