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On Stewardship

One of the concepts in Christianity is a thing called stewardship. It’s something we are supposed to value and one of our jobs as good Christians is to be good stewards. But the term and the concept can be really obscure. I rarely hear the term explained well, and have yet to get a satisfactory lesson on the Christian concept of stewardship. In fact, different Christians seem to explain the idea in sometimes vastly different ways. So I’m going to do my best to break it down here on my own.
A steward is someone who manages someone else’s money or other resources. So it involves both sound management and taking care of stuff that doesn’t belong to you. I guess we could call this responsibility, but there seems to be more to it than that. Otherwise we would just call it responsibility. Sometimes stewardship is equated with giving, especially in terms of money. That’s fine, except we already have a term for that too: generosity. I’ve also heard the explanation that all our gifts are from God and we need to remember that they are ‘on loan to us’. To some this explanation means we should always be feeling humble before God who is everything and has everything. This doesn’t seem super useful to me, especially if it messes with self-esteem. Another way to look at the ‘on loan’ aspect is to let it remind us we are to be using our gifts and resources for the things God would want. For me that means we need to be doing stuff to help people.
What I seem to be getting at here is two-fold. First the nature of what we have is God-given, so when we use our resources and talents, God expects us to be striving for certain things and avoiding other things. This is as simple and as complex as doing good and not doing bad. Since I’ve already spent time on this blog getting into good and bad, I’m going to move on to part two.
The second piece to stewardship is proper management of the resources we have. Resources people have can include just about anything from time and energy, to money and stuff, or talents and skills. Managing resources means making the best use of what you have, and usually it involves finding ways to increase and reach further. Stewardship of a business would entail growing the business. So our goal is not to spend our energy doing stuff until we are tired and broke, but to manage our resources so they perpetuate and grow to do more good. This I think is at the heart of what a good lesson on stewardship needs to teach. The reason this kind of concept is so hard to grasp is the fact that it involves choosing to do some things and choosing NOT to do some things.
Some examples are in order I think.

Starting very simplistically, say you own a forest of 100 trees that can be made into 100 packs of paper. You cut down all 100 trees and help 100 needy schoolchildren have books. You just helped a lot of people! But now you have no more trees and can’t help anymore kids until more trees grow. On top of this, you have only the seeds from the cut down trees to use for regrowth. If those seeds should fail you have no more to work with. Better stewardship might involve saving some trees for generating seeds, cutting branches off instead, or coming up with a way to use just the leaves for paper.

Next a more realistic example. Heifer Project is a charity that I’ve collected money for in the past. They have programs that help struggling families in poor countries by teaching them about farming and raising livestock. They also give animals to the families they help. This type of project could help more people faster if instead of animals, they bought rice and gave that away, BUT that kind of help is short-term. Spending the extra money to actually purchase and give away an animal is a longer lasting help that perpetuates itself. Usually the family is asked to give back to the program by donating the first offspring of the animal they were gifted to help another family in need, furthering the resources even more. This is good stewardship.

For my last example I want to get at the usage of time and talents. And I’m going to borrow from my absolute favorite TV show right now. Yes, I am about to synopsize The Aquabats Supershow; specifically episode 2 of season 2. This episode is also available on YouTube (which is how I saw it). The beginning of the episode details the return of the Aquabats from space. They are heroes who have saved the world, but don’t remember anything about it. Once they regain their memories they offer to help everyone with everything. From cats in trees to pickle jars that won’t open, they want to help, however the crowd decides they aren’t helping enough and chases them for a song-montage-sized chunk of the episode. In the end the Aquabats realize they can’t help everyone with every little thing. This, I think, is a stewardship lesson. If you have a talent for something big- like saving the world- it might not make sense for you to spend all your time doing smaller things. Time and energy are finite and good stewardship entails using both wisely. Again I’m seeing the lesson is not simply what to spend time doing, but what NOT to spend time doing. I think we need to balance both in order to practice good stewardship.

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Church #46, Saint Francis of Assissi, South End Community

Date: 12/1/13

Church name/type: Saint Francis of Assissi, South End Community, Roman Catholic

Pastor: Deacon Ray Sullivan and guest pastor I can’t guess at the spelling of his name.

