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07175
March 23, 2007
Stewardship, discipleship and French fries
Conference stresses the transforming power of giving
by Evan Silverstein
DENVER * Presbyterian Larry Stilgebouer knows good Christian stewardship.
As the newly appointed stewardship elder for his congregation * Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church in Rio Rancho, NM * he knows that stewardship means more than just dropping a few dollars into the offering plate each week.
He knows that strong biblically-based Christian stewardship is about using all of one's personal possessions. He knows it's about how people manage all that God has created and about personal service to others. He knows stewardship is a central part of discipleship.
"It's about being a good Christian," Stilgebouer said. "It's about being willing to give of yourself."
Stilgebouer's church is also no stranger to good stewardship. The 260-member congregation is a long-time participant in all four national special offerings of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), particularly the One Great Hour of Sharing.
Years ago members at Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church established a local food pantry called Storehouse West, which provides families in need with food and children's clothing and occasional money to pay utility bills.
Stilgebouer said the New Mexico church also collects money in support of PC(USA)-related Menaul School in nearby Albuquerque, which serves primarily Hispanic and Native American students in grades 6-12. Church parishioners also team with a Catholic congregation each year to build a Habitat for Humanity home in Albuquerque.
Stilgebouer * a 74-year-old former U.S. Navy commander and retired accountant for defense contractor Lockheed Martin * contributes 10 percent of his gross annual income from pensions to the Rio Rancho church. He also contributes money to missionaries and to a non-denominational Christian college in northern California.
To shore up his stewardship to the environment, Stilgebouer recently purchased a Toyota Prius, a petroleum-electric hybrid automobile that produces low particulate emissions and high fuel economy.
But Stilgebouer knows there's always room to learn more about stewardship.
That's why he attended the PC(USA)'s first national Stewardship Conference, a planned annual event held here March 12-14.
Stilgebouer was joined at the symposium, with its transformational stewardship theme, by more than 220 pastors, elders, presbytery and synod officials and other church stewardship leaders. As with Stilgebouer, they were interested in learning more about doing stewardship and teaching it to others.
"The reason for the conference is to get Presbyterians excited and energized about helping our members with their stewardship in all areas of life, including finances," said the Rev. Bob Sheldon, who is director of funds development for the Synod of the Rocky Mountains and a conference design team member.
Also attending the event were representatives from PC(USA)-related agencies such as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation, which raises and manages permanent funds for the denomination. And the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, dedicated to providing low-cost loans to congregations that are constructing, expanding or reshaping their buildings using funds invested in the program by committed Presbyterians.
Together, participants exchanged ideas, shared experiences, attended workshops and plenary sessions, networked with colleagues and came together in worship at the three-day event sponsored by the PC(USA)'s Stewardship and Mission Funding office. [http://www.pcusa.org/stewardship/]
There was also a question and answer panel discussion, a resource center and a "Good Sense" seminar before the conference.
"It's been great," said Stilgebouer, who drove the 400-mile trek from New Mexico to Denver in his Toyota hybrid on only one tank of gas. "I'm not saying I'm going to have it in me to do [everything I've learned] but it's things I need to pray about and hope I can grow into."
Stewardship conferences are nothing new in the PC(USA), but this year marked the first time the event was open to Presbyterians other than middle governing body representatives and national church staff.
Key stewardship components, according to conference leaders, include acknowledging God as the source of all gifts, sharing in God's mission through living, practicing economic justice, making personal and institutional responses to the needs of others, living simply, modeling of stewardship by leaders and applying biblical critique to economic systems.
Transformational stewardship was the theme of the event since the objective of Christian stewardship is life transformation, not increased giving, conference leaders said.
While an effective stewardship ministry will bolster contributions, especially if the church has a compelling vision and the leadership is trusted to use resources in God-honoring ways, the goal is to help the congregation live a financial lifestyle that honors God and allows members to grow spiritually.
"Transformational stewardship is first and foremost about transforming people into the image of Christ," said the Rev. Eugenia Gamble, conference worship leader and writer-in-residence for the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley. "This, as we all know, is not easy work. It is not simple duty and it doesn't happen overnight."
Churches and middle governing bodies must train people to provide ongoing assistance to individuals and families, helping them make the transition from worldly to biblical ways of managing their resources, according to conference programmers.
They also emphasized that stewardship is about making choices as individuals and as a faith community. It is about being faithful disciples, caring for and managing all that God has created.
