Why Pastors Dread Talking About Money
By Tarris D. Rosell, Assoc. Prof. of Pastoral Theology & Ethics
Central Baptist Theological Seminary, KS
Stewardship programs and pastors don`t mix any better than oil and water. The way it`s put by many ecclesial stewardship and mission promoters is that preachers have a perennial problem talking to parishioners about money. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I think that a better stewardship program is not the answer to this problem; nor will it be resolved by motivational talks to pastors about why they ought to talk stewardship with their people. The answer lies rather in morality and ethics.
Actually, I don`t know whether or not it would be factually accurate to claim that preachers don`t talk much about money. It seems to me that in my own sermons and those of my pastors, we have not infrequently addressed financial and material concerns. There is a good biblical case to be made for doing so. Depending on how and what one counts, I`m told there are somewhere between 800 and 2500 biblical references to wealth and poverty. Many such sayings are attributed to Jesus (who, in contrast, seems not to have said one thing about homosexuality). Surely we ought to be preaching and teaching about the things Jesus taught also, as well as on issues of biblical concern.
What surely is true, as well, is that pastors often do experience a sense of discomfort when speaking or preaching on financial giving relative to the church`s budget and program. This may not be a matter of timidity or insufficient training, however. Might our discomfort be instead a matter mostly of personal morals and professional ethics?
It is a point of pastoral sensitivity when we are hesitant to shame financially challenged congregants into tithing behaviors, or when we are sympathetic to the economic situations of those for whom even minimal giving would be impossible without additional borrowing. The widow`s mite ought not to be placed in the offering plate if it really belongs to a legitimate creditor; and denominational stewardship programs don`t often address the preliminary problem for many North Americans of consumer debt and chronic deficit spending. Some of the latter is not from moral turpitude so much as systemic oppression or bad luck. One major hospitalization in this country, where healthcare access is tied to employment based medical insurance, can put a middle class family over the edge and into virtual indentured servitude to medical creditors or their collectors.
Despite what we say about percentage giving on a spectrum starting with the widow`s mite, wealthier givers tend to get off comparably easy. An eroding middle class cohort of congregants may be the only ones really expected and exhorted to give sacrificially. While those of much means receive accolades for their measure of tithes given out of abundance, the increasingly less affluent receive little more from ethically insensitive preachers than a challenge to do more. Other pastors who eschew shaming the relative poor are to be commended.
Some church members in every socioeconomic bracket are exceedingly generous souls, but feel called of God to respond to support appeals beyond that of just the church. If they are able to give away as much as ten percent of their income, it may be divided between the church, the Scouts, United Way, a homeless shelter, the local rape crisis center, and the nonprofit organization for which they work.
Is this wrong? An ethically astute pastor knows otherwise. What sort of arrogance is it that would claim and proclaim moral and fiscal hegemony of my own congregational agenda over that of a hundred other worthy charitable causes in the community and world? Why should the church not have to make its case for legitimacy of support right alongside all the other nonprofits whose humanitarian services make the world a better place for all of us to live?
A ministry ethics issue at the heart of pastoral discomfort with stewardship programs is that pertaining to an inherent conflict of interest. When the preacher talks to her people about money that will ultimately end up as pastoral salary, discomfort is ethically appropriate. In small congregations, and some large ones, the biggest budget item is the pastor`s compensation package. How does one avoid conflict of interest ethics code violation, and inducing congregants` cynicism, when the exhortation to give money "to God" clearly entails an economic benefit to the exhorter?
This also goes against the ethical grain of pastoral service. We who are called of God to serve the Church as pastors do so without assessing fees or hope of financial gain. The Church provides the clergy with salary support so that we are free to practice for free, charging nothing to those who need pastoral care. Most pastoral counseling specialists and some spiritual directors do practice their ministry arts on a fee-for-service basis, but they have never resolved adequately the professional tension and moral dissonance this creates. Likewise, the ethically sensitive pastor becomes understandably uncomfortable when asked to ask the congregation for budget money that significantly includes pastoral salary and benefits.
If stewardship promotion really is not about the budget or raising money, as promoters will protest, then let`s do the program in February after the annual meeting and leave out the pledge cards. No? Then it is about money after all, which of course is not a bad thing. Only the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And indeed someone or some group in every organization must attend to the budget. That someone would be the president, CEO, executive director, development or institutional advancement personnel in most nonprofits. Ought this role to be filled by the pastor within a church, or does that special calling and code ethically exempt one instead from fundraising of this sort? Maybe the only fundraising to be done by pastors is that exclusively designated for external mission, or else untainted capital campaigns not aimed at personal kingdom building. We have not given sufficient thought to that possibility, grounded in ministry ethics.
There is yet another possibility to consider. It may be that the love of money is the biggest reason many of us clergy feel discomfort in the role of financial stewardship promoter. I am referring now to our own idolatry, not that of parishioners. They too are prone to make and worship golden calves, if rather less prone to part with the precious metals requisite for congregationally casting one. Yet, few North American preachers, including this one, live anywhere near a lifestyle reminiscent of the Christ we otherwise claim to emulate and follow.
Those clergy who live simply on account of a sort of forced poverty may feel uncomfortable addressing monetary matters from the pulpit because of personal resentment at congregations deemed stingy. Chosen poverty, or at least a radically simplified lifestyle, likely would have a different effect upon stewardship preaching. It may render such preaching unnecessary, given that actions speak louder than words and the most powerful sermon is one that is lived. Perhaps then it is not a better stewardship program that is needed by many of us, but more moral integrity of pastoral stewardship practices.