Style of worship: short Catholic mass, formal with casual add-ins

Overall Impression: Seems like a nice place

Thoughts:
The church was easy to find and enter; the building was warm and up-kept. It was a smaller space I might call a chapel. The interior was white, with green and golden tan and small stained glass windows close to the floor. One cool noticeable was what looked like a ‘1000 paper cranes’ mobile. One of the things I love abut the Catholic Church is it’s ability to borrow from other traditions. Many of our holidays are placed at a certain time of year because the early church borrowed from holidays already being celebrated. The 1000 paper cranes is often a symbol of the wish for peace, but can be vague enough to represent any wish one makes deep in one’s heart. It’s not the first time I’ve seen these cranes in a Catholic Church and I for one, like them.

I was greeted warmly at this church by smiles and ‘good morning’s both at the beginning of mass and at the passing of the peace. The church membership seems a friendly bunch. Although there was no coffee hour after mass, several people came up to me to say hello and chat briefly.

The sermon was fairly short. It was in regards to advent. The church season of advent is the expectation of Christmas. But how can we anticipate with excitement, a thing that is happened and over? It is ridiculous to try and manufacture this feeling. So what can we do with this time? The suggestion was to get a ‘checkup for the soul’. We should ask ourselves- how are we grateful? -how are we spoiled? I like the thoughtful nature of this sermon’s questions. I struggle with the question of how I’m doing and if I’m a positive force in the world. I think there are times church should make us comfortable and times it should make us uncomfortable. For instance we shouldn’t be content with helping only ourselves. We shouldn’t be content with sitting at home when we could be volunteering. I’m not the best at this, so I’m glad the church keeps reminding me to seek to do better.

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Church #45, Powerhouse City of Deliverance, part two

So this church had so much going on I decided to put it in two installments. I will now continue.

Beliefs: This church did not mention or claim a bigger group that they are a member of, such as a denomination. Instead they read a series of faith statements before the sermon. Here are the ones I managed to write down:
We believe the bible is infallible.
We believe in the trinity.
We believe Christ will return.
We believe repentance and faith save us from sin.
We believe the Holy Spirit is needed for salvation.
We believe in baptism with the Holy Spirit.
We believe in the ministry outlined in Ephesians. (Anyone know what this is?)

In addition the church recited the Apostles Creed together, so they must believe in that.

Pre-sermon: After a call for ‘testimonies’ several people came up and shared positive news. At other churches this section might be called praises or joys.

Sermon: So I had some trouble understanding parts of the sermon, mostly because of the acoustics in this church but also partly because I had some difficulty with the dialect of the pastor and copastor. The church membership is mostly Black, and the some of the speech patterns are less familiar to me. Properly stated, this is an probably example of African American Vernacular English, which has usage differences as well as pronunciation differences from what ever dialectic category I fall under. Now that you’ve had your linguistics lesson for today, let’s continue with the parts of the sermon I was able to catch.

The sermon started with 2 ways evil/problems may enter your life. The first is by God, the second through sin. The example for God causing evil is the story of Job. I have mixed feelings about blaming God for problems. I’ve encountered the idea before in the following form; God tests us by giving us hard things to experience and it is through this that we grow. I get that it’s mechanism for people to understand their problems by, but I’m not sure it squares well with the how I feel about God being all about love.

The second way for evil to enter your life is through sin. This does make some sense to me. Making mistakes in life can lead to a string of problems. Saying sin leads to evil is another way of saying this. Explaining the two reasons for evil are better than a single blanket reason. If the explanation doesn’t go too far into specifics this leaves it up to the individual to decide if there are changes that need to be made or if it’s an opportunity for growth. Of course I’m interpreting very broadly here about both these interpretations of sin. The nice thing about this sermon was that it wasn’t that specific about what falls into the categories, so I could be more metaphorical in my interpretation.

The only other things I wrote in my notes were a couple of statements that spoke to me. The first went, “Don’t look at me like I’m God, I’m human.” This is a great thing to put in a sermon. Pastors have whatever power leadership brings. It’s a good sign when a leader, especially a religious leader, acknowledges their own humanity and propensity to failure. Sometimes the opposite happens and a religious leader claims exclusive access to God and them runs with it, convincing others to follow into negative stuff. Looking at Jesus, who did claim access to God, I notice even he empowered others to access God. I’m thinking of the times he told his disciples to heal others, pray for miracles and give money to those in need.

The second cool thing that was said was, “God’s gonna free you from religion.” This was a week in which I felt God nudging me, and this was one of the bits that drove that home. I do feel like we are constricted by religion. I do feel that what I’m looking for, what I’d really like to find in my project, is less religion and more of a feeling; a sense that this is ok and I can be myself with those who will not care about my quirks or find my thought processes too odd. I want something indescribable. When I think about the word religion it feels like a thing that is all too often filled with rules and gestures that are empty. Pastor says God’s gonna free me from this. Well, I sure hope that’s right.

