Editor’s note: Monthly articles from LCMS Stewardship Ministry are hosted here on The Lutheran Witness site. Visit the “Ministry Features” page each month for additional stewardship content.
In his recent book, The Gift of Small, Allen Stanton gave the following encouragement to small-membership congregations:
Small-membership churches are places of deep potential, but it is not necessarily the potential to be bigger … It is the potential to grow the kingdom of God in delightfully surprising ways … They should embrace their vocations. They should embrace the realities that make them who they are. In doing so, our small-membership churches will recognize that being small is not a lament at all. It is a great gift for the kingdom of God. [1]
In the eyes of the world, and even among some in the church, a small-membership congregation is a problem in need of a solution. In the western world, big is better. To be small means that the subject is weak, challenged, or even insular. Application of the correct strategy along with the requisite effort would provide a solution. This solution is always seen as numeric growth.
God gives all His children unique vocations
But what if being small ISN’T a problem that needs to be fixed? What if being small is exactly what the Lord has intended? The very solutions that are intended to bring growth could be poisonous to that which is small! An attempt like this to repair something that isn’t broken is a denial of the identity that the Lord has given to the small-membership congregation.
This same kind of “bigger is better” mentality often infects the steward leader as well. When the stewardship of the individual child of God is compared to others around them, it can start to look a bit like what Jesus saw when He sat across from the offering box at the temple. On that day Jesus saw people put in large sums. But He also noticed a poor widow who put in two copper coins, all she had to live on (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 21:1–4).
To the world, the widow’s offering looks insignificant. Certainly, no priest was going to be given their livelihood from her offering. Without a doubt the operation of the temple could not survive without all the much larger gifts that were deposited that day. But Jesus took note of the smaller one. Why? Because of the widow’s faithfulness!
One-size-fits-all stewardship is just as damaging to the work of the kingdom of God as one-size-fits-all church growth. Each steward in a congregation has a unique vocational position within the body of Christ. Life-long, well-employed saints will be in a much different place for support than the young family that has been entrusted with the stewardship of the next generation. Congregational steward leaders who expect equality of outcome will heap an unbearable burden on the latter and give the former an occasion for self-righteousness.
Stewardship is about faithfulness
Stewardship is not about big. Stewardship is not about small. Stewardship is about faithfulness. That is exactly what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians! “Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). Pastors and steward leaders should focus on forming a culture of faithfulness in the congregation. This isn’t accomplished by chart or scale. Faithfulness is never a matter of checking the box or attaining a goal. Faithfulness in stewardship is about confessing that all we have and all we are flows from God. Every breath, every moment, every morsel and every opportunity are trusts from God. They are to be managed for His purpose and for the benefit of our neighbor.
This vocation of steward, and its requisite call for faithfulness, takes different shapes at various times. Depending on the context, the neighbor we are benefiting may be close to home or out in the community. The baptized child is called to faithfully steward their time and life under the stewardship of their parents. The parent has unique stewardship over the lives of the children under their care. The congregation practices faithful stewardship so they can care for their community, full of neighbors that need their care. Over time, the makeup of that community changes as well.
This is why the teaching of stewardship faithfulness is essential. When the steward regularly recalls the Lord’s abundant blessing and their call to respond in faithfulness, any discussion of size becomes out of place. The congregation and the individual steward that knows and faithfully lives out this vocation truly becomes a blessing to the work of the kingdom of God.
This won’t happen by accident. It takes intentional, repeated formation by the Word. It takes loving, patient calls for repentance and faith. Not big. Not small. Faithful! When this is what takes place in steward formation in the local congregation, the kingdom of God can and will grow in delightfully surprising ways!
LCMS Stewardship ministry features may be reprinted with acknowledgment given to The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
[1] Allen T. Stanton, The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2024), 149.
