Stewardship, Outreach, M&S--What's the Difference?

“What is the difference between Mission and Service, Stewardship, and Outreach?” This was the question Kathleen wrote in a letter recently. She added, “My experience has been that the aim of each of those committees is to raise money and give it away where needed. I've been months trying to understand the difference but am no further ahead. However, one more try - can you tell me the difference in these three?”

Here's my response (shared with her consent),

Bear with me as I think out loud about your question. Stewardship has been called "everything we do after we say I believe." That has only really made sense to me recently. I now think of it this way: As Christians we are told by Jesus in the Great Commandment that we must love God, and secondly we must love our neighbour. Part of loving God is knowing that we are greatly blessed and being thankful for that. It also means knowing that everything comes from God and that we are to care for creation and that includes other people.

To love others we must give of ourselves, our talents, and certainly our wealth. Part of this is recognizing that although God gives all to all, it is humanity that has created the great inconsistencies of the “have” and “have nots.” Good stewardship is not giving a bit of what we think of as "ours" to others, but it is recognizing that we are required to help put the inconsistencies right.

That's what I think of as stewardship--honouring all that comes from God and sharing and caring for creation.

Outreach for me is what we do to look beyond our own needs and the needs of those in our immediate circle. Reaching out is not easy if we want to do it well--with respect and integrity, not demeaning others or presuming we know best. So outreach will be what we do in our congregation, our neighbourhood, our community, in the world to lend a hand and share resources whatever they might be.

Mission and Service is both outreach and stewardship. M&S, however, is particular to the national UnitedChurch. M&S is the name of the fund, the vehicle by which we do stewardship as a national church and how we reach out to others as the church.

It is also much more. It is what we do and how we do it. It is about our faith, our worship life, about support for struggling congregations across this wide country, about resources, and educating ministers, as well as all the work in Canada and around the world we might traditionally call outreach.

M&S is how we have decided as members to do our work in the best way, honouring our partners, being careful in our spending, always respecting those with whom we work, remembering that we have not been blessed by God more than others but that history has created differences that we are called to put right.

Not all congregations have three committees--you are lucky if there enough interested people to do the work of three committees. I think all of our work involves stewardship and many congregations do outreach locally that is not included in their M&S work. As UnitedChurch members we support our wider church’s work by giving to M&S, and for others we show that we are the hands and face of Jesus in the world when we do the work of M&S.

But I'm not the expert--it's a conversation that should be ongoing.

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