Church and Main

Is putting money in the offering plate the same as having daily prayer?

That's what we're talking about today on Church and Maine.

Music.

Hello and welcome to Church and Main, the podcast at the intersection of faith

and modern life. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host.

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that are affecting the church and the larger society.

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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.

My parents believed in tithing, and that meant giving 10% of their income to the church.

Now, my parents were autoworkers. They worked on the assembly line.

They did not make a whole lot of money. It was a nice living,

but not a whole lot of money.

But they did believe that what they got should be given back to God.

And my mother continued that. that she has, until very recently,

was a giver at our church and always gave consistently.

She didn't tithe anymore, but she still gave from her limited and fixed income, retiree income.

And I think that that same ethic still applied. She believed that what she got

should be given back to God.

My parents represented an older generation of Christians that tended to give more.

It didn't matter if they were professionals or working class.

That generation seemed like they gave more of their income to the church.

Now, if we fast forward to today, younger Christians give much less to their

local congregations. And there are a lot of reasons for that.

I'm not going to go into that right now.

Now, about a decade ago, I asked today's guest to come to the church where I

was serving at the time as associate pastor to talk about stewardship.

If you're someone that goes to church regularly, then you know that stewardship

is something that happens that we talk about at least once a year,

where people pledge about how much they should give for the year.

Well, she talked about stewardship, but it was in a very different way.

Seeing it much less as something that you had to do that was a kind of pledging

to meet the church budget for the coming year.

And seeing it in a far more holistic sense.

Seeing it as a spiritual practice akin to, as I said earlier,

having a regular prayer or reading your Bible on a daily basis.

So that is what we're 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 of the foundation since 1997.

She is also a commissioned minister in the Christian Church,

Disciples of Christ, and lives in Kansas City.

And she also is a certified fundraising executive, a chartered financial consultant,

and a chartered advisor in philanthropy.

So join us today as Kirby and I talk about what it means to view the offering

plate as a way to draw closer to God.

Music.

Well, thank you, Kirby, for showing up 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 I'm very excited to be invited to participate this morning.

Well, I think the first thing, before we kind of go into that,

is just to let people know kind of what you do and your role in the Christian

Church Foundation. Sure.

I'd be glad to share. The Christian Church Foundation is one of the general

units of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.

We are headquartered in Indianapolis, but I have what we call a zone office

in the Kansas City area and serve churches and donors in basically Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska,

Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and I left one out, Iowa, sorry.

We focus on the area of what we call the stewardship of accumulated resources.

So churches can go to various resources to run annual stewardship campaigns.

They can go to other resources to do capital campaigns, but our focus is really

on accumulated assets, whether that be a church that might be left a gift from an estate,

or if that may be an individual who who wants to be generous at 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.

But quite frankly, you can't do that end-of-life stewardship if you haven't

done good with the first other two parts of stewardship as well.

So it's a long continuum of how we share and give and are gracious with others from our abundance,

whether that be what we put in the offering plate each week or whether it be

something we give at the time of our death.

So one of the things, and I had you on here, is because of something actually

we did probably about 12 years ago.

It was in 2012. It was. Yeah.

And when I was at another congregation, we talked about stewardship as a spiritual discipline.

And I think stewardship is one of those words that, well,

It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

How would you best define stewardship?

Well, that's interesting.

If you go back and look at the Greek definition, you know, not that I'm a Greek

scholar in any sort of way.

But the actual word stewardship comes from a Greek word, and I won't pronounce

this correctly, oikonomos, which translates into economics.

Economics, and so it has come to be the meaning that a person who is a steward

is someone who is a household manager.

They take care not of their stuff, but of somebody else's stuff.

So think about going on a passenger ship, I mean going out on a cruise,

and who is it that brings you your luggage and turns down your bed at night

or brings you your food? It's a steward.

Well, Well, the ship isn't owned by him.

It's not his luggage. It's somebody else's things that he has been entrusted to take care of.

And so this broad definition of stewardship is not, you know,

got to write a check this week to pay for the church's budget.

It's no, the stewardship that I represent is to make sure that I am taking care of God's household.

It's not my stuff to own, but it's God's house and it's God's property.

