Pastoring and Preaching to the Rich

            So how does one preach to rich people? Years ago I actually gave a workshop on this topic—not that I had any experience with preaching to wealthy people back then. But I now pastor a church that has its fair share of wealthy people. I want all the members of my congregation to hear good news on Sunday. So what about the rich? What do I keep in mind? I’ve come up with a list of ten things:

1. The most frequently discussed moral issue in scripture isn’t adultery or homosexuality. It is money. Money may not be the root of all evil, but it is the root of many evils. But this is so for rich and poor both. While the rich may turn away from the really important things in life to build bigger barns, the poor can spend their lives coveting. Both are great temptations and neither is a good idea.
2. Well-to-do people need pastoral care just as much as sick people or poor people or Jane Average in the pew. The key here is that ministers must be pastors to the whole church. Get out there and visit everyone. Get to know them apart from their wealth or lack of it. Then, when the pastoral need arises, you will be ready.
3. Don't generalize about rich or poor people. I've known door-to-door sales people who failed miserably when it came to building wealth but were great church leaders—or not. I’ve also met others who became fabulously rich selling door to door, but who were bullies in the council room and didn’t have an ounce of empathy—or not. Don’t let a person’s wealth or lack of it define who they are, what they can do at church or in the world, or what their values are.
4. Preach sacrificial giving. Many studies have shown that most wealthy people give a smaller percentage of their income to church causes than poorer people. The widow's mite story is so powerful because it resonates with reality. So I challenge well-to-do people to consider sacrificial giving. Rich or poor your wealth is your budget for being an ambassador of God’s grace.
5. Remember that many people give sacrificially to other causes than the church. That’s great. All of us live in communities that need the public to support art galleries and cancer centers and symphonies and the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. Preach a generosity that extends far beyond the church’s needs.
6. Whether people are rich or poor, their whole lives ought to be lived for higher purposes. Preach that. Whether someone is a banker or a poet, a stay-a-home dad or mom, or a carpenter, he or she can make a positive difference for the work colleagues, for the institutions upon which our society depends, for the customer, and for God. Life is worship. Work is worship. Never forget that wealth is a means for loving God and neighbor.
7. Money is power. People need to hear about how they can and should use the power they wield for good and not merely for selfish or silly ends. Explore how power works in the world, and how it ought to work differently in the church. A key word here is kenosis. Look it up.
8. Insist that all gifts given to the local church be given without strings. Allow people to respond to the church’s financial gifts and goals as they are able. Feel free, as church leaders, to underline special needs. But once the gift is given, remind givers to really let go and let the church leadership accomplish the goals that were set even before the gift was given.
9. Don’t preach party politics or economics. Politics, strictly speaking, is a very religious issue. It is bounded by ideals and values, hopes and dreams—the very stuff of religion, and the content of many a sermon. But stick with preaching those hopes, dreams, and values—not party platforms. Churches must remain nonpartisan.
10. Don’t regularly beat up on the rich, or business people, or those who have inherited great wealth, and then when you need money, go running after them with the big ask. This is really, really shallow and dehumanizing for your parishioners.

 I’m sure that a lot more can be said. What would you add?

One Hundred Percent of Everything

Oh my. For most congregations, just as the new church year gets started, the fiscal year soon enters its last quarter. How is your congregation set for the big push to “make budget?” Will members give it an Old Testament tithe? Or at least a few thousand dollars?

Money is an issue. Most churches struggle with declining membership and fewer givers. At the same time, churches need more staff than ever because church members don’t have as much time and energy for voluntarism as they used to. Today’s congregations pay people to have great Sunday Schools, delicious coffee, bookkeepers, and so on. Even thriving churches struggle with soaring expenses.

Unfortunately, the economy—and markets—haven’t exactly been thriving, have they? So again, will your church members give it an Old Testament tithe? Or at least a few thousand dollars?

At least, that’s how we normally frame the church budget crunch. But I’d like to put a different spin on the matter. Instead of talking about Old Testament tithing—one of the few Old Testament laws that gets any press on modern pulpits—I’d rather talk about being one-hundred-percent stewards. Rather than make a big push in the last quarter for a few extra big checks, I’d like church members make it their Christian ambition to imagine how they can put everything they have: money, time, talents, visions, and dreams—put everything they have in the service of the good and neighbor.

The one-hundred-percent steward idea also had deep roots in the Old Testament—but more as a blessing than a law. You will remember that, in the creation myth, God tells Adam and Eve that their job is "fill the earth and subdue it." Subdue sounds a bit negative, but it isn't meant to be. What God is saying, actually, is that Adam and Eve were blessed with the responsibility to make all of creation, including themselves, prosper. The fact that this is a blessing, rather than a command, becomes obvious when you contrast the Genesis story to other ancient Near-Eastern creation myths, such as the “Enuma Elish.” In those myths, people were created as slaves to work earthly gardens to provide food for the feast tables of the gods in heaven. In fact, the early parts of Genesis can best be read as a satirical response to these other creation accounts. The point of Genesis, here, is that the Jewish God blesses rather than condemns; he gives the garden to human stewards to care for and enjoy, rather than as a prison farm without an exit.

 So Genesis tells the story of early humans trying to do the amazing things with their lives that God wanted them to do. For example, besides making the garden grow, we read in Genesis 4 that Jabal herded animals, and Jubal learned to make beautiful music with harp and flute. Tubal-Cain figured out how to make tools of bronze and iron--the world's first industrialist. And so on. Filling the earth and subduing it is code for using our human brains and hands and culture to give our lives divine meaning and purpose.

The thing is, we get to do this with our whole lives, all the time. Or, to put it in the words I began with, Genesis portrays humans like us as giving one hundred percent of our lives developing the gifts and opportunities God has given us.

            Modern one-hundred-percent stewards offer their hobbies and pastimes, their authority at work, their spiritual and physical gifts, their education, thinking, emotional intelligence—they offer it all to God and their fellow humans to make both the earth and their lives more, now, what God wants them to be forever.

            One-hundred-percent stewards might be executives who build new factories for profit and for employment. One-hundred-percent stewards might be model-train enthusiasts who share their hobby with kids who need Big Brothers. They are farmers who grow crops that save the soil rather than eat it up. One-hundred-percent stewards include the GM employee who dreams of putting his kids through college while making the best trucks he or she knows how. Oh, and yes, one-hundred-percent stewards give generously out of their financial resources to make sure that the church is a blessing to them and in the world, as well. And this especially happens when the church is a community of people who are into building community where people wear love on their sleeves.

            Genesis is an invitation to put moralistic, rule-bound, if-you-tithe-then-you're-perfect Christianity behind us. Instead, the creation account invites us to freely use our entire life, all our culture and energy, our job and hobbies and church participation—everything we are and have to help make the earth and our neighbors everything they need, thrive.

            It takes wisdom to be a one-hundred-percent steward—wisdom that Adam and Eve seemed to lack. It also takes courage to see all your skills and gifts and money as the total budget God put you on to be the kind of human he hoped for in Eden. But there is also no life like it.

            Especially for congregations full of such hundred-percent stewards coming to the end of their fiscal years!