Intentional Practice vs. Fear

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:34

Dear Friends in Christ,

The world around us tries to motivate us with fear. What can we do to form and shape our hearts and minds differently? To be free from fear and open to trust? One practical way is in the mindset and practice of Christian Stewardship. In this practice, we live knowing that all that we have belongs to God. How, therefore, shall we tend God’s resources as God would want us? We ask God this basic question in our prayers in all aspects of our lives: how we use our time, how we invest our energy, how we give, how we spend, how we save, how we order our lives, how we live out the priorities we say we have. And we discover God in all of it!

I almost always emphasize this broader concept of stewardship so that we don’t get caught up in a narrow slice of stewardship—the part of ‘giving money to the church.’ But in this email, let me address that narrow slice (and please bear with me—you might read something fresh). How we support the ministry of our Christian community is an important starting point and teacher that trains the rest of our lives, if we let it.

Some people are wealthy enough to be generous without noticing. But I think that the noticing is so very important. When we take on the commitment to save for our future, it often impacts the rest of our budget, and how we spend, and how we prioritize. Likewise, the commitment to give impacts the rest of our budget if we let it. But in the commitment to give, we also exercise intentionally valuing others. I suppose some people give with a sort of ‘payment for services’ mentality—they give a lot if they like church, and give little if they don’t like it. But what if the purpose was not transactional? Yes, each of us has a stake in our common decision-making, but what if our giving called us to release our need for control, to let go of a little of ourselves, placing those resources in the hands of others, so that we all might flourish together? What if we gave, not to influence an outcome, but to honor God and to trust what God might do with these resources, for others and for ourselves?

You see how spiritually formative intentional Christian giving can be? It turns our hearts and minds outward beyond our narrow scope of ourselves, and looks through God’s eyes. Intentional Christian giving, especially when done sacrificially, frees us from the fear and bondage of a mindset of scarcity. We practice trusting God with our security, and in a life of prayer, we discover that God guides us and provides for us. This isn’t just an idea, this is the lived experience of the people who engage in this practice.

This practice then becomes a starting point for us to trust God with all of our life—all that God has blessed us with. That is why the Biblical tradition of tithing (giving 10% of one’s income to the church) is such a powerful spiritual practice. Yes, the church needs funding, but also each of us needs more faith, more trust of God, more freedom from fear and insecurity. And we can find these blessings through pledging and giving and tithing, as strange as that might sound. If tithing sounds like too much, start with a smaller stretch and see what God does with that step. Then let that experience teach you the joy of trusting God with more of your life.

When our stewardship speakers spoke in these last few weeks, they often remarked how they were always able to make their giving work—they always had enough. They weren’t boasting of their economic prowess, but rather they were sharing their delight in how God provided for them, even when their families faced financial stress—God still provided for them, and they new it, and it gave them joy and peace!

This week, we invite our members to make a pledge of financial support to the church (click here). Partly, these pledges help us to know how to manage our parish resources—how to make a budget and what ministries and staff we can sustain. But more importantly, this exercise is a spiritual practice in which each of us encounters God providing for us more and more. Then, with thankful hearts, we discover other ways in which God is blessing us and our neighbors, and the virtuous cycle thrives!

God bless you in your prayers and your practice of intentional Christian Stewardship.

Yours in Christ,

-Tom