| Joyful stewardship is possible indeed  by Charlie Parker Stewardship refers to how we manage care for and use all that God has given us. From the time of creation, God has made humankind stewards of earth and all that lives upon it. Good stewardship is both a response to Gods graciousness in our lives and a spiritual discipline by which we open ourselves to the movement of the Spirit. Good stewardship is both a means of grace in our own faith journeys and the way that we nurture and support the mission and ministry of the broader church. God does not need our gifts; we need to give our gifts to God, for the wholeness of the world and our own as well. We in the church often approach the issue of stewardship with trepidation and embarrassment. How we care for our resources is a fundamental expression of who we are before God, and because of that, this subject often elicits reactions of fear and anger when we seek to explore it.  Yet this is also why focusing on stewardship is such a fundamental responsibility for us as Christian leaders. We cannot gbwc_superusere the process of Christian discipleship without teaching about sacrificial giving. When people respond to the good news of Jesus Christ, giving is transformed from an uncomfortable duty to an exciting opportunity. Lives are changed; the church is empowered.
Much of the Scriptural witness on stewardship speaks about the tithe, or giving 10 percent of what we earn. And while church-goers are generally far more generous than non-worshipers, on average even church-goers only give 2.6 percent of their income away. It is noteworthy that at the height of the Great Depression, church-goers gave away more of their income than they did in the year 2000, at the height of our most recent economic boom. The hopeful word in these statistics is that if we all increased our giving by a mere 1 percent of our income, we could totally transform the way we live as the church of Jesus Christ. John Wesleys view of tithing was that it represented the barest minimum of what we are called to do as Christians. Tithing is, of course, not a New Testament model for giving. Christ calls us to give sacrificially, reflecting the radical transformation that God has worked in our lives. Zacchaeus, for example, responded to Jesus by joyfully giving half of all he had to the poor and repaying anyone he had wronged fourfold. Wesley encouraged the growing Methodist communities to earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. He lived this admonition by giving away everything that he earned that he did not need to live on. Towards the end of his life, when the proceeds from his writings amounted to a considerable income, this meant that he was often giving well over 90 percent of his income to the church. In Exodus 36, when Moses is building the sanctuary for the Lord, the people respond with such joyful exuberance that Moses has to tell them to stop, so the people were restrained from bringing; for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work. What a vision for us as the church: that our desire to give would exceed what we need to accomplish what God has given us to do. We dont need to make difficult decisions between buying the new church furnace and supporting Africa University, or between paying rising pension costs and supporting new church starts. If we are faithful to where God calls us, we will have all that we need to do what God has given us to do. The purpose of stewardship education is to help local churches develop a culture of joyful stewardship. The Stewardship Center and Foundation seeks to be a resource in helping congregations engage in strategic planning processes develop strong annual pledge drives, and initiate planned-giving campaigns. Our staff travels to churches around the conference to meet with church Stewardship and Finance Committees and other congregational leaders to help them assess and develop the most effective plans for their setting. Please give us a call. The Rev. Charlie Parker is the co-executive director of the Stewardship Center and Foundation for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. He may be reached at (800) 492-2525, Ext. 307. | 
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