"Stewardship is so much more than money," said conference attendee Margaret Elliott, an elder from Winston-Salem, NC, who is chair of the stewardship committee for Salem Presbytery. "It's about following your faith and doing what's right. We need to teach our folks that when you're giving your money, you're giving to Christ and that you have to give up more of yourself than you might have previously thought. That's not an easy message to hear sometimes."
Elliott, who worships at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, said she found the workshops helpful and expects to take home some good "how-to's" for spurring transformational stewardship at the church level and on the presbytery level.
"The whole idea that we need to start taking risks, that we need to start trusting what our passion is and to follow our passion to do Jesus' work in the world and in our communities," said Elliott, referring to new insights gained at the conference.
Programmers said that stewardship must be practiced at all levels of the church and that Christian-discipleship and stewardship are interwoven into one's own personal faith journey and involves every aspect of life at all stages.
"I think the lesson to learn here is that stewardship is the foundation of everything we do after we say that we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior," said Christie Neagle, a conference planner and associate for Marketing and Resources in the Stewardship and Mission Funding office.
"It's the car you drive. It's the food you eat. It's the friends you have," she continued. "We need to uplift stewardship because it is all of us, and it is all that we do."
For conference keynote speaker Rick Ufford-Chase, executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, [http://www.presbypeacefellowship.org/] his car truly does reflect his commitment to ecological stewardship.
Last fall, Ufford-Chase, who presided over the PC(USA)'s 216th General Assembly in 2004, convinced his wife, Kitty, to sell the family's much beloved minivan so they could use the money to buy a 12-year-old Volkswagon Passat station wagon that had been converted to run on used French fry oil.
Hoping to ease his family's dependence on fossil fuel and reduce harmful emissions, the elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ, said he purchased the vehicle * along with its 250,000 miles *through online auction house eBay. Ufford-Chase did not disclose how much he paid someone in northern Vermont for the alternative-powered grease-burner.
At first Ufford-Chase's new science experiment worked well. Then last December the family decided to visit relatives, who coincidently live in northern Vermont, by driving cross-country to avoid polluting the sky by flying from Arizona in a jetliner.
Armed with a 55-gallon drum filled with grease drained from fryers in the kitchens of Tucson-area Mexican restaurants, Rick, Kitty, and their young son, Teo, drove east toward Vermont.
But shortly after finishing a tank of grease, somewhere outside Tulsa, OK, the epic cross-country trip quickly turned into a grease car family adventure when Ufford-Chase attempted to switch over to the vehicle's diesel fuel tank.
The diesel and grease tanks intermixed due to a faulty valve, he said.
"So this wonderfully environmental thing that I was trying to do had been converted into me spraying diesel and grease all over the highway behind the car as we drove down the road," Ufford-Chase said to a highly bemused audience at a downtown hotel.
The hybrid-style vehicle, which eventually broke down in Missiouri, has since been repaired and is currently running well, he reported.
On a serious note, Ufford-Chase said there's "an excitement, an enthusiasm that exists across the church and across our country for trying to find deep and significant ways to express our faith. It seems to me that the conversation about stewardship is primarily going to be a conversation about how we built on those exciting, powerful, vibrant movement of followers of Jesus Christ * and everything else will fall into line from there, to be built around that passion."
Ufford-Chase urged those attending not to be afraid to express their passion about stewardship as part of being connected to a vibrant movement of followers, even if it could bring about conflict.
"One of the problems that we have is that the way we physically express passion is automatically assumed to be combative," Ufford-Chase said. "You chose a side and you speak passionately about what you believe on one side or the other. In many of our churches it's been my experience that little by little in an effort not to be in conflict with one another that we simply disrupt the engines of our passion until it seems like there's nothing left."
Ufford-Chase challenged conference-goers to practice good stewardship through economic justice by paying attention to where their clothing is manufactured and to understand the conditions in which the products are produced.
"Every morning we get up and we clothe ourselves with clothing that was made, in 90 percent of the cases, by people who were not paid a living wage for their efforts," he said, after asking attendees to check the country of origin printed on their shirt labels. "What does that mean to us and are we willing to consider it a spiritual discipline to actually be thoughtful about what we wear and how we buy it, where it comes from? And to do our level best to try and transform how we do our own shopping?"
Ufford-Chase encouraged the faith followers "to find the community that gives permission to challenge one another and hold one another accountable on questions of how we live in this culture."
He emphasized resisting the temptation of living in gated communities and ones encircled by walls like many Presbyterians already do.
