Episode 172: Stewardship As A Spiritual Practice with Kirby Gould

[00:00:00] Is putting money in the offering plate the same as having daily prayer?

[00:00:07] That's what we're talking about today on Church and Main. Consider subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app and leave a review. That helps others find this podcast. So growing up, as I did in Michigan, I went to church with my parents every Sunday. And every Sunday I would see my parents write out a check and place it in the church envelope to give during the offering.

[00:02:41] should be given back to God.

[00:02:48] My parents represented an older generation of Christians that tended to give more.

[00:02:53] It didn't matter if they were professionals or working class, that generation seemed like they gave more of their income to the church.

[00:02:59] Now, if we fast forward to today, younger Christians give much less to their local

[00:03:04] congregations, and there are a lot of reasons for that.

[00:03:07] I'm not going to be talking about today, seeing stewardship as a spiritual discipline. My guest today is Kirby Gould. She is the vice president of the North Central Zone of the Christian Church Foundation, and she's been part on the podcast to talk about stewardship as a spiritual discipline. Well, I'm glad to be here, Dennis. I have appreciated our friendship and many years as colleagues in ministry and very excited

[00:05:43] to be invited to the time of their death, typically at death to leave a gift to the church or other ministry causes, to support ministry forever into perpetuity. So it's a very specialized area of stewardship.

[00:07:00] But quite frankly, you can't do that end-of-life stewardship if you haven't done good

[00:07:06] with the first other two parts word stewardship comes from a Greek word, and I won't pronounce this to give back from my abundance, from my wealth, from my paycheck to support the church as well as all causes that are near and dear to a person's heart. So I kind of just like to go back to that that Greek rooted definition of truly what stewardship is.

[00:09:44] It's economics. It's taking care of of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life. So there's these three. One is the inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, study,

[00:11:00] offer avenues of personal examination, and change. So the other thing that we that we look at is if we go to 1st Timothy 4 6 through 10 and this has often been compared to how we exercise our disciplines. And the discipline of our own economics is that discipline of making sure the church and God's church is getting His share, her share of our resources so that we can grow the kingdom of God.

[00:13:40] One of the things that we were talking about before we went to the interview is a little I guess my question is how do you try to encourage younger generations? And I think that in some cases, it's probably Generation X and younger about the importance of stewardship and of giving and what that entails. Yeah, it's interesting that I also grew up in a household of tithers.

[00:15:03] My mother, every Saturday night, would pull out the checkbook and write that check to the generation above us, how do we become influenced in our current state in which people might be living and living in attending church and such and understanding why it is so necessary to support the church then we have to become understanding of where we are in our in our on our financial life planning and you know Dennis there's a lot of churches that will do like the you know bring in the financial peace university

[00:17:42] and you know to show how to budget and. Does that kind of understand that? Well, I think it's also, you know, we live in a time when there is a lot more

[00:19:02] distrust of institutions.

[00:19:05] Yes.

[00:19:06] I think that's what you were getting at is that older generations, they gave like look at it. But very impactful because what it took for her was to actually gather clothes and take them under the bridge to give them to the people who needed clothes. Well you know she was bringing in you know these fancy ballroom dresses and you know shoes that nobody but only people who lived in a

[00:20:22] castle could wear and she saw for her own eyes. She says oh my gosh you know I those days are really over. Do you see any examples out there of congregations that are kind of having kind of novel approaches of how they're trying to deal with stewardship? You know, in lots. Because we gave X percent for our building, we are now able to, not in certain situations, we now open our building to AA and Boy Scouts and whatever, all those other groups.

[00:23:00] So I think that really drives the point home visually and with more impact.

[00:24:05] can cite so many examples of churches that have endowment funds mostly invested with us and they just take a regular percentage to help supplement

[00:24:09] budget or operating or capital or whatever. But if they start losing

[00:24:16] their budget, there's not enough income, then they're going to start dipping into

[00:24:20] their endowment funds to help make up that difference. So one church in or on fixed income, there's all of those things that always play into this as well. But I don't know, it's how do you become more creative each year when you got to do it every single year? That's a dot, dot, dot question. How do we create those more creative opportunities to do an annual stewardship drive?

