Stewardship

Stewardship is a popular topic in Church circles, but are we truly taking stewardship seriously when it comes our financial resources? This question is explored in episode 2 of the Rich Church Poor World Podcast. 

Transcript

Rich Church Poor World - Episode 2

Stewardship is a buzzword for us Christians in America. It’s one of our favorite topics. We hold packed out Dave Ramsey seminars at our churches and our radio stations are full of “biblical” financial advice shows that listeners flock to hear. You would think financial freedom was three pegs above spiritual freedom on God’s priority list the way we American Christians eat up any financial wisdom we can get. Sadly, we’ve painted our idol worship of financial security with a “stewardship” brush to make it seem like setting ourselves up for a life of financial comfort is what God really wants; and unfortunately, our concern for wise stewardship doesn’t extend far past ourselves and our own individual advancement. 

A positive of all our “Christian Financial Success Plans” is that most do encourage Christians to give a full 10% to their church, but too often there is little, if any, interest in how these funds are used. The mindset in giving is often self beneficial. It can be along the lines of “I’ve given my 10% so the Lord will bless me and that’s all I’m really concerned about.” There is little concern as to whether or not the funds are being best distributed to advance God’s kingdom. 

            As a result, we’ve reached a place where only 2 cents in every $100 that is given to churches in America goes towards reaching people who have never heard the gospel. In case you didn’t catch that - it wasn’t 2 cents in every dollar, it was 2 cents in every $100. The fact that we give so little to advance the gospel is almost worse than nothing because every time the question arises we can point to that tiny amount and say “see we’re supporting missions.”  Isn’t our main objective supposed to be preaching the gospel to every nation? Weren’t those Jesus’s final marching orders before ascending to heaven? We haven’t just taken our eye off the ball, we’re not even playing the right game anymore. 

              In the last episode, we pointed out that the average American Church devotes more of its budget to building maintenance than it gives to international missions, which is a sad reflection of our priorities, but perhaps no statistic shows our condition more than the fact that almost 50% of church budgets go to pay church staff. Why is so much staff needed? It’s because we are a nation of spiritual babies, who have not matured, and require full time care from church leadership. We’re also lazy. We’ve outsourced the work of being a Christian to our church staff. In exchange, we expect to show up on Sunday morning, turn our children into state of the art child care facilities, enjoy singing along with the most talented worship leader money can buy, and hear an inspirational message that never runs too long. 

            Unfortunately, many people in church leadership have been far too willing to accommodate this attitude. “Church shopping” has become a totally acceptable phrase in American Christianity and if you want to keep people coming back, you better cater to their every need. Afterall, being a successful pastor in America means having more lukewarm bodies in your seats than the church across town. 

            This mindset among pastors and others in leadership creates an “arms race” among churches. Bigger buildings are needed, more associate pastors, more talented worship leaders, better sound equipment, bigger projection screens, a gymnasium must go in! The list goes on and we find more ways to spend the money on making our Sunday mornings a better customer experience while the missions budgets become an afterthought and the world’s poor remain destitute. 

            What has been the result of heavily investing our resources into bigger church buildings and more staff? Are we seeing a nationwide revival led by the local church? Are we seeing neighborhoods and communities being turned upside down by the gospel? Are American Christians more Christ like than they used to be? There are some exceptions, but for the most part the answer to all these questions is an emphatic no.

            In fact, our strategy to cater to our “me centered” version of Christianity has only hindered the American church. Studies show that 65% of our churches are declining or have plateaued and the number of people in America who identify themselves as Christian has dropped by 12% in the last decade. Without a doubt, the most alarming reports are the ones we see in the generation of young adults in America where at least 6 out of 10 young adults who grew up going to church have walked away from their faith.  

How can this be? We’ve invested in the best children’s programs and hired the best pastors to oversee our children's ministries. We’ve not only hired youth pastors for high school, but for middle school as well. Every step along the way we have invested in our children and yet when they become adults the majority of them are walking away from their faith. We love to blame our culture for this, but if we’re honest the church has endured far worse cultures than ours. No, the problem is with our version of Christianity, not the culture. Kids see better than they hear. We’ve set an example of Christianity that is a bunch of words and no action. 

I imagine these young adults thinking, “if mom and dad really believed that people without Jesus are going to hell they would focus more on reaching the lost than their retirement fund.” I picture them thinking “If they really believed this stuff they would be volunteering at church instead of just showing up 10 minutes late every Sunday and complaining if the message runs overtime.” I picture them thinking “if all these people at church were really filled with the Love of Christ they would be talking about reaching the needs of the world instead of bickering over what color of carpet is going in the sanctuary.” 

