WILLOW Magazine, Winter 2002
A Solid Financial Stewardship Ministry is Just Good $ense
Sometimes God calls people to be a voice in the wilderness. Other times, He calls people to be a voice at the intersection of Main Street and Madison Avenue.
Count Dick Towner among those in the latter category. He walks along a pathway that few envy … or traverse. In a culture that screams for bigger, better, newer, Towner desires to see people being fiscally sound with the resources that God provides them. He is a champion for good stewardship.
“Two years ago when the Willow Creek Association approached me about creating Good Sense curriculum and heading an effort to help other churches work through the whole stewardship issue, it had all the sounds of a legacy to me,” Towner says, “I’ve really been involved in this area for 35 years.”
It started innocently enough. Towner’s upbringing in a first-generation immigrant home provided “a very frugal background,” he says. After college, friends started approaching him for practical advice when he would be the only one in the group with money in hand at the end of each month.
“I’ve always enjoyed helping people with their budgets,” Towner says, “As I grew in my understanding of faith, I realized stewardship was really a huge biblical mandate.” His spiritual development combined with his financial acumen led to him teaching classes at his church, College Hill Presbyterian, in Cincinnati. In 1976, Towner was asked to become a staff member at College Hill.
For the last decade, Towner’s stewardship service has been at Willow Creek. He arrived as the first full time staff person in the church’s Good Sense Ministry, which had been run by volunteers since it started in the mid-1980s. Good Sense was created to help people honor God with life resources regardless of where they were on their spiritual journeys. With a full-time person bringing direction and vision to the ministry, Good Sense flourished under Towner’s leadership. Today, Willow Creek has more than 150 trained counselors who assist attenders with resource issues; and as many as 3, 000 people annually have attend workshops, seminars, and financial counseling sessions sponsored by Good Sense.
Towner might still be leading Good Sense at the church if the WCA hadn’t approached him with the idea of becoming the movement champion for good stewardship. He would be championing one of Willow Creek’s Five G’s: Grace, Growth, Groups, Gifts, and Good Stewardship.
But Towner knew this would not be an easy role. Within churches, the discussion of finances often is taboo. And therein lies a dilemma.
The Stewardship Dilemma
It seems simple enough. The WCA’s Good Sense arm “is devoted to proclaiming and advancing the value of biblically based stewardship by empowering local church leaders so that biblical stewardship becomes normative.”
Of course, when it comes to money — especially money in the church — nothing is normative. A survey of WCA Member Churches indicated stewardship tools were greatly desired, for many reasons.
“This stewardship dilemma manifests itself at all levels throughout a church,” Towner says. “Individuals are dealing with debt, which causes stress, relational conflicts, lack of confidence. Corporately, the church is strapped for cash; ministries are hamstrung. With money, we are literally talking about the chief rival god to the God of the Bible. That’s why we’re so committed to creating resources that tackle these dilemmas.”
Yet even with resource tools, financial issues still provide for a rocky terrain for churches … and their leaders.
“Let’s be honest, this is a difficult area for many pastors. Seminaries don’t present courses in stewardship,” Towner says, “Pastors are concerned that people will get upset if they talk about the subject. And they’re concerned that their message will be misunderstood.
That’s because when money is talked about, it’s often in the context of giving to the church.
“When John Maxwell talks about teaching on financial issues, he likes to say, ‘Who gets upset? The person who isn’t giving any money!’ I agree with that, ,” Towner continues. “But teaching about stewardship is so much broader than teaching about giving to the church. What I suggest to pastors is to see this as a wonderful pastoral opportunity. From a biblical perspective, this is a huge issue of spiritual development.”
Count Bill Hayes among those who believe in this concept. That’s why he now works alongside Towner in the Good Sense area of the WCA.
“I have a passion for spiritual growth and development,” says Hayes, who spent more than 30 years in the marketplace, including stints in marketing and sales for such corporate giants as Procter & Gamble and Quaker Oats. “Stewardship results from a spiritual transformational process. How you handle your money is an outward display of an inward reality. Stewardship really is a spiritual matter. I enjoy helping churches help their people deal with this.”