[00:26:45] I don't know, how somebody's got to come up with more creative ways of how we define a stewardship campaign.

[00:26:47] That's your problem, Genesis.

[00:26:50] Well, but one of the things I'm wondering too is, you hear stories, especially, I mean,

[00:26:59] here in Minnesota and't know, I

[00:28:20] just wonder about that, if that's lost today the top, you know, okay, this is what I give versus people in lower to middle class. I think they are surrounded more by the people who are in need. So they again feeling that sense of gratitude for what God has blessed us with in whatever capacity we have to be able to respond and return that gratitude by supporting our churches, our ministries, or even just you know's a responsibility of how are we working, how are we seeing this to further God's mission or how are we using this to help others, that we don't have to worry about that anymore. And I just wonder about that. Excellent, excellent point of discussion. So to make up shortfalls and budgets,

[00:32:23] churches are saying, well, let's go start a daycare and take the realm of the regular budget to giving you can enhance you can do so much more with rather than just let's just use this to help pay the budget and I can't remember the way I quote this is that You know Joe Jones when Joe Jones died and left your church

[00:33:40] You know a million dollars and you sat back and said well

[00:33:44] I don't have to give another dollar because Joe Jones is now paying my pledge

[00:34:45] 10% and then every third year you do another 10% for the widows, the orphans, the aliens, and the Levites.

[00:34:46] But then you flip over to the New Testament and guess what?

[00:34:51] God didn't or Jesus didn't talk about tithing.

[00:34:55] He talked about, I want everything.

[00:34:57] I want all of you.

[00:34:58] I mean, you got to put your whole self inside that offering plate and maybe that kind of

[00:35:03] goes back to the spiritual discipline is that God just doesn't want you for a couple hours

[00:35:08] on Sunday. those who still hold fast to just that 10%, maybe they could be giving more than 10%. But for those who think Jesus said, well, he didn't talk about tithing. Well, he didn't talk about tithing. He said he wants all of you, everything that you have and all that you are. And so that's always a good lesson to learn in terms of what we really mean as tithing

[00:36:23] versus what we really mean as jumping in that offering plate and being there 100% for God So that was one thought that I had, that I had remembered a church was trying to, a month of tithing. Maybe that might be something for us to try in churches. I'm trying to remember, I hope Aaron wanted to story correctly for me as church and I just sometimes I just can't wait to get get somewhere where I can write a check and put it in put it to good use and so I feel that joy that internal joy every time I can give back a part of my abundance to

[00:39:01] to causes that I hold near and dear. So how do And does that matter? I don't know. But it seems

[00:40:22] like there is something, like there needs they did was they supported their fellowship of believers in whatever way is necessary. In Acts 4,

[00:41:40] you know, Barnabas actually sold a piece of property and laid it at the disciples' feet. of which stewardship is one. And I think people probably have never thought about stewardship as a discipline. But it's very basic to who we are and how we manage our money because we have to have money to pay the bills. And so how do we bring it more into more of a spiritual context versus a money context?

[00:43:00] So I see maybe a book to be written about that.

[00:44:05] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Bruce Barkauer in the Center for Faith and Giving. Numerous resources for disciples or any

[00:44:11] denomination are available to you on that website to help. And he really focuses on

[00:44:17] the aspect of generosity and the gratefulness that we have for the abundance that we can share. So

[00:44:23] a lot of good resources there I would point people to that website.

[00:45:29] opportunity going forward. So much kudos to you for your love for this area of ministry in stewardship.

[00:45:30] Thank you so much.

[00:45:32] You are welcome.

[00:45:34] Okay, take care.

[00:45:36] All right. Goodbye, everybody. page. And there are ways that you can subscribe, be a paid subscriber. I have many free subscribers, which I am very thankful for. But if you want to become a paid subscriber, you can do that as well. When you are on the website, on the Substack, just click on where it says subscribe and you can become a paid

[00:47:00] subscriber. There are also links, if you look on our whatever podcast app that you