Kids and Stewardship

BY REV. TANYA YUEN

“HOW CAN WE get the kids involved in understanding stewardship?” I remember someone asking me this at a deacons’ meeting where stewardship was the focus of our discussion. We were observing both the decline in financial giving and the increasing challenges due to lack of volunteers in many of our ministries. “At last!” I thought as I suggested that we could ensure kids were present in the worship service while tithes and offering were being collected and even involve them in collecting the offering during worship.

There is actually more to that question then simply how we teach kids stewardship. Further reading and study helped me to understand that it is really more of a question about how we (adults) continually cultivate the environment surrounding kids so that they respond in gratitude and generosity both personally and in the community around them.

It is important that we cultivate that environment from when they are quite young by modelling stewardship, having intentional conversations and teaching about stewardship, and finding different ways to weave tangible examples of stewardship through daily life.

At its core, stewardship is all about having an “others first” mentality. Practicing gratitude and generosity in very practical, hands-on ways with kids, both within families and within church communities, invites them to become grateful and generous people who look out towards others.

Stewardship, like so much of what we hope kids will learn, is an ethos within which kids must be immersed, over and above receiving instruction. Allowing toddlers to ‘help’ with household chores, despite it likely lengthening the time needed to accomplish a particular chore, develops a sense of looking around for needs to be met that continues to grow as kids get older. Incorporating simple practices of “give some, save some, spend some” with young kids as they receive money for birthdays or other occasions instills a financial stewardship mindset from a young age. Relating Bible stories to their lives and the issues of today helps kids develop a “theology of stewardship” as it relates to areas like creation, their bodies, talents and spiritual gifts, time and priorities, relationships, and financial and material possessions. Perhaps the question we each need to ask ourselves is this: “What do I do so that the kids in my care develop lives of responding in gratitude and generosity, both within themselves and toward the people and world around them?

What could stewardship with kids look like?

Home: Let younger kids ‘help’ with chores, e.g. make their beds. Give them money that they can be ‘generous’ with by looking for needs to meet. Have family serving opportunities, like cleaning up litter in local park. As kids get older, have conversations about the cost of living and about creation care as you model turning off lights, not letting water run, and recycling items. Have family conversations about time stewardship, ways of serving together, family ‘mission’ projects, caring for home and material possessions well, and extending generosity.

School: Teach kids to steward their possessions well by taking care of clothes, lunchboxes, backpacks, desks, chairs, books, etc. Help kids learn how their talents can care for and serve others. Invest in relationships. Teach and model body stewardship by preparing and packing healthy lunches and encouraging them to be physically active and to respect their bodies.

Church: Invite kids to consider how they can serve the church: invite them to practice giving tithes and offerings, bringing food or other items the church may be collecting; helping with meal programs or special mission projects; helping in the worship service. Simple jobs for younger kids include handing out bulletins, assisting with collecting offering, helping pass out Sunday school materials or cleaning up craft items.