A Foundational Source
“It’s one of the Five G’s at Willow Creek, but stewardship is often the last area where people are yielded to God,” Hayes says, “It’s an area that is often difficult to let go of.”
Now if they were being countercultural for the sake of being countercultural, people like Towner and Hayes might not have much of a case for what they say — especially in light of what Wall Street and Madison Avenue tell us each day. Of course, all they have to do is open up the Word of God to find their source of wisdom. A lot of wisdom.
Towner likes to say there are approximately 2, 500 verses in the Bible focusing on financial issues. That might seem like an overwhelming number. Don’t worry; if there’s one thing Towner enjoys, it’s being economical.
“Let’s just look at a few of these verses focusing on money,” Towner says. “We’re told ‘you can’t serve both God and money [Matthew 6:24 ].’ That shows an improper understanding of money can keep a person from serving God.
“Or ‘where your money is, that’s where your heart also is [Matthew 6:21 ]. ’ That indicates that money can steal a person’s heart from God.
“In the parable of the sower and the soils, Jesus says ‘the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the Word, making it unfruitful [Matthew 13:22 ]. ’ That says money can choke out God’s Word in a person’s life.
“And then there’s ‘the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil [1 Timothy 6:10 ]. ’ Do you really desire to allow all kinds of evil to enter your life?
“Just stop there. In only four passages, we see that money can keep a person from serving God, from loving God, can choke out 5•6 God’s Word, and the love of it brings all kinds of evil.” Doesn’t that make a strong case for us to tackle this topic?
“There are five aspects of money,” Hayes says. “Earning, spending, saving, debt, and giving. In all five areas, the model we use is what culture is saying versus what Scripture says. With this approach, people understand right away where they stand on that continuum.”
As they learn, their hearts are changed and then their practices begin to change.
Eliminating the Dilemma
“During the Good Sense budget course that I took, I came to the point of seeing the truth about money and ‘stuff’— mammon — more clearly than ever before. For the first time, I could see stewardship not as a strategy, but as a call of God,” says Bryan Richardson, pastor of Tyler Road Southern Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas. “In fact when Jesus says, ‘follow me, ’ I can now hear the call to the total disposition of material things. I shall spend the rest of my time learning how to obey that call, but the road starts here.
“Understanding materialism not to be just a bad habit, not just a sin, but also a competing theology in which money makes the same kinds of demands and promises that a deity makes — that reaches all the way to the heart of the Christ-follower.”
Pastors. Core committed believers. Even seekers. Good Sense hears stories all the time of people gaining a better understanding of how, according to the ministry's vision, they can “experience the spiritual, emotional and relational joy and freedom that results from practicing biblically based financial stewardship.” But it’s not always easy.
“Like other areas of spiritual development, sometimes it takes a long time for people to understand and apply,” Hayes says, “For others,” Towner adds, , “they get their socks zapped off the first time they hear about stewardship and change. It’s all over the map.”
Whatever the course taken, this map leads to only one destination: getting people closer to financial (and thus spiritual) freedom.
“We have to do more than just provide effective teaching,” Towner says. “If we just teach on what Scripture says, people will say, ‘You’re right, I ought to …’ But unless we give them some training, they will become more frustrated and guilt-ridden.
“The Bible tells us that as a servant, we have the choice of two masters: God or money,” Towner says, “Faithfulness is understanding the mind and heart of God. The pull by the culture is foolishness. It simply comes down to: 'are you becoming more foolish or more faithful?’ We’re constantly trying to draw the contrast between culture and Scripture.”
Making Good Sense
That’s why Good Sense curriculum (or Good Sense in a box, if you will) will be available in May.
“Everything you really need to start a stewardship ministry is in the kit,” Towner says, “It’s a biblically based fundamental teaching tool that’s all ready to go. It’s been adapted for use by the local church. Everything’s here: a budget course, Stewardship is so much broader than teaching about giving to the church. “”•counselor training, a vision video, and so much more.” (see article)
As Towner indicated, the materials focus on three main areas:
“The goal is to help churches implement a full-fledged, churchwide, year-round integrated ministry of stewardship education and training,” Hayes says, “It’s designed to be integrated for everyone in the congregation. And it’s for use throughout the year.”