I've been entrusted with resources and it's my opportunity then 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 Greek rooted definition of truly what

stewardship is. It's economics.

It's taking care of stuff, taking care of someone else's things.

And how would we view this as something that is kind of a spiritual discipline

in a way that it would be like, you know, having a regular prayer or reading

scripture on a daily basis?

Exactly. I like to go back to the book of Celebration of Discipline by Richard J.

Foster. And he describes, obviously, it's all about the disciplines of how we,

As you say, prayer, meditation, studying the Bible, fellowship,

all of these things that basically just make up who we are as Christians and how we live our life.

Not what we do on Sunday mornings for a couple hours, but what we do 24-7, seven days a week.

And so I want to quote from his book.

He has divided disciplines into three movements of the spirit,

is how he describes it. And he shows how each of these areas contribute to a

balanced spiritual life.

So there's these three. One is the inward disciplines of meditation,

prayer, fasting, study, offer avenues of personal examination, and change.

The outward disciplines are simplicity, solitude, submission,

and service, and to help prepare us to make the world a better place.

He then describes corporate disciplines as confession, worship,

guidance, and celebration, which bring us nearer to one another and to God.

So the inward disciplines are what we do to change ourselves from within.

The outward disciplines are what we do to try to make changes in the world.

And the corporate disciplines brings both of those things together in a time

of the fellowship of fellow Christians.

So I would say that the outward discipline, that stewardship could be defined

as an outward discipline, as how we are going to handle our resources,

but also the corporate discipline of combining those resources for the good

of the church and for the benefit of God's kingdom.

So, the other thing that we look at is, if we go to 1 Timothy 4, 6-10,

and this has often been compared to how we exercise our disciplines.

And verse 8 talks about, for physical training is of some value,

but godliness has value for all things.

So, there's writers that focus on this understanding of physical training.

So if you buy that total gym equipment, like I did at Christmas time,

and it just sits in your garage waiting for it to be unrolled so you can start

doing your exercises, it's no good.

You know, you've got to exercise your disciplines on a daily, daily basis.

And so we obviously would include stewardship and how we manage our economics

to something that has to be applied every single day.

You know, too often we think about our money and we don't plan well with our

money. We don't do budgets.

We don't make sure there's enough income to take go with the outgo.

And to be disciplined means you have to have those things for your own well-being.

Make sure you can pay rent and buy groceries and save for college and whatever those things are.

Well, a part of that 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.

One of the things that we were talking about before we went to the interview

is a little bit about my own kind of experience with stewardship for learning from my parents.

Both my parents were auto workers. They worked on the line for General Motors.

And they were both they both believed in tithing.

Um and even years later

when my um before my mother's stroke um she

was someone that was still get didn't tithe but still gave a substantial amount

um and it seems like there is a generational difference in some ways now that

older generations really regardless of their income level would give,

and sometimes give a lot, that younger generations don't seem to do as much.

And 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.

My mother, every Saturday night, would pull out the checkbook and write that

check to the church and stick it in her Bible to make sure it was there in the offering plate.

And even once she She moved to a nursing home and in her later years,

I saw the checkbooks and her social security and other checks, other money coming in.

She calculated that 10%. And so she, you know, so I saw that I lived in it and I witnessed that.

I think there's so many other, I think more social things that are affecting

the people's ability to give.

And for those who didn't grow up in a household like you and I did,

Dennis, you know, in a faithful home to where church was, that was paramount.

I mean, there was nothing else more important than going to church on Sunday

and all the other school activities could take a back seat.

Um, so if we haven't been influenced by the, the generation above us,

how do we become influenced in our, in our current, um,

the current state in which people might be living and, and, and living in attending

church and such, and, and understanding why it is so necessary to, to support the church.

Um, and I also think maybe denominationally, uh, there are some denominations

that are are much stronger in their emphasis, we'll say, on tithing.

There are certain churches that may even come to your home and look at your

tax returns to make sure you're tithing.

Now, I'm not sure that we should be forced into a situation where that is deemed necessary,

but there is so much that other denominations have figured out how to implore folks to give.

And then you've got the prosperity gospel, the ministers that preach,

well, if you just pray hard enough, or if you just give enough money to me, God will bless you.

