Patrick McNamara on Stewardship for Catholics & Protestants Interviewer: Tracy Schier Sociologist Patrick McNamara is familiar with wide-ranging reactions when the concept of stewardship comes up. He knows there are pastors and parishioners across the land who take the biblical injunctions that encourage good stewardship seriously. And he is aware of the challenges and difficulties that face the men and women who aspire to make stewardship happen in their congregations. And, understanding that the spectrum is wide, he knows only too well those individuals who still roll their eyes when they hear the word, convinced that stewardship is a euphemism for fund-raising. In his studies of congregations across the land, however, McNamara has time and again discovered that stewardship is alive, well, and growing. McNamara is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and past president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. With Dean R. Hoge and Charles Zech he authored Plain Talk about Churches and Money. With Hoge, Michael Donahue, and Zech he authored Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches. He is the editor of Religion North American Style (with Thomas Dowdy), and Conscience First, Tradition Second: A Study of Young Catholics. McNamara s most recent book (1999) is More than Money: Portraits of Transformative Stewardship. In it he presents portraits of eleven congregations across the United States that have successfully faced the challenges of living out the ideals of stewardship. Currently he is working Page 1 of 5
on a book about Catholic parishes across the U.S. that have adopted a stewardship approach. This conversation is edited. Q. First of all, please tell me your working definition of stewardship. A. Stewardship is an invitation to members of a congregation to commit resources of time and talent and money out of thankfulness and a desire to return God s gifts in order to advance his kingdom in their community and beyond. This invitation may take the form of an organized program and may involve further invitations to pledge and/or to tithe. That is the definition that I accept, but I urge readers to read the American Bishops 1992 letter, Stewardship: A Disciple s Response. In it the bishops articulate a beautifully developed theology of stewardship that many individual parishes have taken to heart. Q. Catholics in recent years have received poor grades in the area of church giving when they are compared to their Protestant neighbors. What is behind this? A. In the research for our book, Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches, my co-authors and I came across Catholic parishes that were alive and vital, where giving levels were comparable to neighboring Protestant churches. Some key features were financial openness, liturgies that were vital and engaging, a pastor and staff accessible to parishioners, vibrant ministries that parishioners were encouraged to participate in, and sermons portraying a clear stewardship ideal. Stewardship conveys the idea of personal responsibility for your church. Protestants historically have been more likely than Catholics to give strongly because their offerings directly support the pastor and his family. In Catholic parishes, the pastor s salary is paid directly by the diocese; nuns traditionally received support from their religious orders. So Catholics were less sharply aware of their financial responsibilities. But don t forget that decades ago, poor recently-immigrated Catholics generously supported construction of parishes, schools, convents, etc. What stewardship does is to rekindle this generosity and apply it to supporting the parish s ministries. It enhances a sense of obligation to participate which, in turn, generates a strong sense of ownership in and accountability for the parish mission. For the pastor, stewardship motivates him to share Page 2 of 5
parish governance with the membership, and this in turn increases the sense of ownership among parishioners. Q. Have you found similarities and differences in the ways that Catholics and Protestants practice stewardship? A. I find that Catholics and Protestants are virtually identical when it comes to stewardship. There must be a core conviction on the part of the pastor that we are recipients of God s gifts and that we need to return those gifts back to God. That is the bedrock of stewardship and must be owned by the pastor. Most importantly, however, is the need for the pastor to communicate this to the parish and to make it clear that this type of ownership of stewardship must belong to all members. The pastor has to let parishioners know that it is not my parish it is our parish. Successful stewardship predicates a partnership model of leadership, as opposed to a patriarchal model, in the congregation. Such partnership unleashes energy in the parishioners and intentionality occurs. In stewardship parishes we see a willingness to let nothing be taken for granted and a desire to examine the church mission and all of the ministries. The intentionality of which I speak turns loose a dynamic reflective energy. Q. You say in your writings, and others say it as well, that stewardship is counter-cultural. Please talk about this. A. Stewardship is counter-cultural in our American economy which thrives on people s wants becoming needs. The whole concept of stewardship forces people to rethink their priorities---not just their priorities when it comes to their money, but also their time and their talent. Stewardship parishes ask their members to think differently and try to understand what is important in their lives and how they spend their money. It is interesting when people are asked to think about their check registers, something considered by most people to be very private, or at least something that is between them and their bank. When they examine their check books over the course of, say, a year, they can get a pretty good picture of where their priorities are. Effective pastors in parishes that practice stewardship convey an awareness that this parish costs to belong to. Some pastors actually say, following a stewardship presentation to new member classes, We have Page 3 of 5
strong expectations. This parish may not be for you we expect our members to tithe. Q. What do the demographics of a successful stewardship parish look like? A. There is no one look for a successful stewardship parish. The one exception might be with some parishes in which the members of the congregation are new arrivals in the United States and do not have such a giving tradition in their homeland. But even these people are coming along. We find that the baby-boom generation is susceptible to the message and that older parishioners can sometimes be harder to reach. The really successful parishes try to have the stewardship concept percolate down into the religious education classes and other children s programs. I see parishes where the children even have pledge cards for their allowances, and prayer cards to remember persons in need, and dedicated ways that they can use their time and talent by helping grandma, for example. As far as gender is concerned, stewardship is stewardship and women heads of households are just as committed to the concept as are their male counterparts. And I should also add that the liberal-conservative axis doesn t seem to be relevant. Q. Can you generalize about the worship life in stewardship parishes? A. In the many churches I have been privileged to visit, I have found that worship is more dynamic. The people seem to visibly incorporate their giftedness into their parish life. There is real meaning at the offertory when the people bring the collection baskets along with the bread and wine as gifts to the altar. And I have to say that I have found wonderful choirs in these churches as well. Q. There are a lot of demands on everyone s philanthropic dollar. In the stewardship parishes, how is giving to church balanced with giving to their local food pantry or to their college annual fund or their hospital building drive? A. The pastor helps the parishioners do the balancing. The stewardship parish is not asking that the church be the locus of all charitable giving. But models of giving are suggested; for example, the tithing ideal is often proposed in the form of 5% to the parish and 5% to charities of one s choice. Some parishes will ask that parishioners devote 10 hours per Page 4 of 5
month of their time for good works and donate two hours of their wages every week. It varies from parish to parish. There is a lot of good literature that helps pastors and parishioners with this issue. A sensitive pastor will have a cultivated awareness that there are different giving styles and the best stewardship parishes have a sensitivity to that. Q. Is there anything that you have learned about stewardship parishes that hasn t yet found its way into public discussion? A. Yes. There is stewardship. And there is stewardship. It can be just nominal and used loosely as another term for fund-raising. Or it can be a dynamic, transformative force when it is done right. A parish cannot become a good stewardship parish overnight; it takes four to five years to get a program going in a way that it is owned not just by the pastor but by all of the members of the congregation. If the experience is transformative it means that the parishioners' energies and talents are engaged in new ways. Often, new ministries will come about in a parish when it gets to the place that the members of the congregation own the stewardship idea. Q. How do you see this study of stewardship completing or filling in a larger perspective on the situation, role, and impact of religion and Christianity in American society? A. I am a sociologist and I look at this issue of stewardship from an institutional perspective. I try to look at the original purposes of institutions and try to understand what they have become over time. Max Weber has a phrase, routinization of charism, which applies to churches as well as to other institutions. What Weber means is that institutions tend to grow away from their original purposes. Stewardship is an organizational movement that can bring churches back to their original purpose, that can revitalize the conviction that people are recipients of God s gifts and it is incumbent upon us to return those gifts generously. Page 5 of 5