Best of all, churches can begin using it this year.
“It makes it easy to focus on the ministry aspect of it, not on the task of getting materials,” Hayes says, “It’s a tool that can be passed on to a staff person or a volunteer. They don’t have to create a new program. I think that’s a confidence builder. It’s proven. It’s been used at Willow Creek for 16 years.
“Our model calls for the pastor to be involved with a Good Sense ministry. There needs to be support, stewardship principles taught. A holistic approach to stewardship is important. From there, churches need to find a person or two who have a vision for stewardship.”
Once those key leaders, be they staff or volunteers, are identified and empowered, the possibilities are endless.
“This is more than just one budget workshop a year,” Towner says, “At Willow, we’ve integrated stewardship with other ministries. We offer a financial seminar in the pre-marriage classes. We’ve geared training for Axis, the next-generation ministry. Even within Promiseland, our kids’ ministry, , we’ve been able to adapt teaching lessons.”
Of course, that’s at a church that has been involved with stewardship ministry for a number of years. What about a church that’s going to get started by purchasing a Good Sense kit?
“We’re committed to doing as much as we can do to support each church that gets a kit,” Towner says. “We want to be as responsive as we possibly can be.” Adds Hayes, “We’re going to support churches and provide assistance to them to help their ministries start on solid footing.”
The Legacy
“We often hear that this is a very grace-filled approach to stewardship. It’s easily understood and very practical,” Hayes says, “We find that people’s hearts and minds are changed. Spiritual transformation is occurring and then people change practices. This is really a spiritual matter. We get to help churches help their people deal with this. That’s why I look at Good Sense as being all about transformational stewardship.”
Therein lies potential that can be unleashed in churches all around the world. But how is this played out in the real-world life of a church?
“When Willow Creek launched its Chapter 2 capital campaign, pledges were made for 60 percent more than was sought,” Towner says. “I do believe that 16 years of Good Sense teaching was tied into that result.”
While Dick Towner’s ministry is rooted in the practical, his dream is that of a visionary.
“In the immediate future, we want to begin to build a movement, a network of anchor churches, local champions, that have strong Good Sense ministries and have a desire to help other churches in their areas.
“In 15 –20 years, I’d love to have it be standard, normative, for churches to be teaching and training about stewardship issues,” Towner says. “We would end the great silence within the church regarding financial issues. We would have church-wide ministries focusing on stewardship concerns.
“The model that inspires me is that 25 years ago, ‘seeker’ was an unknown concept in churches. Now, the seeker churches are a significant movement. I’d like to think the same thing could happen with stewardship in the church.
” Sometimes it’s good to dream big. Especially if God puts you at the right crossroads.
RECOMMENDED STEWARDSHIP RESOURCES
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BOOKS
Money, Possessions and Eternity ,
Randy Alcorn, Tyndale House.
Mary Hunt's Debt-Proof Your Kids ,
Mary Hunt, Broadman and Holman Publishers.
Giving: Unlocking the Heart of Good Stewardship ,
John Ortberg, Laurie Pederson, Judson Poling, Zondervan.
The Treasure Principle ,
Randy Alcorn, Multnomah Publishers.
Grateful & Generous Hearts,
John Westerhoff, St. Luke's Press. |
AUDIO TAPES
The following tapes can be purchased by calling (800)570-9812, or by ordering them online at www. willowcreek. com.
Tools for the New Millennium: The Palm Pilot. M0003*
The Calculator and Managing Your Finances. M0004*
It All Goes back in the Box. M0042*
What Jesus Really Taught About Greed. C9516*
The Financial Ten Commandments. M9903*
Establishing Financial Good Sense (Defining Moments tape #DF9906)
* Transcripts of these messages are available for immediate download. Click on tape name to see more. |
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