Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

Recovering Christian Stewardship from Secular Fundraising 21
Christian values, the Church has followed suit. Some
diocesan/presbytery stewardship offices actually publish such
charts to help parishes determine whether they can raise the money
they need. In this case parishes, including their lay and clerical
leadership, assume that the “experts” at the diocesan/presbytery
level know what they are doing, and unquestionably adopt those
practices and methods as models of “good stewardship.”
Another tool invariably used by secular fundraisers is the
donor recognition incentive. For a princely sum, one can be
memorialized in a wall plaque; for a less princely sum, one receives
membership in the “Preacher’s Circle;” and for a suitably sizable
contribution you can receive an invitation to dine with the bishop,
your priest and other wealthy donors of record. This is not
stewardship. It is the marketing of recognition. Any tactic intended
to instigate or reward giving nullifies the act as gift and reduces it
to transaction. And yet the Church uncritically adopts such
practices as the means to successful fundraising.
Demonstrating our appreciation for generosity should not be
tied to reward, but should flow from the inherent gratitude with
which one accepts a gift. The very idea of generosity hinging upon
donor recognition is undercut by the example of the poor widow
Jesus noticed dropping a nearly worthless coin into the almsbox
(Mk 12:41-44). It was all she had to live on, but if Jesus hadn’t been
looking, would anyone even have known she gave it, let alone
thanked her? And yet hers is the gift which Jesus held up as an
example of true stewardship.
When attending conferences, speaking to Church bodies, or
discussing stewardship with my professional peers, I often struggle
to make the point that stewardship is not method-driven. Good
stewardship, whether exercised corporately by the Church as a
whole, or individually by each Christian, cannot be achieved simply
by following the instructions in a “how to” book we pick up at our
local Christian bookstore. Such books can certainly help with issues