It’s the poor example of what it looks like to be a Christian that has turned off so many young adults. Imagine if the focus of our churches became working together to meet urgent needs in our communities and around the world, while making significant sacrifices to get the gospel to people beyond our Church walls.  What a difference that would be to the country club Christianity our young adults have come to know and reject.

The last question we must consider is if this large investment in ourselves is leading to a church filled with people who are more Christlike. We may be failing in other areas, but have our large investments in the “church experience”, bible study programs, Christian Cruises & Holy Land tours lead to Christians who beam with the love and character of Christ? Let’s ask those outside the church for an honest answer: In a recent study by the Barna Group among young Americans, who are outside the church, it was revealed that 87% said yes when asked if they believed Christians were judgemental. When asked about hypocrisy, 85% said they considered Christians to be hypocritical. 75% said we are too political and 70% agreed that we are insensitive to others. 

Was Jesus judgmental, hypocritical, overly political or insensitive to the needs of others? It appears we need to give ourselves another “F” for the category of Christlikeness. In spite of our large investments in bigger church buildings, better Bible study training and more staff we are not reaching our communities for Christ. In fact, we are turning them off. Do we need any greater proof to see how flawed our methodology has been? 

Given the complete ineffectiveness of our current church strategy and the fact that most of the money we give to our churches comes back to directly benefit us instead of reaching others, Christians who have a sincere heart for the lost, both in America and overseas, must ask ourselves a tough question that will likely not be popular among pastors. Is it time to give more money to organizations that are working specifically to reach the lost and meet the needs of the poor around the world than we give to our local church? This is without a doubt a question that will raise controversy, but it’s one that must be asked. 

Before diving deeper into a polarizing topic, let me first state that I believe every Christian should support their local church financially in some manner and in a perfect world we would be able to give all our contributions to our local church with the assurance that a large portion of the funds are being used to advance the gospel and help the poor, but the reality is that’s not the world we live in. The world we live in sees churches in America throwing crumbs to those starving outside our walls while stuffing our members who are already fat. Until this changes, and proper balance is restored, those who want to contribute to highly impactful work must consider other avenues than the local church.

All the money we give to the Lord’s work, be it a local church or mission organization, honors Him, but if we want to take stewardship seriously we should show concern enough to examine how the money is being used. We only get one life to live and God only gives us a certain amount of money to invest in His kingdom. Should we not invest it wisely to increase our heavenly treasure and be entrusted with greater responsibility in heaven? 

Think of this scenario: You spend your whole life giving all your tithes to your local church. Assuming your church is like most other American churches the majority of the funds go towards benefitting the church and its members. The leadership goes along with American church culture and assumes that any surplus of funds should be used to upgrade the sound equipment, hire more full time staff or be tucked away for when the building needs a remodel. Afterall, it will be harder to attract new members if the church looks outdated. The funds you give are by no means completely wasted. The church grows and then plateaus but remains a foundation for local Christians to be encouraged and, while very few outside souls are saved from the church's work, at least there’s the assurance that it’s raising up the next generation of Christians. That is until 60% of the kids mysteriously walk away from their faith when they become young adults. 

Now think of this scenario: Upon being made aware of the incredible needs around the world you recognize that you can play a part in meeting these needs through financial giving. You recognize the need to still support your local church and so you decide to give half of your tithes to the church and give the rest to other urgent needs around the world. With less funds to squander the church actually requires more of its members to volunteer and use their spiritual gifts. The result is a healthier, more vibrant church that sets a strong example of service and sacrifice for the next generation. 

Over your lifetime, the other 50% of the funds you gave to Christian organizations working on the front lines around the world contributed to the drilling of 50 wells in remote towns in Asia where people were previously dying from contaminated drinking water. These wells opened the door for the gospel to be shared in each village. As a result, an average of two families in each village accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Because you continued to give, missionaries continued to work in these villages and overtime an average of 30 people were saved in each village. The total number of people saved because you faithfully contributed to this work was 1,500. That’s not even counting the number of souls these new believers could potentially lead to Jesus. This is the harvest of “thirty, sixty or even a hundred times as much as had been planted” Jesus is talking about in Matthew 13:23. 

Which scenario would you rather be a part of? Perhaps a better question to ask is what kind of impact do you want your life to have on eternity? Do you want to contribute to the salvation of thousands of souls or would you rather have a five star church experience every Sunday morning? The reality is we need to ask ourselves these questions when we make out our tithes. We can blindly give our full tithe to our churches, knowing the money is probably going towards a new inchurch cafe; or we can use that money to help send a missionary to an unreached people group. Which one do you think will have a bigger impact on eternity?