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Church #45, Powerhouse City of Deliverance, part one

Date: 11/17/13

Church name/type: Powerhouse City of Deliverance, Pentecostal

Pastor: Pastor Evan and Copastor Patterson

Style of worship: Loud fun music with lots of dancing and jumping. The sermon was interrupted by spontaneous song several times.

Overall Impression: actually I liked it

History in Brief:
This church was in neither the phone book or any websites I could find. Digging around online I did find a bit about the building’s history. It was originally the German Evangelical Protestant Church. At some point it was referred to as just Evangelical Protestant Church. (The sign outside still bears this name and old, incorrect times of worship.) Later it was used by a UCC group. Currently it is used by the Powerhouse group, which is Pentecostal.

Breakfast:
I arrived at the time advertised on the sign; 10:30. Instead of a church service about to start I found people inside serving breakfast. They invited me to eat so I did. I took a seat and asked about church. I was told church starts at 11:30 with prayer and 12:00ish for the actual service and that breakfast is served to anyone who shows up between 9am and 11am. I had a bit of conversation with some ladies who were sitting around having breakfast. We spoke a bit about my project and they asked me what I was looking for and what I’d found. During the conversation I said that I was disappointed with some churches for failing to show me friendliness or take much notice of me at all. This was notably the case in my visit to the Catholic Church closest to my house. One of the women told me I shouldn’t look for friendliness per se because:
“You don’t know where they’re coming from or what they’ve got going on.” Which I think I can agree with in general. If someone is hurting I can’t expect friendliness to be the first thing on their mind. I don’t expect this would ever be true for an entire church, but I get what she was saying. The other woman (who turned out to the copastor) said we need to be the ones who reach out to others and make what God wants a reality.- “It’s all on us to show that love,” she told me.
I also talked for a few minutes with some guys who wandered in for breakfast. They were trying to decide what to do with their morning and whether to include church or not. They seemed nice. While I was there one woman I met offered first me and then the three guys help if we needed it. That’s a huge blanket statement to make and she did seem sincere. Clearly this church wants to be able to help others. One visit isn’t enough to tell me how much help this church is really able to give, but the free breakfast seems like a nice way to go.

Praise portion:
So the service starts with something a woman told me was “intercessory prayer”. Instead of a formal prayer this felt much more like a preparatory space cleansing. Church members walked up and down the aisles and sides and front of the church chanting words and phrases and sometimes clapping. Most of what they said was in English but I noticed some of it was in tongues. (Those unclear on tongues: it’s a spiritual language some Christian groups believe in. The words don’t mean anything in any earthly language and those unfamiliar with tongues may perceive it as gibberish.) The chanting went on for at least twenty minutes and sometime rose to a modest shout. I was unclear on whether the prayer was meant to be participatory for everyone so I stayed in my seat.
After a while the band started to strum a little and a group of people assembled up front began to sing. The instrumentation was drums, guitar and keyboard and the music…if music rocks do you call it rock? I’m not a genre expert but it was very intense. The first song was one I recognized, so I sang along. After this I was unfamiliar with the music, but I did some clapping.
The acoustics in the room were rather bad, giving the music a blurry quality. I had great difficulty understanding the words of songs I didn’t already know. Also the sound was cranked right up to eleven, so it permeated my entire body from all sides it seemed. I did enjoy the music, and being unable to hear the lyrics left me free to think whatever thoughts came to me. It was weirdly relaxing and I found myself wandering about a string of ideas regarding secular music, worship, prayer, and God’s existence.
The most unusual part was the frenzy of the worship team. They sang loudly when there were words and at other times danced; quite fast sometimes. The dance involved a lot of stomping and shaking. The floor was moving and everything was full of energy. One woman actually collapsed on the floor. This must happen occasionally because no one made a big deal about it and someone brought a white cloth and placed it around her.

Part two of this church description will be up next week.

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Five things

Today’s sermon had some really interesting things to say. Among them, the pastor said, if we criticize five things about our church but find nothing wrong with ourselves we are doing it wrong. Now, I plan to do a full write up of my church adventures of the day, BUT I think this idea deserves it’s own post. In fact I’ve decided to take it as a challenge. Since I regularly do criticize churches on points I feel they need work, it’s only fair to think up five things that I need work on.