I'm not sure I buy into that as well. So I think it all comes back to the understanding

of that this is a discipline,

that if we truly want to be faithful to God and faithful to our church and the

mission that we we have set aside for front through the church,

then we have to become a understanding of where we are in our,

in our, on our financial life planning. And, um.

You know, Dennis, there's a lot of churches that will do like the,

you know, bring in the Financial Peace University and, you know, to show how to budget.

And there's all kinds of prefabricated programs to help people understand,

you know, you got to have enough income to pay your bills, as we've said.

But then a piece of that is also, if I truly love my church,

why shouldn't I carve out part of my income to go to my congregation?

I think in fundraising, which I've been a fundraiser for 30 years,

which is kind of hard to believe, I think we have to focus on the outcomes.

If I do this, then this will happen. happen.

Um, we are in a new generation, you know, unlike you and me and our parents

who were, you just gave on faith.

You gave because that's what you did. You wrote a check, you gave.

Um, but the newer generations is like, you know, prove it, prove to me that

if I give you this money, that you will do what with it.

And so it's that, that questioning generation to say, I want to be a part of

what you're doing, but you got to make sure you can prove to me that you're

actually doing what you say you're going to be doing. Does that kind of understand that?

Show me the money as it were. Go ahead.

Well, I think it's also, you know, we live in a time when there is a lot more

distrust of institutions.

Yes. I think that's what you were getting at is that older generations,

they gave on faith because they trusted these institutions that they were going

to do the work they were going to do.

And I think younger generations don't have that same trust and are very wary

of, well, what are you going to do with this money?

Right, right. It's very interesting. I just went to a play.

Two nights ago by a local theater here in the Kansas City area.

And it was called Poor Claire, C-L-A-R-E.

And it's very loosely based on St. Claire, who was a very rich princess or something

who met Francis of Assisi.

And she then became converted into his lifestyle and eventually her entire family

took that vow of poverty.

And it was more of a comical play kind taking a Kardashian-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, she was bringing in these fancy ballroom dresses and shoes that nobody

but only people who lived in a castle could wear.

And she saw for her own eyes, She says, oh, my gosh, you know,

I live in this opulent lifestyle and look at the people just a few a mile away

from me that are living in poverty.

So she had to actually experience what it was that her gift was going to do

for other people. So maybe, I don't know, Dennis, do we need more experiential opportunities?

Get people serving food in the homeless shelters and, you know,

helping kids who are down in their luck. All of those things.

Maybe that's what it's going to take to change a generation of understanding

why their gifts matter is to make sure they really see this is how it will matter.

I don't know. Just kind of throwing that out as a thought.

Because as you say our generation of just you give because that's what you do

those days are 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 um you know

in lots of churches do stewardship campaigns.

Even those, it's almost a lot of because my work involves sometimes a lot of,

communications and marketing.

It involves a lot of that, too, that you have to almost sell something to get people to give.

Are there churches that are doing things that are different?

That's sad that churches have sort of become So it's become sort of a fundraising mechanism.

A lot of churches are going now to what we call a narrative budget.

So instead of line item income from this source, this source and out go,

this is how we're spending the money.

Music.

Because we gave X percent, um, to outreach, this is, this is the,

these are the people that were helped because we gave X percent to the administrative budget.

Look what our minister did, um, reaching out to people in need,

you know, because we gave X percent for our building, we are now able to not

in your, you know, in certain situations, we now open our building to AA and

Boy Scouts and whatever, all those other groups.

So I think that really drives the point home visually and with more impact.

You know, the big buzzword now with charitable organizations,

you don't do annual reports anymore. You do impact reports.

How did the money we raised last year impact the ministry or the cause for which we're raising money?

So, you know, maybe I'm thinking Maybe we should change our terminology to impact reports.

Then going back to the idea of just the annual stewardship campaign,

I know people get tired of those and they, oh, we got to ask for money again to make the budget. it.

And sometimes you maybe bring in fresh eyes or fresh ideas.

Maybe that younger generation that says, you know, this may have worked for

you, but I think this will work for our generation.

Often, I 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

budget or operating or capital or whatever.

Um, but if, if they start losing their budget, there's not enough income,

then they're going to start dipping into their endowment funds to help make up that difference.

