Mission:

What is stewardship? Church leaders sometimes deny it and argue otherwise, but stewardship is a critical component of the life of a congregation. One reason for such a negative opinion of stewardship is that, over the centuries, stewardship in the life of the church has usually been linked exclusively to raising money for the church and its institutions. Stewardship is about money, but it is also about much more than money.

Robert M. Martin offered these intriguing thoughts on happiness and desire: Let’s put the problem in more picturesque terms. I know a genie who lives in a lamp and will grant you three wishes—change three things to make them the way you want them to be. I know you’d like to meet this genie; unfortunately I’ve lost his address. But I can get you in touch with his cousin Fred who is also a genie who can make the world match your desires. Fred does this not by changing the world, but by changing your desires. If something isn’t the way you want it to be, Fred will change what you want. Are you eager to avail yourself of Fred’s services? Why? Why not…? Is it possible that there’s more to life than getting what you think you want?

We live in a time of critical spiritual anxiety. Walter Brueggemann wrote about the experience of being pulled in two directions—being haunted by two different versions of one’s life. He described two stories that operate in his life:

    - One story that competes for our loyalty is the money story.
    - But we also know about and take seriously a different account of our lives, the story of the gospel.

The money story is the story of self-sufficiency and merit and being safe on our own terms. The sign of this story is more. It insists that no matter now much one gathers together, it is not yet enough for happiness and safety. The outcomes of this story are anxiety and worry.

The second story is the story of the gospel: It is an account of God’s generosity that we are able to see in the mystery of God’s creation, that we know crucially in God’s love in Jesus of Nazareth, and that we trust because we have experienced it in intimate, concrete ways in our own lives. The outcome of the story is a life of communion with God shaped like gratitude, a capacity for deep generosity because all that we have is a gift, and a valuing of neighbor, whereby we live to transform our world into a viable neighborhood where justice and mercy for all brothers and sisters is assured.

The first story of anxiety and greed—the money story—has great power and is the dominant story of our culture.
The question then is how do we move our lives toward the second story? The move from the story of anxiety to the story of generosity does not happen by accident or by osmosis. It happens by intentional resolve and by incremental discipline. It happens not only with our money but with every aspect of our lives. Stewardship, thus, is a practice of our true selves

Drawing from his observations of commercials during the time of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and also from his trip to Kruger National Park in South Africa, Brueggemann talked first about commercials that had the theme “Follow Your Thirst.” His point was that the underlying motif of the commercial was to urge more—“more thirst, more drink, more self-indulgence, more satisfaction.”