« Money and the Church | Main | Church giving statistics »

October 11, 2007

Stewardship and Fundraising

We need to be clear about two technical terms...Fund-raising refers to a process of asking donors for contributions to an organization...Fund-raising professionals typically manage programs in which potential donors are asked for gifts....

...Fund-raising is a secular term, stewardship is biblical. It is most clearly depicted in the parables of Jesus, when he talked about a king or a wealthy landlord who went on trips and left his realm in the hands of a manager, or "steward." ...The message is always that God owns the earth and all its riches but leaves it in our hands temporarily....

The term stewardship today is often used loosely to mean nothing more than "giving" or "teaching about giving." ...Stewardship involves more than money and more than expecting to be blessed in return. It includes use of time, talent, and treasure, and it includes management of not only personal wealth and church wealth but also the entire human family and the environment. We are asked by Christ to oversee all of humanity and all of planet earth until he returns....

From Money Matters (pgs. 143-4)
by Dean R. Hoge, Charles Zech, Patrick McNamara, Michael J. Donahue

Posted by bstroup at October 11, 2007 1:36 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs.lifeway.com/cgi-bin/mt3.35/mt-tb.cgi/330

Comments

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)