Blog & Pastor Letters

If you roll your eyes at the mention of the term stewardship, it’s probably because, in the modern Church, stewardship has become something of a corporate buzzword. It’s often used interchangeably with the concepts of financial endowment and volunteerism.

What’s wrong with supporting your parish monetarily? What’s the issue with giving of your time in service and ministry? Nothing at all, in fact — we should all be doing more of these things.

As the seasons change, a lot of us like to clean out our homes and unload some of the junk we’ve acquired over the summer. One trendy approach to decluttering is the Marie Kondo method, named after the author who popularized it. Overly simplified, it’s a process that compels you to go through your closets, your garage, your basement — all the places you collect the dreaded “stuff.” As you do so, you hold up the items and ask yourself: “Does it spark joy?”

In the South, the use of “Yes, Sir,” “Yes, Ma’am,” and “Thank you,” have been drilled into many a little person’s brain. Unfortunately, as time goes by, those social conventions seem to be in danger, even in the very places that have held them sacred for so long. In fact, I have found that I sometimes will even get a strange look when I utter similar words to a stranger or passer-by. It seems manners are being traded for acceptance of ill-conceived tolerance, even tolerance of the ill-mannered.

During a conversation about good stewardship of money and time, my daughter shared that sometimes doing the best thing was so hard for her to do. It wasn’t always a matter of right and wrong, black and white, but a matter of better and best. I began to reflect on the truth of her statement. When confronted with a decision, we can sometimes be given a choice of good, better, and best. We fool ourselves into believing that the good choice is not a bad one, so it must be enough. However, we have essentially placed a limit on our generosity or commitment with our false sense of good stewardship.