So one church in particular, um, that I visited with, um, quite intently in

the fall because they're really having serious, serious budget issues.

And I just asked, I said, well, do you do an annual stewardship campaign?

And he said, well, no, they, we just, we just don't bother with that anymore. more.

And, you know, I'm thinking stewardship campaigns are not just to raise money,

but also to raise awareness and to get, make sure people understand,

you know, if you have to look at the black and white of it, all right, here's our budget.

Here's what we need. You know, here's our shortfall. Some people are really

visual with the numbers.

But if maybe stewardship campaigns would take more of a positive approach,

that narrative budget, that impact report, look what what we did last year with

all this money that you gave.

Um, now obviously some of those congregations are declining in membership,

older members that can't are on fixed income.

There's all of those things that always play into this as well.

But, um, 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, that's, that's would be a dot dot dot question how do we create those

uh more creative opportunities to to do an annual stewardship drive um one of

the this is kind of going back a little bit to.

Desire you know what is it that we desire for ourselves and and things what

a comment from From Sheryl Crow, a song that she wrote says,

it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got.

Meaning we should be content with what God has given us rather than always wishing

to keep up with the Joneses and to try to get more and more just so I can be

happier with all the stuff that I have.

And so even good Christians sitting

in our pews every Sunday probably are thinking those things as well.

So, so understanding the value of a, of a stewardship campaign,

and maybe we call it something different, you know, I don't know,

annual budget celebrate.

I don't know how, somebody has got to come up with more creative ways of how

we define a stewardship campaign.

That's your job, Dennis.

Well, but one of the things I'm wondering too is,

You know, you hear stories, especially, I mean, here in Minnesota and Lutherland,

I've heard stories of some Lutheran congregations that, you know,

during the Great Depression,

people were still giving.

And, you know, in fact, you told that some people would come to houses.

I've heard one such church, it's actually one of the big churches in Minneapolis,

people would come to the house to see if they were giving.

Um, there is that sense, at least in those times, people still gave,

I mean, you know, what was possible.

Um, and so I'm always kind of wondering what was so different back then.

And I don't know, and this is just me positing something, that it has something to do with gratitude.

Because I think the role of gratitude has something to do with stewardship and

even just how we live our life in general because I think gratitude of what.

Especially in the Christian context, what Christ has done, how we act is kind of that response.

We don't respond because we need to.

It's not works, but it's out of kind of a grace of thankfulness.

And I don't know. I just wonder about that, if that's,

lost today. Yeah, exactly. And I wish I had the statistics in front of me,

but, you know, back in the depression,

it actually reflected the highest percentage of generosity and giving because

the people who had still had money and still had resources were so grateful

that they were still solvent,

that they thought, I can't keep all this without helping my neighbor or without

helping my family's sister or whatever.

And so if you look at the giving per capita or whatever those,

however they rate those, in the depression was absolutely some of the highest

percentages of giving because it was their neighbors that were in need.

And so And the other statistic is that in general, people of lower incomes give

a higher percentage of their money than people of wealth.

Because wealthy people, it's just off 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 have a better sense of generosity because they can actually see what the need is.

Um, the, uh, I think it's second Corinthians eight, um, that Paul writes and

it's basically encouraging generosity.

I mean, it reads like a stewardship manual.

It's a great second Corinthians nine is just replete with commentary about, um, generosity.

And then second Corinthians nine is when he talks about service to the saints.

And those two books, those two chapters are just, they're just made for stewardship

committees to read and understand.

And that response that we feel compelled from all the gratitude with all the

abundance. And believe it or not, folks, we in America, we live in abundance.

No matter how much you think your checkbook is too small, we live far above

every, nearly many, I won't say every, but many, many countries around the world.

So again, feeling that sense of gratitude for what God has blessed us with in

whatever whatever capacity we have,

to be able to respond and return that gratitude by supporting our churches,

our ministries, or even just,

you know, taking a meal over to a family who just came out of the hospital.

I mean, those are how we display gratitude by exhibiting generosity to serve other people.

Where do you think go okay you're going to say something or sorry no go ahead,

i think you know where do you see kind of the

future in stewardship um you know some people wonder if it's things like you

know offerings and all of that are things of the past um and that we need to

try something different and different models of funding which you know No,

on the one hand, I think that there is something to that.

