Dishonest Stewards: Three Ways Your Money Management is Destroying Your Mission

“You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). 

The words linger in the air after the Gospel is read or the words are preached. Everyone nods in agreement. Maybe in that same sermon, we hear St. Paul’s words to Timothy: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). 

Yes, yes—we cannot serve money. We cannot love money. 

If only it were so simple. 

Vice is interesting; there are significant, nasty consequences to vice that we see and that we often associate with it. When we think of greedy people who love money, we think about CEOs who pursue profits at all costs or company leaders who steal money. When greed manifests in the church, we think of the sad occasions when a church employee or pastor embezzles or steals from the church funds or misuses them for their benefit. 

But vice isn’t always overt—it often manifests itself in ways we don’t quickly recognize. 

Are you serving God or money at your parish? It’s time to take an honest look at three ways that our money management may reveal that we are more tied to dollar signs than we realize and come to terms with how each of these “little vices” is slowly destroying our big mission. 

You hoard money

Jesus tells a parable of a farmer with an excellent crop yield one year. He has so much yield that he builds bigger barns to store it all. Upon completing the new storage facility, he compliments himself and believes he can finally relax. He dies the next day (Luke 12:16-21).

We tell ourselves a little lie about money that significantly impacts our mission: One day, we will have “enough” in the church. We operate from a scarcity mindset, constantly worried about stewardship and finances. We may even fool ourselves into believing that storing up money in our budget is providing us with safety in a world where inflation can dramatically impact donations to our parish. 

As a result, we constantly worry about budgets and pour over transactions. We question purchases, look to slash costs and try to make cuts. We ask questions about salaries like, “Does that person need to be paid that much? This is a ministry!” and we try to find places where we can cut costs on programs entirely (“We don’t need to do a youth group trip this year—just have them do something for a day at the parish”). 

When we hoard our parish money, we forget the purpose of why God is giving us the money. Our budget is not about storing up provisions for downtime—it is about investing our money into people and ministry so that we can lead them into a relationship with Jesus. This is the piece the farmer in the parable of Jesus forgot: He shouldn’t have built extra storage for the high yield of crop… he should have given it away to people who needed it. As the saying goes, “You can’t take it with you,” which rings true for our parish finances as it does for us. 

You lack vision for money

A lack of vision often drives our scarcity mindset and makes us hoard money. When we lack a vision and a plan for our parish and ministry, money quickly becomes our Master through fear (hoarding money) or frivolous spending without purpose. Many parishes are caught in a cycle of a fear and scarcity mindset, moving into a frivolous spending mindset and back into a scarcity mindset. This is how it works:

A parish is hoarding money, reluctant to spend it out of fear. One day, the team realizes they are in decline—maybe they have to contend with some challenging data on the parish, or a new pastor comes into the church and calls it out—and they decide to begin spending more. But there is no plan or vision to direct the money, so it goes everywhere. It gets spent on frivolous endeavors that aren’t serving anyone, is wasted on staff positions that are poorly defined, and never produces a positive impact on ministry. Giving suffers, and then people get scared. Repeat the cycle. 

We need a plan and vision for investing our finances, or it will run us into the ground. Jesus tells another parable about three servants, each given a different amount of money to look after (Matthew 25:14-30). The first two invest the money, and both get a return on their investment. The third, lacking a plan, buries the money in the ground. Upon return, the Master finds his money has multiplied from the first two, and their responsibility is multiplied. Still, the third has his position taken away for failing to invest. 

Then Jesus offers a strange, pithy statement: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will grow rich; but from one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29). 

What do we need to have to gain more? A vision for the future. The first two servants didn’t simply invest; they knew how and where to invest. This is obvious because they each doubled their investment and had a plan for handling the money. The third, however, panicked. His only plan was to avoid losing money (maybe a bit of a scarcity mindset?). 

When we have a vision for our mission, we can direct our money rather than having it run us into spending and scarcity. A vision also challenges us beyond the confines of our budget; it allows us to invest our money into worthy causes that may not make financial sense initially but accomplish a long-term goal. Remember: The money God has given us needs to be invested in people and ministry. A vision helps us know what that looks like. 

You won’t ask God (and trust Him)

One of Jesus’s simplest and most powerful statements is, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). It was one of the first passages from the Gospels I memorized because it gave me hope that Jesus would hear my prayers and respond with what I needed. 

Do you think I will write about asking God to send you donations and balance your budget here? Do you think I will tell you to “ask big” and that “God is never outdone in generosity?” 

This is partly true—we should ask God for big things. We should ask God to send people into our ministry who can financially support us and ask if we want to receive them. 

We should also be mindful of the words from the Letter of James, instructing the early Christian community:

“You ask but do not receive because you ask wrongly…” (James 4:2).

We need to ask God for big things and pray about our plans. We must ask for the grace to overcome our scarcity mindset and focus on abundance. We must ask the Lord to grant us a vision to inspire others and direct our finances. We must pray for the Holy Spirit to help us discern that vision. 

We also need to ask with the right heart and intentions. Are we asking God to be our Master and for all of our ends and roads to lead to Him? Is our heart set on building the Kingdom of God… or the Kingdom of our Parish?

Our posture of heart is ultimately where our financial mismanagement comes from. Suppose we don’t believe in the mission of Jesus Christ and aren’t drawing close to Him, trusting that sometimes Jesus may call us to do big things beyond the budget or a vision more significant than our financial storehouses. In that case, we are going to serve money. If our heart is set on “keeping our parish open,” we will serve our profit and loss sheets. 

Let’s look at our parishioners as customers and donors and not disciples. We will pray hard during a capital campaign but wonder why it failed. If we ask big things of God, but only so that we will look good before others and increase the stature of our parish in the diocese and community as an end to itself, then we shouldn’t be surprised when our plans do not come to fruition. 

But if we can ask God to give us a big vision and the money we need to fund it, then we are putting our lives in the correct order—trusting that God will carry through what God has called us toward. 

To serve God’s will and be obedient to it is to serve the true Master. In doing so, God will multiply not only our efforts but also the financial resources we need to bring that vision to reality.