"It's not about money, and it's not about me. It's about mission." So said Erika Puni, director of the Seventh-day Adventist world church's stewardship department, responding to what he sees as a potentially troubling trend in the giving habits of some Ad
“It’s not about money, and it’s not about me. It’s about mission.” So said Erika Puni, director of the Seventh-day Adventist world church’s stewardship department, responding to what he sees as a potentially troubling trend in the giving habits of some Adventist church members. Rather than giving systematic Sabbath School mission offerings, he said more and more members are funneling their offerings toward special projects.
Puni, along with other church leaders, praises the enthusiasm and level of involvement of members who give to special projects. However, because these projects are extremely localized in interest and impact, they sometimes cramp the global scope of regular mission offerings. And when mission offerings suffer, efforts to “Tell the World” are compromised, Puni has observed.
He also noted that some members misunderstand the concept of stewardship. There are two fundamental ways to view stewardship, he says: first, as a works-oriented obligation; second, as a grace-motivated privilege.
Puni points out that the early Adventist church epitomized the latter attitude toward stewardship with its unparalleled missions offerings. Members keenly felt “what the church could do on a global scale” and “realized that the work depended on their freewill offerings,” he explains.
In fact, during Adventism’s early years, members gave to missions at a phenomenal rate of 60 percent; that is, for every dollar of tithe, they gave sixty additional cents to regular mission offerings. Today, that percentage has dropped to just four.
Rick Kajiura, director of communication for Adventist Mission, agrees. “Early Adventists had a real strong missions component that drove everything they did. They had a real sense of urgency that the Lord was coming soon and they needed to finish the work. I think we’ve lost some of that urgency, and that’s a shame because missions still needs to be central to the church and certainly to the Tell the World initiatives,” he says.
Church leaders attribute what they see as a shift in Adventist attitudes toward stewardship to numerous factors. Paramount in Puni’s mind is the influence of postmodernism, which he says has turned offerings into charitable donations, rather than acts of worship.
Speaking as a hypothetical postmodern donor, Puni says, “I need to see the results of my donation. And donation is key here; postmoderns give as donors, not stewards. And there’s something that comes with a donor mentality: somewhere in the process of giving, there’s a sense that I have a say where my money goes and how it is used, and a sense that if they don’t do what I want with my money and I can’t dictate where it goes, then I’m not going to give.”
Kajiura adds that donors today want to make sure that their money “is being used in a timely, efficient way that makes a visible impact. By giving to local, specialized projects, those results are often more apparent, whereas a standard missions donation may not offer that level of donor satisfaction.”
Kajiura cites the materialistically-minded “Me Generation” of the 1980s as partly responsible for the decrease in mission offerings. He also notes that while that time period “produc[ed] a new generation that cares,” embezzlement scandals such as the one that racked the United Way have given them “a pervading cynicism that makes them distrustful of large organizations and their handling of funds.”
Puni agrees that today’s socio-cultural context has exacerbated this attitude, but he also admits that the institutional church has played a part. “Over the years, the church has grown as an organization, and it has been more difficult to keep tabs on every penny of offerings,” Puni says. While he adds that church leaders are currently stepping up efforts to be accountable and transparent regarding the use of missions offerings, he maintains that “trust has to [be] a factor.”
Perhaps Homer Trecartin, director of planning for Adventist Mission, best articulates the church’s position. Members ought first and foremost to faithfully return tithe and give mission offerings, he says. Then, “as the spirit impresses them and the Lord blesses them, they are at liberty to give to special projects.”
Church leaders want to make it clear that they are in favor of supporting such projects. In fact, many special projects are sponsored by Adventist Mission and Global Missions. But at the same time, they reiterate that support of such projects should be “above and beyond” regular mission offerings. “It is not an either/or situation, but both,” says Puni.
To encourage this pattern of giving, church leaders agree “stewardship education that promotes giving as worship to God, while also acknowledging a need for transparency and accountability by the church to ensure that what we do in the disbursement and distribution of funds is in accordance with Bible principles,” Puni explains. “This will help young members and new members trust the church to handle offerings and let them see that their giving to the Lord is being properly managed.”
Ultimately, what is needed is a mindset overhaul. Church leaders fear that members are increasingly compartmentalizing their lives. Biblical stewardship, pure and simple, “is a lifestyle of total submission to God. It is not about saying, ‘this is for God, and this is for me.’ Stewardship is all of your life for Jesus,” says Puni.
With the current Tell the World initiatives, Puni says the church “is heading in the right direction. I can see this historical mission focus coming back.” Ted Wilson, a vice president of the world church, says that when church members commit fully to evangelism and stewardship with an emphasis on missions, “all other departments and activities seem to fall into place and function in an even more powerful way. The Lord just blesses.”
That a focus on world missions has a filter-down effect on local projects is a notion other church leaders echo. Kajiura says, “if we just look narrowly at our own community’s needs, we lose a sense of the worldwide scope of the church, which can be discouraging if we’re having problems in our local churches. But if we can help progress globally, we often end up helping ourselves in the process.” Plus, we gain a greater sensitivity to cultural differences and “become a little more accepting of something a little different from what we’re accustomed to,” he adds.