08223
March 20, 2008

Stewardship is about celebrating God’s generosity, Campbell says

Theology of giving smashes ‘myth of scarcity’ in a world of abundance  

by Evan Silverstein
Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Cynthia Campbell

FORT WORTH, TX — The theology of stewardship is a subject that should first be thought of not in terms of financial giving but as a response to God’s generosity.

Stewardship is about responding to the creator. It means accepting responsibility for that portion of God’s creation given to us. It’s about feeling and showing joyful thanksgiving for the grace of God, who created the world out of overflowing love.

That was the message the Rev. Cynthia Campbell, president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, sent to the 2008 Presbyterian Stewardship Conference, which gathered here March 10-12.

In her address, “Reframing Stewardship: A Theology of Generosity,” Campbell said stewardship is an expression of discipleship built on the recognition that God is the origin of all life, the giver of everything that we have and are.

Campbell, who has led McCormick since 1995, framed her discussion by referring to the Book of Genesis and its tension between the “myth of scarcity” that comes out of the human response to living in the world and God’s “liturgy of abundance.”

“Generosity and abundance are the heart of God,” the seminary president said. “Humans are created in that image and likeness. We are intended to be as God is. Like God. With hearts not built around scarcity but hearts capable of deep generosity.”

Campbell asked the 190 pastors, elders, presbytery and synod leaders and other stewardship proponents attending the event if they operated from the perspective of God’s abundance as being a reliable part of their life.

“Is that the story you preach and teach?” she asked. “Is that the story you and I live?”

Campbell acknowledged that it’s easy to fall into a premise of scarcity, believing there’s not enough resources to meet everyone’s needs.

As a result, she said, much of American Christianity operates, not on the basis of  God’s unconditional generosity and goodness, but as if God’s love is conditional due to finite resources.

The liturgy of abundance, on the other hand, affirms that the generosity of God is going to be there unconditionally, Campbell said.

“We don’t get to control God’s love,” she said. “We don’t get to put limits on God’s generosity because the sun shines and the rain falls on all of God’s creation and invites us then into living as though we were the incredibly unworthy but grateful recipients of this immense generosity. That’s what it means to live out of a liturgy of abundance.”      

Referring to the biblical miracle of feeding the multitude, Campbell recounted how Jesus supplied food above and beyond anything that could have been asked for or even imagined. In the same way today, God supplies everyone with blessings that are more abundant than anyone could imagine.

“It’s not just abundance it’s super abundance,” Campbell said. “There’s not just enough, there’s enough for everybody and leftovers. It’s a symbol obviously, a symbol of God’s abundant generosity.”

Campbell said stewardship is about developing and cultivating a life-long response based on the question of how best to support mission, the life of the church and the community at large. She suggested four models that church leaders could suggest to contributors regarding how they can share their financial resources.

The stewardship models outlined by Campbell:

• The Legacy Model — Talking with perspective donors or contributors about the legacy they want to leave behind following their death to reflect their accomplishments and values. “I think most people who have been deeply embedded in the life of faith and the life of congregations want to leave something, want to continue the work that they’ve done,” Campbell said. “And that’s a very important way to invite people to think about the future. What are the values that you want to continue?” She said the legacy model could involve leaving behind something material. It could be other kinds of “spiritual wills” that people are beginning to write these days as ways of passing on values to their children and families.

• The Impact Model — A contribution aimed at accomplishing a specific objective or making a difference in a particular way. “We obviously all saw that after [Hurricane] Katrina and after the Tsunami, a very direct giving that makes a concrete and particular difference,” said Campbell, using financial contributions earmarked for disaster-relief as an example.

• The Membership/Ownership Model — This is, for instance, about giving to your congregation, a community public radio station, the symphony orchestra or a political candidate. “You belong to this,” Campbell said. “It’s part of your identity and because you believe in it follow it with your financial participation. Think about the benefits that you, your children, your neighbors will receive as you give generously to whatever this is.” She said a lot of public fundraising works through this stewardship model. One such example, she said, is Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, an effort built on the backs of people giving $25-$50 each, Campbell said. She said Obama’s campaign has fascinated her over the last eight months because people have said, “‘Yeah, I want to own a piece of this. I want to be part of something that’s happening.’ And I think sometimes we in the church are not quite as excited about offering people the opportunity to participate however they can in this community effort that’s going to make a difference. And that their ownership, their part of that is really important.”

• The Spiritual Discipline Model — This is alms giving, a very old idea that is one of the five pillars of Islam, one of the basic practices of Judaism and at the heart of early Christian life. Campbell said after the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup in the earliest communities an offering was received and at the end of the service the offering and the leftover bread were taken out to the poor and the widows. The leftover food and the offerings of support went directly from the Lord’s table to those in need. “That was the heart of early Christian worship and was part of the spiritual discipline of that community,” she said. “Often communities that were themselves very poor but who learned that part of being Christian was sharing, was responding because of the abundance that they experienced.”

Campbell said mass consumerism and materialism have tremendous cultural power these days and thus also produce tremendous anxiety. We are told to be afraid, she said.

“We are living in a culture where fear is part of the motivator that’s being used for political policies, foreign policy and domestic policy,” she said. “We’re afraid of terrorism, we’re afraid of immigrants, we’re afraid of Muslims, we’re afraid of difference. Now there are things worth being afraid of, but this has come to be a culture where fear is part of the fabric of our culture.”

Prior to going to McCormick, Campbell served pastorates in Salina, KS; San Antonio; and Dallas. Her teaching interests include theology, worship and sacraments and Presbyterian polity. She is the author most recently of A Multitude of Blessings: A Christian Approach to Religious Diversity. At the stewardship conference, with its “Kaleidoscope” theme, participants exchanged ideas, shared experiences, attended workshops and plenary sessions, networked with colleagues and came together for worship at the three-day event.

The conference was co-sponsored by Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery; Heartland Presbytery; Northern Kansas Presbytery; the Synod of the Covenant; the Synod of Lincoln Trails; the Synod of Living Waters; the Synod of the Southwest; the Synod of the Sun; the PC(USA)’s General Assembly Council; the Texas Presbyterian Foundation; and the Presbyterian Endowment Education and Resource Network.