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Unparalleled needs and opportunities are confronting local churches today. The ability of the local congregation to respond constructively is in direct proportion to its available resources. The resources, both individual and financial, depend upon the effectiveness of its stewardship program.
Few congregations have effective year-round programs stewardship education, tithing and planned giving. Most need help. SALT will help supply that need. SALT, through information provided by "Church Stewardship & Growth Center" will meet the needs of your church by bringing you articles of what others are doing in the stewardship field, suggestions on new programs, displays, literature, electronic medias, and training materials. It will give you and your congregation the satisfaction of more effectively meeting the needs of the work of Jesus Christ.
You can help! Share with others the ideas you have found effective.
Send you ideas to Editor SALT@Neibauer.com.
SALT addresses itself to a long-felt practical need: to help the pastor or chairperson as a stewardship leader in the local church. It can spare them that desperate, once-a-year plunge which they have often found to be ineffective. It will help them to project goals with checkpoints for progress in stewardship training. People of considerable stewardship experience and creativity from many denominations will share the benefit of their knowledge. Contributions from your stewardship experience should also be shared. Thus, there will be a stewardship of tried and tested ideas that will enrich all of us.
The difference between the success and failure of bringing families to full stewardship stature is vested in local leadership. As the chief steward under God, you hold the key of leadership. Use it or lose it!
Walter J. Waddell, III
Church Publishing Manager
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There was a time when the benevolence budget of the average church was determined by an oratorical contest.
College presidents, board secretaries, pleaders for the orphans and the Eskimos came to the congregations to beg for gifts and take up collections. The support they got had little connection with the needs. So a central benevolence treasury was worked out to be administered by those
who saw the whole picture. They could know better than most donors whether a hospital in Korea needed X?ray equipment more than a missionary in Alaska needed a car. Gifts for special interests were encouraged, but in general the work of the church was done by the whole church and shared by all contributors.
There is danger that this method will be less emotionally satisfying. "How many percentage points can we add to our general mission quota?" is less moving than "How many children can we save?" "Interpretation" is continually needed to help people see the faces behind the percentage points. We need an emotional response to statistics. One death by starvation is heartbreaking; a hundred thousand deaths by starvation is not a hundred thousand times as heartbreaking?it is an agricultural statistic. Christians learn of the human realities behind statistics so that the items on a church budget will rouse agony, or desperation, or joy.
Another problem in giving to a treasury is that it requires that a donor buy some things he does not want. Organizations can never be perfectly tailored to any one member's wishes. This mixture of good and bad is one reason for giving through a treasury that supports many causes. If someone invests all his savings in one company and it goes bad, he is ruined. But, if, through a mutual fund or one's own devising, money is in a wide variety of enterprises, some of them can go bad while the investor still does pretty well. If, in the main, the money you give is well used, you can be satisfied even though there are some items you oppose. You may need to protest and criticize, but financially you should not feel you are too badly treated.
People feel deeply about the money they give the church, and this is good. It expresses their love of Christ; it is the channel through which they pour their lives into His service; it makes their daily labor holy. That is why, when even a tiny part of their giving goes for something of which they disapprove, their reaction may be more emotional than seems warranted by the amount. When a church member is irritated, the first thing he thinks of may be his pledge. This is not because he is obsessed with money, but because he has been trained to express his emotions through his contribution. Thus a virtue becomes a vice when every disagreement with something the church does sets us to dashing off angry letters to the treasurer.
Some people seem sad and reluctant when they cancel their pledges because of something the church did. But there is no mistaking the vindictive spirit of some others. There is the joy of punishing someone and of gloating over the suffering of church officials when the money ceases to come in. Some seem to regard the money they have dedicated to the Lord as a club. They threaten with it; they swing it menacingly to force other church people to do what they desire. This is surely a sad distortion of Christian stewardship.
Some irritated members declare that they will give for their local congregation but not one cent for general mission. But it is not that simple. The duplex offering envelopes marked "For Ourselves" and "For Others" are wrong. They should be triplex. We really give (1) For ourselves directly, (2) For ourselves indirectly, and (3) For others. The last two are in the mission budget. The subsidizing of church literature, the education of ministers in seminaries, the salaries of Christian education experts, the youth conferences, and a great deal more are just as much for the local church as are its heating costs, even though the former items are paid for from general mission funds. A participating member who does not give to "missions" is being carried by the other members of his church.
People naturally dislike paying for what they think is useless; even more do they resist paying for what they think is wrong. Some items of which one strongly disapproves can be accepted as inevitable in a church which allows a wide range of views. When a considerable portion of a person's giving seems to be used improperly, it is a hard moral problem. Fortunately, there is always a way out. Selective giving is never frowned upon. The courage to say no is essential to good stewardship. A person can be a perfectly loyal member of the church without giving to anything he does not wish. It is not as easy as checking a pledge card, but he can designate all the objects to which he wishes to give.
The guidance of the Holy Spirit is given the church through its members' consciences. Correction and reform would lag if there were no way the members could express their views. They can vote through their giving. If this is to be valid it requires information. Impulsive prejudices are not worth expressing. But unconventional opinions based on study and prayer will save the church.
If you wish to give to everything in your church except the new drapes, which you consider a sinful extravagance, you can do it. It may require a special sort of payments, or of instructions to the financial secretary, but it is not too complicated. You can write checks to every mission cause you wish to support, and leave out just one.
The trouble is that most disapproving church members do not take the trouble to be really selective givers. They do not identify their dislikes, It does not make sense to show anger about the church and society report by punishing a hospital in Africa, which is what most people who talk of changing their pledges are threatening. We vote with our money by giving less to the specific things we dislike and giving more to what we like.
An amateur who is trying to decide where to put his savings needs an investment counselor. This adviser, who spends all his time learning where money gets the best returns, will make fewer mistakes than would most of us. The church is a benevolence?investment counselor. It has a worldwide view and a centuries long experience. Its administrators have a knowledge none of us can match. They know what at present is doing well and what offers a poor yield. It is the church which teaches us what loyalty to Christ should make us want to accomplish. The church lays certain opportunities before us and says, "In these you can get a good return on your investment."
It is natural to like to spend your money close to home, but if what you really want is the most Christian accomplishment per dollar ? in the relief of suffering, in teaching the gospel, in training Christian leaders, let your church show you some possibilities you would never see.
The church was never more needed than it is today. When people who use sacred money ? the product of their dedicated lives - to express their anger, they are crippling all the good things the church ought to do. The elastic walls around what the church is doing are always heartbreaking. The needs and opportunities are endless. A budget is a fictional limit; it is based upon the sad assumption that no more can be expected.
Christians have always believed that the world is lost without Christ, but it looks now as though a time limit has been set. In a revolutionary age, with a world of suffering, with dire possibilities looming over us, we know Christ has the answers. He is the way. Through the church His guidance can be given to Christians, and through Christians to people everywhere.
See the whole picture. Nine?tenths of your experience of the church is in your own congregation. Do you find the power of God there? Then think of the whole worldwide church of Christ ? healing, teaching, feeding, preaching, condemning, saving, comforting. Supporting it is the most important work in all the world.
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