A Post on Stewardship for Church Anew

I’m excited to share my first blog post for the organization Church Anew, “Beyond Stewardship.” Church Anew is an ecumenical ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church that equips and inspires church leaders through writing, teaching, and resources for renewal in today’s changing church. In my first post, I invite us to rethink one of the church’s most familiar frameworks for talking about money. I ask whether the language of stewardship still serves us well theologically, or whether it flattens the deeper biblical vision of generosity.

I draw on some historic and contemporary critiques of 'stewardship' and pull from Scripture, church history, and my experience serving in Spanish-speaking communities to explore alternatives: talking about offerings, recovering the stories of women patrons in the early church, and embracing Paul’s vision of koinōnia (economic fellowship).

If you've ever felt a bit uneasy about the language of stewardship (or simply wondered where it comes from) I hope you’ll read along.

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Welcome!

My name is Miguel Escobar and I am an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Long Island, currently serving a two-year curacy at San Andrés Episcopal Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My work centers on the intersection of faith, justice, and economics, including through research and presentations on Christianity’s complicated relationship with money, wealth, and poverty. I write and think about these issues from my location in a parish setting, and more specifically as someone committed to Spanish-language, Latino ministry. As a writer, I focus on how Christianity has wrestled with questions of money from its earliest days to the present. My first book, The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today , traces how the early Church’s stance on wealth shifted over the first five centuries, going from a position of sharp critique to eventual accommodation, and reflects on what was gained and lost in that transition. I’m currently working on a second book that explores the...

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Miguel Castilleja Escobar

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