On the other hand, I worry then that we are helping, we're kind of allowing

people to skirt the issue.

That the money, the things that we receive, that there'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.

More. And I just wonder about that.

Excellent, excellent point of discussion. So to make up shortfalls in budgets,

churches are saying, well, let's go start a daycare and take the income from the daycare.

Let's put a cell tower on top of the church and get the money from the cell tower.

Obviously, in my work, churches start endowments, and so they receive income

streams from endowments to enhance their budget.

And that's, I think that that is a critical word is enhancing a budget.

It's not to meet a budget, but what can these dollars do to do over and above

ministry that we were not able to do just from regular offerings?

And, and, um.

I was with a church over the last week that I was trying to encourage them to

do a legacy planning event and encourage people to give to the church to maybe

build up their endowment.

And this one man said, churches shouldn't have money like that because then

people in the pews will quit giving.

And I said, well, that's why you didn't have to educate them that gifts that

come sort of outside the realm of the regular budgeted giving,

you can enhance, you can do so much more with rather than just let's just use

this to help pay the budget. it.

And I can't remember the way I quote this is that, um,

you know, Joe Jones, when Joe Jones died and left your church,

you know, a million dollars and you sat back and said, well,

I don't have to give another dollar because Joe Jones is now paying my pledge.

And I would, my response would be, well, you know, um, that gift did not forgive

you, uh, being faithful to God.

You know, Jesus died on a cross for forgiveness of your sins,

but he didn't give you the right to be forgiven of your obligations,

a strong word, of your desire, your giving to the church.

So I have a great way that I have phrased that in the past, but we can't allow

other sources of revenue or other people to take over what we already feel that

we should have an obligation or a desire to give to support the church.

Hmm. I, there's, you know, going back to the, the tithe, um,

that, you know, it's very old Testament, you know, old Testament is everything

is the first few fruits, 10%.

And then every third year you do another 10% for the widows,

the orphans, the aliens, and the Levites.

But then you flip over to the new Testament and guess what?

God didn't, or Jesus didn't talk about tithing, he talked about,

I want everything. I want all of you.

I mean, you got to put your whole self inside that offering plate.

And maybe that kind of goes back to the spiritual discipline is that God just

doesn't want you for a couple hours on Sunday. He wants you all day, every day.

So if we put ourselves in that offering plate, that means even our money has

to be carved out to make sure that we are doing all we can to support the church.

Church um in matthew 23 23 24

the only thing we can find in the new test about

about tithing was he says woe to

you scribes and pharisees hypocrites for you

tithe your mint dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the

law which are justice mercy and faith so he says okay that was old testament

tithing and you're just so particular on making sure it's 10% of every little piece that you own.

But, and you know, like the, the, the parable of the rich young ruler,

he said, sell it all. I want all of you.

So, so 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

is tithing versus what we really mean is jumping in that offering plate and

being there 100% for God all the time.

Yeah, I think that, you know, people kind of complain about the whole 10% is, ooh, that's a lot.

And it's like, oh, yeah, you didn't read the New Testament, did you?

It's even worse there.

And that just reminded me, Dennis, of something a church, some churches have

done in the past, and I haven't seen it regularly, but that they say just for

one month, try to be a tither.

So, you know, you may be giving these little sums every month,

but for the month of September,

calculate what a true tithe would be and give that amount and then see if you are,

if you can go back to your regular giving in October or if you're thinking I

could live without that 10% so I can maybe give more than maybe I thought I could.

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'm hoping I remember this story correctly,

but it was something that Sharon Watkins once shared.

And for those who don't know, she was the former general minister and president

of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ.

And she must have been in Africa or something, somewhere where they had the

service and then they had the offering. And the offering was literally a celebration.

Like people were dancing in the aisles as they gave their money.

And that is something that I found fascinating because that is usually not the

way you see it in some churches, how we give money.

But here, and I think it was a place where people didn't have a whole lot of

money, a whole lot of resources, but yet they gave very much joyfully.

And, you know, that makes me wonder where joy fits in when it comes with stewardship.

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

You know, and, and I've just, I've just grew up in the church.

