Ah, it's that time of year again. A special time of year in churches all across America. A holy time... a sacred time... a joyous season, full of love and good cheer! Thanksgiving?  No. Christmastide? No. What season am I talking about?

Why, Stewardship Season, of course!

Most churches mark this month on the calendar for their annual appeal to our members to make pledges of financial support for the coming year. From most pulpits, congregants will be treated to one, two, and if you're lucky three or more sermons on the "blessings of giving." You will receive letters in the mail, be invited to lunches with the pastors, review budgets and be shown plans and visions for the future.

But I'm kidding a bit when I call this "a time of love and good cheer." Truthfully, this is a tense time. Stewardship season is tense in every church, poor or rich. That's because all churches use the money we receive each year (aside from gifts specified for an endowment). Churches don't make a practice of "storing up for a rainy day." Jesus himself told a parable about the man who had an abundance, stored it up, and that very night keeled over dead. The moral? If you've got it, use it... 'cause our assets are of no use to anyone when we're dead. To be faithful to Jesus, churches use what we have.

But if you spend what you have, you're in a dicey position for the next year! How do you know if people will give at the same level? What if that great family who were active in the church and were very generous moves to Omaha? What happens when that couple who have given for years decides they don't like what the pastor's been preaching about the war and decide to withhold their pledge? What happens to the level of giving when the church's senior pastor, much beloved, falls ill and has to take a leave of absence? Will members of the congregation still feel connected enough to the church to give for the next year?

Obviously, these are not hypothetical questions. The ministry of our church depends upon people like you - the heart of the church - to give from what you have. If you and many people like you are generous and feel invested in the ministry, the church thrives in the coming year. If you decide you have other, better ways to use your money, the ministry of the church diminishes.

This is a hard time to be a pastor and an ordained elder or deacon. In a very real way, Stewardship Season is a popular referendum on our leadership. Do you like the direction the church is going? Or not?

Stewardship time is always a tense time. But I love this because I think it's a faithful tension. Do you, the members of the church, believe that the church is doing the life-changing work of God? Do you experience the good news in and through this congregation's ministry? 

As your pledges come in... or not, you speak loudly and clearly.  And we, your chosen leadership, are listening....