Ok, so I sent a Twitter post last Sunday while my wife and I were sitting in the final class of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, and he was talking about the notion of "stewardship" campaigns in the church. He points out, and as I’m sure you’re familiar with as am I, that the term "stewardship" usually equates to "fund raising" drive.
Now, I’m all about fund raising, and certainly giving money to worthy causes and tithing to your church should be, and FPU teaches, the very first lines in your budget, before anything else.
That said, as Dave was talking about "the great misunderstanding" about charitable donating, he mentioned something that I found interesting. Dave said, what if more churches taught stewardship, not in the form of donating and asking for money from the body, but stewardship as it was really meant, teaching lessons in managing the abundance given to us.
This has nothing to do with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. It has nothing to do with Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, or Temples. This has to do with teaching humanity to be good managers of the gifts that have been placed in to our lives.
Now, before I come across as sounding too self-righteous, I’ll be the first one to stand up and say I haven’t been a good steward of the abundance in my life. But I do work on it daily, and get a little bit better every day. But I digress.
The whole point of the lesson is that if the Church (or whatever) began teaching their respective bodies on HOW to be good stewards, there is a VERY GOOD possibility, that the body will respond by GIVING more abundance to the Church.