1) I get angry.
I get angry and loud and occasionally mean. It’s stupid and unproductive and needs work.

2) Sometimes I have a little too much fun criticizing a bad job.
It can be productive to talk or write about a problem that needs work. However, I sometimes overlook the fact that sincere people may be behind it. It’s no fun to be on the receiving end of snarky criticism. I should probably give others the benefit of the doubt more often and be little nicer with critiques.

3) I take things personally.
So you’d think since I am good at criticizing others I’d be great with them when they happen to criticize me. Not really! I hope this blog never achieves fame because I’d be stuck with a lot of messages that make me sad.

4) I ignore.
I am great at ignoring when it suits me. I should probably be all super citizen and vote every election, adopt every highway, volunteer at more than one charity organization, and speak out on some issues. I don’t. I ignore big problems facing society because I’m either afraid to help or think I can’t matter. That is stupid. If everyone decided they couldn’t matter, democracy, charity and other collective efforts would fail.

5) My patience level constantly needs work.
This one often ties back to my first problem with anger. I jump too quickly to react with anger and negativity when it isn’t called for. And I hate waiting in general, so I get frustrated before I’ve actually found out if the thing I’m waiting for is ultimately negative or positive.

So there’s my list. I struggle with this stuff quite a bit. Sometimes I think I make a little progress. Maybe someday I’ll have it figured out.

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Still Practicing Love

I’m still practicing love. Some people say it’s easy to love. I say it’s easy to try to love. For me, love doesn’t mean simple affection. Love means always looking out for someone’s best interests. Love means putting yourself on the line to see that this happens. Love means taking care of others at the cost of your own comfort. It would be easy and cozy for me to lie in bed Tuesdays when I’m supposed to be volunteering at a food pantry. It feels good to yell when I’m angry and figure out who deserves that anger from me. It feels good to spend and buy expensive things for me and just me.
But love, as I see it, is getting out of bed to help others. Love is NOT sharing anger regardless of your made up system of ‘deserves’. Love is buying the nice toys for Christmas for kids you’ve never met. Ok that last one is not too hard. Actually I have a really great imagination and love going in my mind and ‘seeing’ the look on their faces when they open presents. But you still have to get out of bed for it on a day you wanted to order in for sushi.
Love is hard. And I’m still practicing. Especially regarding anger.

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Church #44, St Paul’s Episcopal Church

Date: 9/3/13

Church name/type:St Paul’s Church, Episcopal

Pastor: just for today it was Father Leslie Hughs

Style of worship: Formal with some chanted elements

Overall Impression: Seems just fine!

Thoughts:
I had a little trouble figuring out the entrance. This is one of those buildings where the sanctuary isn’t obvious and there are hallways leading to other rooms near it. I went into the sanctuary and got a little treat listening to choir practice. They were very nice, a capella, sounding angelic in the echoey space. The space itself was tall with white angular pillars against muted gray stone. It had a nice clean, almost Fortress of Solitude vibe. The organ and choir area were veiled by a wall of bronze spiderweb depicting a cross with sunlight pouring both from it and onto it.

Service went about how I expected, although slightly more formal than I realized. A man I met afterwards said he was almost put off by the ‘high church’ aspect of it all, until coffee hour when he really got to know some friendly people. I wasn’t fooled by the discrepancy. There are some churches that maintain a high formality level inside the sanctuary and then flip to an easy-going chatty bunch over coffee. This week was like that. I felt very much among peers at this place. At the coffee hour, at least six people began conversations with me out of the blue. I really love it when church membership is on the ball about greeting newcomers. Overall it was a pretty nice church and among my favorites.

Anything else?: I wish I’d spoken with long-haired guy. He made me so happy because he looked super comfortable. I like churches that seem good with members showing their own style rather than just “standard church look”. And being comfortable and being who you are are things more churches should endorse.

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Episcopal thoughts

I’m heading to an Episcopal church this morning and want to predict it will be extremely boring. Episcopals so far seem so reasonable and normal. The Episcopal church here in the US even approves of homosexuality AND has a blessing which can be given to same sex couples. Come on Episcopal church! You are impossible to pick on. That’s my rant for now. An actual post about the church will be along soon I hope.

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God is all my friends

Church said God would be there when you need him. Church said God knows our hearts and that he hears us when we are sad. Church said God comforts us when we feel our hearts are breaking. Today, God is all my friends.
Thank you.

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An important Update

My life has suddenly become very exciting and very busy. I may have to miss a few Sundays. There will be a better update for those curious in a few weeks.