Tag: Money

Stewardship series – Should be church giving personal but not private?

Dave Davis explores whether pastors must be involved more in the financial process in their congregations. For Davis, such involvement includes knowing what amount of money each member gives, or at least, the persons who give the most. This raises the question of whether giving should be personal but not private. In this brief reflection, I respond with a “yes” to this question regardless of socio-cultural context. I offer brief reasons. In a church context where people give money for the administration of the congregation, I think how the money is earned, spent, saved, and alike, all of these aspects …

Stewardship series – Two key biblical principles about money and their impact for pastoral leadership

It is an open secret that money is a taboo in the church, especially in our North American context. This reminds me of two key principles from Walter Brueggemann’s Money and Possessions because of their impact to my pastoral leadership: God constitutes the source of gifts and all goodness (First Principle) and human beings have been trusted to be faithful stewards of God’s gifts (Third Principle). These two principles are important not only for our Christian life but also for our development as leaders in the church. One thing is claiming that God is the source of everything, and another …

Stewardship series – Contrast between Alcorn and Brueggemann on biblical principles on money

In his Money and Possessions, Walter Brueggemann deduces from the Scriptures six general principles that can help to better understand how the Hebrew and Christian Bible inform us about money and possessions. Although there can be more than these six principles, Brueggemann asserts that these six are the clearest to him. In a nutshell, the first principle has to do with God being the source of gifts and all goodness. Brueggemann finds support for this principle in the Genesis narrative of the creation. God is not only the creator of all living creatures but also the provider, where he has …

Stewardship series – What Henri Nouwen teaches us about the spirituality of fundraising

What is the central aspect of fundraising? This is the question I will address in this blog post using as a resource Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen’s discussion of the topic. Two features I find compelling in Nouwen’s A Spirituality of Fundraising are the role of contemplation (e.g. prayer and gratitude) and spiritual communion in a person’s development of a biblical-based perspective on money. For Nouwen, there is a close relationship between money fundraising and spiritual communion. He argues that such a spiritual communion comes from God’s desire to have communion with human beings. Such a desire is also reflected among …

Stewardship series – Sharing coffee with a church treasurer

Discussing the budgeting process with the Church treasurer (CT) of a friend’s congregation, I realized this church uses a formal process with a team receiving all the financial information, who process all data provided by the staff and reporting back quarterly. It surprised me to discover that there are two financial officers in the congregation who work with the financial team to oversight all finances and better control them after a series of difficult challenges in the past. Each ministry has a designated budget managed by the director of that ministry. If extra money is needed after the budget is …

Stewardship series – Giving as a spiritual practice

Recently, I took a summer course on the intersection of finance and stewardship. I did all the readings and decided to share some things I learned there. The first book assigned was Jeff Manion’s Satisfied: Discovering Contentment in a World of Consumption. In a nutshell, the lesson I learned can be summarized in a few words… Christians ought to emphasize the necessity for all to give – not just the affluent since giving itself constitutes a spiritual practice that can shape our spirit. In light of Jeff Manion’s book, especially Chapter 13 titled “The Power of Sharing,” I believe the …