• Home
• Articles
• Blogs
• Videos
• Buyer's Guide
• Consultant Directory
• Training & Certification
• Bookstore
• Jobs

Starting somewhere: 5 views on giving

by: Brian Kluth

Five hundred pastors and lay leaders from more than 200 churches filled the seminar room. I asked everyone who had attended a seminary, Christian college, Bible college or Christian K-12 school to stand. Nearly everyone stood up.

Then I asked, "If in your educational experiences someone has opened up the Scriptures to give you a better understanding of biblical stewardship and financial principles to guide your personal life or church ministry, please remain standing." After listening to the muffled sounds of hundreds of people sitting back down, I saw that only two people remained standing.

I asked the two standing to tell everyone what their stewardship experience had been. One mentioned that a Bible college professor took some time during a class to explain to his students the biblical financial principles that guided his life and decisions. The other person said that Larry Burkett came to his seminary one day when the seminary offered an optional Saturday course. He had not gone, but heard from a friend that about 10 people had attended the optional event.

Another time I spent two days with church district superintendents from across the country teaching them everything I knew from my 15 years of experience surrounding biblical stewardship teaching and church funding. One year later we met again to discuss what they did with what they had learned and applied. While together, I asked the question, "In your years of ministry, what training events or experiences shaped your stewardship understanding?" Each one pointed back to the year before. Some of the leaders indicated that they had been in active church and pastoral ministry for 20, 30 and 40 years and had NEVER been given ANY information that would help them have a firm grasp on biblical stewardship and church funding principles.

Lilly Endowment funded a major research project to determine which seminaries were teaching on stewardship and finances to emerging pastors. They also surveyed and interviewed pastors from across the country. The results appeared in a report originally published in 1992, then republished in 2002, called, "Pastors. The Reluctant Stewards." The study showed more than 95 percent of the seminaries in the country had NO teaching on biblical stewardship, personal finances or church funding, and 85 percent of the pastors indicated they had NEVER been equipped to understand, practice or teach biblical stewardship and financial principles.

Both the anecdotal evidence and the research point to the fact that biblical stewardship has been Christianity's silent subject for 40 to 50 years. Today, there is a whole generation of church leaders who have not had biblical stewardship principles taught or modeled to them in any effective way.

As the national president of the Christian Stewardship Association, I would like to share with you a number of vital stewardship truths that can help shape your personal stewardship thinking and teaching. These lessons come from years of experience working with Christian clergy and leaders from many denominations across North America and overseas.

If you are only using stewardship truths to fund the budget, pay the bills or get building dollars, you will miss God's intention for stewardship teaching. God's goal is always transformed lives—men and women, boys and girls, transformed by the truth and power of God's Word. True biblical stewardship is Lordship teaching at its highest level. It's bringing every aspect of a person's life under the Lordship of Christ.

In George Barna's national research he discovered that 52 percent of the people who read their Bible on the own were givers to their church. The less frequently someone reads the Bible, the less likely they are to be faithful givers at church. The more an individual learns God's perspective on life, including finances, giving, material possessions, etc., the more likely he or she is to have a heart for giving to God's work.

The greatest vehicle for teaching stewardship principles is NOT the pulpit, although the pulpit messages need to speak clearly on stewardship topics. In my own life, God's transforming stewardship principles impacted my life when I went through a personal 12-week Larry Burkett financial Bible study when I was in my early 20s. Over the years, my wife and I have led Crown Financial Ministry home Bible studies. Our church offers Crown Financial Ministry Bible studies every fall, winter and spring to individuals and couples who want to get a better grip on their finances through learning what the Bible teaches about money and possessions. Many churches use Sunday school classes as a place to teach God's financial principles.

Recently, when communicating from the pulpit and later in a written letter to the congregation, I heard one pastor ask the congregation for a special offering to help expand the church's nursery, parking lot and staff offices. He told the congregation that during a recent Sunday they actually had to turn away a woman's baby because of lack of room in the nursery and that some new people drove away from the church after they were unable to find a place to park in the parking lot. Needless to say, over the next few weeks, thousands of dollars were given to help rectify the situation.

In a recent financial newsletter my church sent out with our quarterly giving statements, we communicated that it took $1,000 annually to minister to every man, woman, boy or girl who regularly attended the church. We also highlights where some of the missions money had recently been given. In our newsletter, we always try to intricately tie money and ministry together.

Billy Graham said, "Every person's checkbook is a theological document. It tells you who and what they worship."

Hundreds of years ago Martin Luther said, "People go through three conversions: their heads, their hearts, their pocketbook. Unfortunately, they do not go through these three conversions at the same time."

As a stewardship speaker and financial counselor for many years, I have discovered that a person's willingness to give to God FIRST and FOREMOST is a primary indicator of his or her trust and faith in God.

Brian Kluth is a senior pastor and the founder of the www.MAXIMUMgenerosity.org Web site. He also sends out a generosity monthly newsletter that is sent FREE to 13,000 pastors and church leaders from over 50 denominations. He is the author of a "40 Day Spiritual Journey to a More Generous Life" and many other materials for use by churches and ministries to advance biblical generosity in churches everywhere in America and around the world. Copyright, www.kluth.org.