When I was almost in my teens, my parents had a
life-changing experience and recommitted themselves to Christ by becoming
deeply involved in church. We became one of those “three times a week” Baptist
families--Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night (I fought against
that one). My Mom and Dad began teaching
young adults in Sunday School, and they began to tithe to the church (that
means give ten percent of your income if you are not familiar with the term). In fact, they had regular discussion about
whether to tithe their gross income--the total--or net income--take home pay.
They settled on gross amount because they believed that was the biblical approach."
I mention this because I rarely hear people talk about the
tithe in church any longer. Pastors don’t
mention it, perhaps out of fear that it might seem legalistic. In fact, I would say that most of us who are
regular church attenders may only hear a sermon about financial contributions
once a year.
At the same time, we rarely place the topic of giving our
time and talents to serve within and outside the church under the heading of
stewardship. We think about it more as
volunteer activity than as service.
Churches do have stewardship campaigns annually, but they
usually focus only on money and stop there.
The stewardship we read about in scripture relates to being good
stewards--managers--of everything that God has placed in our hands--money,
land, talents or gifts, physical possessions, time, and even our health. We don’t address those aspects of
stewardship either.
When did we separate stewardship (in the broadest terms)
from discipleship? The church’s mission
is dependent on the faithful stewardship of the disciples of which it is
composed. This means that time, money,
possessions, etc., should be considered in the preaching and teaching of the
church along with prayer, honesty, morality, and salvation.
If we don’t address stewardship as part of discipleship, we
are leaving out a major part of our lives.
If we don’t talk about it, is it important?
Comments