In this Issue:

• • What’s in a Word: Stewardship
  • Stewardship Identifies The Source, But Not The Destination
  • 2026 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
  • The Ecumenical Stewardship Center (ESC) Archives

David P. King, PhD, Karen Lake Buttrey Director and Associate Professor, Philanthropic Studies, Lake Institute & Giving

When congregations address the topic of money, “stewardship” is the word most likely used. As we enter the fall stewardship season, particularly for Christian churches, clergy will preach stewardship sermons amplifying themes from the stewardship campaign developed by the stewardship committee as a part of larger efforts in stewardship education. The dominant frame remains clear: when Christian clergy talk about money, giving, or finances in the church, stewardship is the first word they reach for. Yet, a lingering question also remains: if stewardship has become a catch-all to describe any and every reference to finances and fundraising in congregations, can we still use the term to shape cultures of giving and theologies of money in a meaningful way?

Stemming from our initial National Study of Congregations’ Economic Practices’ survey, Lake Institute colleagues interviewed almost 100 congregational leaders to understand their theologies of money. We didn’t ask them directly about stewardship, but that was the language that emerged. Eighty percent of Christian clergy used stewardship terminology unprompted. The number was 94% among mainline Protestant pastors! We’ve written up these findings in an article recently published in the online Religions journal in a wonderful new collection focused on Emerging Trends in Congregational Engagement and Leadership edited by Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi.  

What co-author Mark Sampson discovered when returning to these interviews was exactly how clergy employed steward and stewardship as both noun and adjective. As a noun, clergy consistently shared a common theological claim about ownership: if God is the owner of all resources, then we are responsible to steward those resources appropriately. And as a theological claim, stewardship was always about more than money, with references to an all-encompassing “time, talent, and treasure” serving as the most regular response. However, when clergy employed stewardship as an adjective, the focus narrowed considerably with a stricter focus on fundraising and finances. Stewardship modified a time of year (stewardship season), a particular role (stewardship committee), or educational efforts (stewardship class). As the work of the congregation so often follows regular rhythms, stewardship activities similarly fall into predictable cycles and frameworks.  

It’s worth noting that stewardship was not always the default word for framing congregational finances and theologies of money. Our article delves into the history of the term, but programmatically, a consistent language of stewardship was taking root in the Protestant vernacular in the first half of the twentieth century. In modes of expansion post-World War II that would envelop the World Council of Churches, U.S. Catholic Bishops, and many other networks as well, denominations and their congregations most often continued to foreground stewardship as the practical container for the ways in which congregations and their leaders sought to raise revenues and manage budgets. There’s little doubt that the history and current use of the term ‘stewardship’ play an unusually significant role in congregational life.  

However, just for this reason, we wonder whether stewardship has wandered from its original meaning and has the characteristics of what Catholic priest and philosopher Ivan Illich calls an ‘amoeba word’ – a word that can be put to any conceivable use (2002).¹ As Illich explains, these words are not the same as hackneyed phrases or clichés, but precisely because the word can be used to cover so much ground, it runs the risk of becoming an empty, vague term. If stewardship could mean anything related to ‘responsibility’ or ‘care’ or ‘giving,’ then what does it mean? On the other hand, if in practice it has come to mean the programming related to the giving and managing of money in the church, perhaps it has become overly narrow, calcified, and rigid rather than flexible and broad. Precisely because stewardship could mean anything, it often ends up meaning nothing.  

So what do we do with a term like stewardship? Given the clear need for religious leaders to further explore the theological and practical ways they regard the resources necessary to sustain their congregations, is the concept of stewardship up to the task? Does the historic legacy of the term, most clearly shown by ‘stewardship season’ and the connection to tithes and offerings, mean that stewardship is ultimately unable to be effectively used for other purposes? In this sense, stewardship has been calcified—stuck with a historic legacy that it cannot shake. In contrast, does the broad, expansive definition of stewardship—of time, talent, and treasure—and the de-emphasizing of money mean that pastors end up talking less about money than they would like or need to, despite it’s rich theological frame embedded there?  

As we see it, perhaps our question serves as an opportunity. It seems as if there is a fork in the road, and there are two options for clergy: either rehabilitate stewardship language or retire it. Either work towards greater congruence between the definition of stewardship and its use, explore more deeply what the nature of a good or wise steward is, or find new language and concepts to think and talk about money and resources. There has always been a robust set of theological frames to consider faith and finances. While we cannot highlight all the credible alternatives here, as faith communities continue to evolve, we believe even greater attention to the economic issues interwoven in their congregations and communities will be necessary. This is a worthwhile, and pressing, task we must engage.

¹Illich, Ivan. 2002. Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars.