Stewardship

​Today we dedicate our pledges for next year, so I want to say something about stewardship and our pledges, about what stewardship is not and what it is.
 
First, pledges are NOT a form of membership dues.
 
Not everyone is in a position to pledge, for all kinds of reasons. But at Saint David’s everyone is always welcome. Everyone who wants to be part of the team is part of the team. Indeed, Christ sends us out into the highways and byways to bring people in. And Christ calls us treat everyone as part of the team, at least potentially, whether or not they see themselves that way.
 
People should pledge because they want to pledge, not because they want to belong. Everyone already belongs to God, and that’s good enough for us here at Saint David’s.
 
Second, stewardship is NOT just another fund-raising drive.
 
I have to qualify that one. We work on our financial stewardship at this time of year because we have to prepare a Church budget, and pledges remain our primary source of income. It costs money to do what we do, and our financial stewardship campaign is how we raise the money to do it.
 
Saint David’s is important to me, so our financial need as a parish is one of the reasons I pledge. And because Saint David’s is important to me, I am grateful to everyone who gives, at whatever level. We should all be grateful to each other for making our common life possible.
 
I am happy to add that our vestry works very hard to use the money you give responsibly, faithfully, and transparently. We post our financial statements on the office-side bulletin board every month so you can track our income and expenses. This year’s budget is there, too. And we’ll present our budget for 2025 at our annual meeting in January.  
 
So, stewardship is, in part, a fund-raising drive.
 
But stewardship is not just a fund-raising drive for Churches. Stewardship is also, and more importantly, a spiritual practice for every Christian.
 
Jesus tells us, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). Put another way, if you want to know what someone values, look at how they spend their money. If you want to know what you yourself value, look at how you spend your own money. That is a spiritual exercise for sure.
 
I have friends who budget carefully, and can tell you how they spend virtually every penny. For reasons good and bad, we don’t do that in my house, so I don’t know exactly where my heart is by that measure. But I worry my spending habits would suggest that my heart is not where I want it to be, not with God or my needy neighbors to nearly the degree it should be.
 
For people like me, people who don’t track their finances with great care, we need other ways to assess our spiritual health around money. A friend of mine and former Assistant to the Bishop for Stewardship in our Diocese recently sent me a pamphlet he wrote on “Spirituality and Money.”[1] In it, he encouraged people to ask themselves a series of questions.
 
Do you ever equate your value as a person with what you earn?
Do you ever envy what others earn or have?
Has money ever been the cause of an argument with a loved one?
Do you spend more time fretting about money than you do in prayer?
 
In his pamphlet, my friend told the story of how he answered those questions. Like him, my answer to all those questions is yes. That is a spiritual problem.
 
Now, each question and answer could be a sermon of its own, but you do NOT want to listen to me talk about my relationship with money that much!
 
So, I am just going to do one, the question about equating our value as a person with our earnings.
 
I don’t remember how much I was paid my first couple of years here at Saint David’s. But I remember that it didn’t feel like enough.
 
I don’t mean I wasn’t paid fairly. I definitely was. Our parish has always compensated me well for what I do. But I have always been part-time, which meant a pay cut from what I was used to when I arrived. And I realized, with some surprise and chagrin, that that bothered me. It made me feel less valuable than I had felt when I was paid more.
 
Over time, our vestry boosted my salary, and one year I realized that my salary had become enough to make me feel like a complete human being.  
 
I was startled to realize that how much I equated my value as a human being with what I earned. Apparently, in my own eyes, I was worth about $30,000.
 
I know better than that.
 
I know that money has nothing to do with our value as human beings. Our value as human beings comes from God. Our value as human beings comes from the fact that we are created in God’s image and likeness and are God’s beloved children, redeemed by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. That is true for rich people and poor people and everyone in between.
 
I knew that. I preached that. And still, I connected my own value as a human being with my salary.
 
When he realized the same thing about himself, the author of my pamphlet recognized that his attitude towards money was not spiritually healthy. It wasn’t good for him. Money had become an idol for him, as it was for me. Or, to use another metaphor, he and I were addicts, addicted to money, dependent on money for a sense of well-being and personal worth.
 
I think a LOT of people in our country are similarly addicted.
 
But God calls us to be healthy. God calls us to be free of anything that sucks life from us, including an emotional dependence on money. God calls us to abundant life.
 
For people addicted to money, that means entering recovery. And recovery is what stewardship can be.
 
Pausing each year to reflect on your relationship with money is a first step.
 
If your relationship with money is dysfunctional, as it so often is, prayerfully consider what a healthy relationship with money would look like for you. Then do what you can to put that more healthy relationship with money into practice by modifying your spending habits as necessary. Include as part of your practice giving to the Church.
 
That is stewardship as spiritual practice. That is what God calls us to do. Not because God needs our money, or because Saint David’s does. But because that’s what we need to do as a disciples of Christ committing to growing in our relationships with God.
 
In a moment, we will dedicate our pledge cards, which represent a part of our answers to God’s call for the next year. My prayer for all of us is that whatever we give serves our spiritual needs and does indeed help us grow closer to Christ, with God’s help.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.


[1] Bruce Rockwell, “Spirituality and Money: Seven Questions That Saved My Spiritual Life,” published by The Episcopal Network for Stewardship, 2009.