The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2024

St. Pauls - Easter 7 stewardship- May 17, 2026

My guess is that most priests, when speaking of their seminary training, would say that very little, if any, time was spent in teaching or forming them to be a successful chief executive officer or business manager. This is certainly true for me. Yet, a significant percentage of my time is spent dealing with administrative matters. Every year our parish files a parochial report and stewardship summary. These reports are, as a colleague of mine likes to say, focused on nickels and noses. We report the annual income, number of pledges, pledged amount, the number of members, new members, members who left, average Sunday attendance, and the number of Eucharists, daily offices, baptisms, weddings, funerals.

The business model of profit and loss has in many ways infiltrated the church. This is evident in the reporting requirements described above. It can be seen whenever the efficiency of Robert’s Rules of Order takes precedence over prayer and discernment. Sometimes the gospel truth is spoken softly, if at all, to avoid angering parishioners and losing attendance or pledges. The reality is numbers matter. While most priests and bishops would probably agree that numbers do not tell the complete story, the underlying and often unspoken assumption is that the larger the numbers the more successful the ministry. 

The numbers may be growing but are the people growing? Isn’t that the real question? Perhaps we should be asking what theosis, union with Christ, looks like in the parish and how is it manifested in the lives of our parishioners?

I am not suggesting that we disregard giving and attendance numbers. Those numbers are important and can offer useful information but can they or should they be the ultimate basis for establishing conclusions about the success of a priest’s or parish’s ministry when the aim of the priestly art, according to St. Gregory Nazianzen,…..is to provide the soul with wings to rescue it from the world, and to present it to God. It consists in preserving the image of God in man, if it exists; in strengthening it, if it is danger; in restoring it, if it has been lost. Its end is to make Christ dwell in the heart through the Spirit, and, in short, to make a god sharing heavenly bliss out of him who belongs to the heavenly host.

St. Basil the Great says that the priest, as the shepherd of people, is to nourish them with doctrine, water them with living water, raise them up and nurture them until they produce fruit, and finally guide them to rest and safety. 

This is about more than nickels and noses. It means nothing less than a change of heart, a new level of consciousness in which people enter a new world, expand their horizons, and accept a new set of meanings. This change of heart is ultimately the choice to grow.

Growth is the ultimate criterion by which a true ministry to persons is measured. Spiritual growth is situated in striving for wholeness or holiness within oneself, and in one’s relationships to God and others. It does not merely refer to a process of intellectualization, an inherent mental capacity, or emotional maturation. It cannot be limited to facts in any shape or form. 

How then do we measure spiritual growth?

Simple numerical analysis of Sunday attendance and giving, though significant, is not the ultimate indicator of growth. The critical question is not how much money was collected or how many people showed up but rather, how effectively did we transform and affect lives. How well did we create what St. Basil called the disposition, the atmosphere, the environment, the ethos in which to cultivate and activate humanity’s tendency toward spiritual development and communion?

To the extent these questions can be answered the answers will be more qualitative than quantitative. We will need to look for evidence of growth over a period of time. More often than not we realize growth in ourselves or another only in retrospect. Such evidence might be found in asking the following:

• How is your life of prayer? What is it like today? How has it changed over the last year, five years?

• What is your participation in the sacraments and worship both quantitatively and qualitatively? Is your experience different now than it was three years ago? How?

• Describe your study of scripture, theology, spirituality? What are you reading? What are you learning?

• Do you participate in spiritual direction?

• How are you involved in outreach and social justice ministries? How has this changed? Where and how are compassion being expressed and manifested?

• Reflect on your marriage and family life, work life, and other relationships in light of the gospel and the life of Christ. In what ways are those relationships growing, deepening, changing?

• Where in your life is reconciliation taking place?

• And finally, when it comes to the financial part of stewardship…..Where and how much money do you give to ministry within and outside the church? Do you tithe? Are you progressing toward a tithe? Is the amount you give reflective of what you have been given by God and being part of this community?

These questions are summed up as the four activities that make up our life. First, we strive to be a real church, where people find and grow in faith, care and receive care, participate in and lead worship, meet Christ in the stranger and the disadvantaged, seek to proclaim and advance God’s kingdom, and become one body. That’s what our congregational giving pays for. 

Second, we seek to be a place where we offer a safe place to be still, eat food, play music, offer school supplies, animal blessings, liturgies to grow our hearts and souls, provide event spaces and commodities that people come here to find and many are glad to pay for. 

Third, we ask strangers to join with our mission to to be a welcoming, prayerful, caring community actively sharing the love of God in the Marfa, the tri-county area and along our southern border. 

Fourth, we need to receive money from the diocese as well as we need to invite wealthier people and foundations to invest in us as an institution and look to the long-term well-being of our fabric because they believe in where we’re going and what we are doing.. We have received grants from the Diocese, the National Church and foundations in the since I have been your Vicar.. Take stewardship away and we stop being a church, take business away and we lose our building, take outreach work away and we’ve lost our mission, take the grants away and we’ve got no future. All four are vital, indispensable, and wonderful.

St Paul's is a delicate balance between many things that occasionally seem very different and on the odd day can feel in tension. But most of the time it’s a miracle of divine initiative and human response, ordinary effort and sublime gifts, simple goodness and astonishing grace, and we all feel privileged to be a part of it. As a congregation we know it’s not all about us: we humbly recognize that lots of good things happen here, which we enjoy, participate in, and encourage; at the same time it’s not all down to us: we gratefully welcome others whose work, custom and kindness pay the majority of the bills. But if the careful ecology of St Paul’s is to continue to flourish, we as a congregation need to play our part, with our time and energy, absolutely; but also, crucially, with our money.

In the end we give because God in Christ gave up everything and came and followed us. We give because God the Holy Trinity is the community of love that we’ve been invited to enter where no one will be in need and we will all hold all things in common forever. We give because God the benefactor gave us life and breath and forgiveness and new life forever. We give because God the steward made us to be people who simply become happier the more we give.

We are the body of Christ. In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Let us then pursue all that makes for peace and builds up our common life.