Where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34)
So is your
treasure behind a fence or on a table? I’m starting to think about the
stewardship season, and the relationships between all of our collective wealth
and our individual wealth, and what that has to do with the purposes of God. The church is a funny community. Part of our business is inspiring generosity
so that more people are inspired to be generous. That is, it’s the church’s job to call people
to faith in Jesus Christ, so that we will be able to live more and more like
Jesus, and give ourselves away.
Seems like a circular kind of purpose.
And so it is. We
gather money and resources in order to give them away and in the process
transform ourselves and others into better givers. It’s
a feedback loop: more generous people mean more and more life to share around
more and more (or longer and longer) tables. In the classic feedback loop, every pass through the loop amplifies the signal being fed back. When you want to short circuit the feedback loop, you put up a barrier so the signal stops. The signal eventually dies. If we want the message about a generous life style to die down, we can hoard our wealth. If we want to call people to follow Jesus, we can practice generosity.
I read something from a person who was
teaching about stewardship in order to inspire participation in the PCUSA’s
campaign for starting “1,001 New Churches.” This is right on the money (pardon
the pun):
“The church does
not teach stewardship in order to float its budget for ministry that has not
yet happened. The church teaches stewardship as a way of life. ... in communities awakening or re-awakening to God, almost nothing
can be more important than realizing that your life, and all its assets, are a
gift [and so are to be given away in order to fulfill their purpose! Ed.].
The feedback loop effect is well-documented in communication theory. Jesus taught about giving oneself away as the way to live in order to find true life: "If you try to save your life, you'll loose it, but if you loose your life for my sake (that is, for the right reasons), you'll find it."
