This is a season in which many churches are holding their stewardship campaigns as they prepare for a new year of ministries. Here at First United Methodist Church, we will be holding our stewardship campaign on Sunday, November 8.This is my 4th recent post to help us reflect on stewardship and it also gives me a reason to post beautiful pictures of the changing autumn leaves!
Stewardship Reflection:
Stewardship Reflection:
Several years ago, I had a conversation with another United Methodist pastor in my district about stewardship in his church. It was refreshing to hear him share that based on the average household income in his area, members of his church were giving somewhere around 5% of their income to support the ministries of the church.
At the time of our conversation, I had read that the Wesleyan denomination had the highest percentage of givers of all the church denominations. Our denomination (United Methodist) was bunched together with several other mainline denominations around the 2% average giving. One of the reasons the Wesleyan denomination has a stronger financial giving record is because they have consistently taught the biblical principle of tithing (giving 10% of your income to support the ministries of the church) to each generation.
Back to the conversation with the United Methodist pastor: So I asked him, "What gives? Why is your church giving at such a higher level than most other United Methodist churches?" His response mirrored the reason the Wesleyan denomination has been at the top of the list in terms of giving. Before he arrived at the church to serve as pastor, the pastors and key lay people before him had consistently taught the biblical principle of tithing to each generation in the congregation. Tithing had become a core value of that church.
Over the years, I have learned that becoming a tither or moving closer to tithing usually doesn't happen overnight. It's a process of putting our giving to Christ and the church at the top of our budget with the goal of giving the biblical principle of 10%.
It's exciting when people in the congregation see how their generous giving fuels ministries which help us fulfill our stated mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our community and world. Our giving takes on that snow ball effect. As we see lives being transformed through the grace of Jesus Christ, we want to give even more since we can see how God is at work through our giving.
Enjoyed your post. One thing I did this year to 'capture the imagination of our stewardship committee' when it came to settin our annual goal was to show the committee what are 'potential' was.
ReplyDeleteI simply took the average income of our congregation ($82,500) and computed a tithing gift of 10% against that amount X the number of families. If every family earning the average income had tithed to our annual fund last year we would have raised over $7.0million, instead we raised $1.6 million or 23% of that potential. Set your annual goals based on moving up that scale. Was also wondering what your philosophy is vis-a-vis tithing taking into account gifts your members may give to other organizations doing 'Gods work' outside of the Church?
Bill Marsella
Director of Stewardship/Development
Normandale Evangelical Lutheran
Edina MN
Bill,
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting study when you actually stop to crunch the numbers. And just think of the many missions and ministries that an additional 5.4 million could have supported.
I know that Malachi talks about tithing to the "storehouse" which would be a central place to offer gifts. Like the "gross vs. net" debate, I think there's room for prayerful discernment.
For me, I would think that the bulk of the 10% should go to support the church in which we hold our membership vows and the other percentage should at least be for ministries that are done in the name of Christ.
Thanks for your post. I appreciate your heart for stewardship.