I, you know, I do everything 24 seven is 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, um, I feel that joy, that internal joy every time I can give back a

part of my, um, abundance to, to causes that I hold near and dear.

Um so how do we

elicit that sense of joy maybe we need to pick up our

doxology or the the offertory music

and bring in a tambourine or two and start

start feeling that that joyful response maybe do a and unfortunately dennis

i see a lot of churches that have done away with the call to giving and say

well you know the box is in the back of the church put your offering in i i

am I'm just a firm believer that giving should be a corporate act,

that we should look in the eyes of the person to whom we're passing the offering plate.

Now, the problem we run into is now everybody wants to give online.

They just want to text their money in and they don't have that sense that here's

what I'm giving and it's going to be shared and blessed in the act of worship.

So that's a big challenge I think we might have going forward.

And I think that was one question I had, because I'm one of those people who

do give online, and people, again, younger generations, if they do give, do it that way.

But the problem with that sometimes is that there's no visible way of showing that.

And does that matter? I don't know, but it seems like there is something...

There needs to be some kind of visual representation of that.

I don't know. It's just something I wonder about at times.

Yeah. I see a lot of churches that will just put in the pew pockets,

just basically, I gave online.

And so they can actually put that card in the offering plate to say,

I'm not giving today, but I gave online.

And so it's that physical act of putting something in a plate. But I don't know.

It's getting to be a real challenge to help know what motivates people.

People want to give online because, hey, get bonuses on your credit cards and

this and that. It's easier.

You do. And you don't have to keep a checkbook. I understand all those things.

Things so i think a lot of us just have to

maybe sort start moving more in that direction but

still make sure we don't negate that

offering is an act of worship i mean even in acts 2 42 47 i mean part of what

they did was they supported their their fellowship of believers in whatever

way is necessary in acts 4 you know barnabas actually sold a piece of property

and laid it at his the the disciples' feet.

Barnabas, that's not the right name. Is that the right name? I think it's Barnabas.

So that everybody's needs could be met.

He gave property in order to serve the needs of his fellow believers.

Well, kind of wrapping things up, where do you see the future of stewardship

and the future of stewardship as a discipline?

As we kind of, you know, changing cultures, changing taste and more.

Where do you see that going?

Well, maybe the emphasis shouldn't be so much on the stewardship, but on the discipline.

And so when we do Bible studies or when we do sermonizing or when we are talking

in small groups that we talk about all the disciplines 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, how, how do we bring it more into more of a spiritual context versus a money context?

So I, I see that.

Maybe a book to be written about that. Dennis, we can start pulling together

some resources and how we can talk about stewardship as a spiritual discipline

and move that forward to,

you know, a Lenten study maybe or an Advent study.

I agree with that. I think that would be a good thing to do.

And that you know you talked earlier about things like Financial Peace University

that maybe there needs to be something resources out there and how to give for stewardship.

In a different in this different way and how do we and as a spiritual discipline

that it's part of who we are as Christians in our daily practices because I

think we need that I don't,

we don't, it's kind of woefully not focused on as much. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I would, I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Bruce

Barkhauer and the Center for Faith and Giving.

Numerous resources for disciples or any, any denomination are available to you on that website to help.

And he really focuses on the aspect of generosity that, and the gratefulness

that we have for the abundance that we can share. So a lot of good resources

there. I would point people to that website.

And definitely have enjoyed meeting with him, especially when I'm at General Assembly.

So I definitely will put that link in the show notes for people.

Awesome. Put that in there.

Very good. Very good. Well, Kirby, thank you so much for this time.

And I'm hoping that this is helpful for people, regardless if they are in our

denomination or not, that this will help them in their Christian walk and can

benefit the church and the world as a whole.

And Dennis, I appreciate your tenacity on this subject.

I think that maybe this will help lift people into those conversations that

they need to have with their congregations or that individuals might start thinking

about for themselves how this might be a life-changing opportunity going forward.

So much kudos to you for your love for this area of ministry and stewardship.

Thank you so much. You are welcome.

Okay, take care. All right. Goodbye, everybody.

Music.

Well, thanks so much for listening in on this conversation that I had with Kirby.

There are going to be several links that are related to this episode,

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I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Thank you so much for listening.

Take care. Godspeed. and I will see you very soon.

Music.