"The problem of course is that we're separating ourselves from the very people that Jesus called us to be with," Ufford-Chase said. "Every step we take down that road makes it more and more and more difficult for us to actually be where God calls us to be."
Other conference presenters said stewardship should not be portrayed simply as an opportunity to pay bills but translated into ministry and mission.
Gamble said Christian stewardship begins with a solid understanding that the property people call their own does not belong to them at all, but to God since the entire world is His by right of creation.
People are only managers or stewards of God's property. Therefore the task is to seek and understand how to do stewardship in a way that pleases God, said Gamble, who served as pastor of historic First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, from 1996-2005.
"There is enormous lying in this world and that is the lie of individual ownership," Gamble said during a sermon. "We do not own squat. Everything that exists belongs to God and anything that we have access to is ours only for the purpose of putting it into service to God."
Stewardship shouldn't be a once a year effort. "Stewardship is something that we need to be aware of all year around. Not just in the fall when we do stewardship in congregations," said the Rev. José Olagues, a conference-goer and associate executive for congregational resourcing for Grand Canyon Presbytery.
"To do stewardship or to talk about stewardship only one particular time of the year means we're negating what the gospel is all about," he said. "We need to talk about how to take care of what does not belong to us, which includes our lives, our resources and everything in between."
Olagues said one problem is that church leaders and members often feel uncomfortable talking about money.
"I think partially because in our Western society we have been conditioned not to talk about money that comes into our wallets," he said. "Particularly the church, sometimes we avoid that. It's just conditioning."
Not preaching about stewardship, programming for or talking about it is leading to big losses for church coffers, said Sheldon, who co-hosted a workshop at the conference titled "Annual Campaigns that Really Work."
He said members generally want to help their church and support its ministry but a lack of direction from church leaders is making it hard to give.
"We make it really difficult for people to figure out how to give us money because we use spiritual metaphors instead of just using English and talking to people straightforwardly." Sheldon said. "As a result they end up giving most of their money to other groups because those groups don't make it difficult."
Those embracing transformational stewardship can find spiritual, emotional and relational "joy and freedom" from the process since it involves improving one's lifestyle, caring for the environment and utilizing talents in ways that build up the church instead of tearing it down, Sheldon said.
"Stewardship is a joyful opportunity rather than an obligation," he said.
In the end, as with any giving, Sheldon said, it's all about building personal relationships and building trust.
Panelists fielding questions from the audience during a question and answer session said church leaders should challenge members to take up stewardship and shouldn't be discouraged when someone declines to give money.
You must learn "not to take no personally," said panelist Rita Walters, director of development for Baltimore Presbytery. "I think no can mean the conversation is over. No can mean no not yet for that suggestion. No can mean maybe. No can mean no to you."
She said not to be "afraid of that and allow that word to move that conversation along the continuum. First seek to understand then to be understood. I think pastors can benefit greatly, all of us can benefit greatly from that."
Gamble cited 12 cultural beliefs she said must be dispelled before Christians can become true stewards. Among them: More is better. "We think there's something out there that we can hold our hands to, some golden calf that is going to fix [our problems]," Gamble said. "So we think that more is better. I'm here to tell you that's something we have to let go. The problem is that in biblical values more is not a biblical value but enough is. The problem for us is that enough seems to be a moving target, doesn't it?"
* Wealth equals security. "Another thing on my list that we have to let die and help our people let die is the illusion that our security rests in what we own, accumulate, control or get paid," Gamble said. "Our security rests in Jesus Christ alone and nothing else is secure."
* Money as a weapon. "Another thing on my list we have to let die and bury itself is the notion that we can use money as a legitimate weapon or ballast to get what we want or to express an opinion anywhere in this world, but particularly in the church."
* Scarcity mentality. "We have to give up our scarcity mentality. It is that deer caught in the headlights, hand-wringing mentality. That sense that there's somehow a finite amount of blessings in this world and that we don't have our share, that there's just not enough. The problem isn't that there's not enough, the problem is that it is inequitably distributed. In most of our congregations the problem isn't that there's not enough. The problem is that our members are sitting on their wallets. We've got to help them to not be so afraid" to give.
* To tithe or not to tithe?: Gamble said members should tithe or give one-tenth of their income to their church, the biblical standard for faithful giving. "Another thing I think that needs to go is the belief that the tithe is outdated, unjust and that we are somehow exempt from it," she said. "I believe that we were created for it."
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