Blog Posts
Vocation: What do you do?
Erin Weber-Johnson and Rev. Mieke Vandersall always felt challenged when they try to tell strangers what they do for a living. Their profession is far more than a job–it's an expression of their vocation.
Photo by Jake Weirick on Unsplash
Exodus 36:6-7
“So Moses gave command, and a word was proclaimed throughout the camp: No one is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing, 7 for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work.”
Erin recently sat next to a Rabbi on a flight. There was a steady stream of people who would interrupt him and ask questions. He leaned over to Erin and quietly whispered, “Sometimes I wish for anonymity.” His vocational expression allowed for people to bring their own narratives, questions, and presuppositions and he became the face for their experiences.
Erin nodded in understanding.
Erin and Mieke always feel challenged when we try and tell strangers what we do for a living. We have far more than a job–but our job is an expression of our vocation.
It’s complicated. As faith-based fundraising and giving consultants for congregations and non-profits, we often hear a number of responses:
I could never do that. Ask people for the money? That feels gross.
God and money? Could you include any harder topics?
Oh you’re one of those…
My hand is on my pocketbook!
Consultants are the worst. They take your watch and tell you the time.
We've thought about trying to find another word for our vocational title. Even the inclination to refer to our consulting work as vocational may be surprising, or feel at odds with the word consultant, given the commonly held perspective that consultants "take your watch and tell you the time."
The alternatives we've imagined for consultants include: Giving Companion and Partner in the Stewardship Ministry. But what do those names mean? In our reflections, we've realized that the word fundraising itself feels imprecise.
We love our work. We love what we do. Because we work collaboratively, we don't see ourselves as mere service providers. This means that while we offer expert advice, we just as readily dream alongside our clients about what's possible. And we do this while focusing each client community's collective gaze on a common goal. We know that when we fixate on a financial goal alone, we are vulnerable to missing what we believe to be the most important point of all: the process of fundraising is itself a restorative life-giving ministry.
The Bible is filled with stories of God preparing a table for us. In many of the gospel stories, Jesus creates a table uniting communities, resources, and people in innovative ways not only build their capacities, but also their imaginations. When we re-meet each other where we are and take a better look at ourselves in relation to our neighbors, we can create powerful new ways of repairing broken systems, reinvigorating our giving and re-energizing our faith.
The spiritual discipline of fundraising within the context of the church is better known as stewardship. When we engage in the acts of asking for and giving gifts, we must acknowledge and confront our own relationships with money, which often bring up feelings of shame, guilt, frustration and confusion, accompanied by perceptions regarding scarcity and abundance.
Often, what's hidden in the acts of inviting and giving gifts is the unique opportunity to be liberated, to not let our past experiences and narratives bind us any longer. The necessary actions in raising funds can heal us, individually and collectively.
This is why we do what we do. Our purpose is not to prioritize care for bigger givers, and we do not seek status symbols for ourselves or for others.
Rather, we have a bold desire to facilitate the redistribution of wealth.
We yearn for communities to understand that what they cannot do individually, they can do together. Our work is guiding communities together to both recognize and build their collective power.
The reason our work is focused on building trust with people is because they haven’t had positive experiences with consultants – or in fundraising. When you don’t know how to raise money well, you rarely succeed, and that does not make people want to engage in this work anymore. In addition, consultants are rarely trusted and often people think we are out there to do as little work as possible and charge as much as we can. We wish there was a different way to describe that this ministry could look in its truest form, as partnership.
Before starting Vandersall Collective, Mieke worked at a small nonprofit that was fighting for queer ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As the organization’s primary fundraiser, she was face-to-face with many individuals and committees asking for funding. Over time, she began to realize that fundraising was so scary to her because when she was asking for funding, she was asking for acceptance of her as a young, queer woman. To get herself out of this dysfunctional cycle, she had to be confident in her own value, in her own identity. Then “the ask” became much stronger, as it was not a personal ask to heal herself (essentially), but instead to provide an opportunity for others to make a difference in a church that both the donor and Mieke dearly loved. This is why it is a spiritual discipline.
And it is this practice that guides our vocational work. We remain rooted in our purpose.
As we do this work, we believe in God’s call to an alternative economy. Walter Brueggeman, a theologian who has impacted both Mieke and Erin’s theological understanding says it this way: “[A] facet of prophetic imagination…is a new economy that is organized around a love of neighbor and that is committed to the viability of widows, orphans, and immigrants. Widows, orphans, and immigrants are people who in the ancient world did not have advocates who were empowered by the totalism in a patriarchal society. So it becomes a test case for the economy, and it is a redistributive economy of respect and viability for vulnerable persons, and there is no way to cover over or to hide or disguise that we are talking about policies of redistribution.”
Our vocation is so much more than raising money by whatever means necessary.
We acknowledge that vulnerability is at the heart of what we do. It is hard to acknowledge that we have needs. That we need each other. That we cannot do it alone.
Our relationships with money not only shape our relationship with God but impact our relationships with each other. The narratives we tell about our worth intersect with our ability to recognize God’s movement in the world. We are unable to imagine what belonging means in the kingdom of God and create structures around these imaginings without examining the relationship between our worth and work, without reconstructing a theology around money that is liberative.
Our prayer is that one day, as was the case in Exodus, all will have enough—so much so that the people were restrained from giving.
May it be so.
Erin Weber-Johnson
Erin Weber-Johnson is Senior Consultant at Vandersall Collective, a faith based, woman-led consulting firm and Primary Faculty of Project Resource. In 2017 she co-founded the Collective Foundation, which worked to address the gap in giving characteristics in faith communities of color. In 2022 she co-founded The Belonging Project, a movement designed to reimagine belonging across the ecclesial landscape.
Previously, Erin worked as the Senior Program Director at the Episcopal Church Foundation, as a grants officer at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, and served as a missionary for the Episcopal Church. She holds a BS from Greenville University, a Masters of Public Administration for NYU and is currently completing a second masters in Religion and Theology from United Theological Seminary.
A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.
Rev. Mieke Vandersall
Rev. Mieke Vandersall, Owner and Principal Consultant, has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in the religious nonprofit arena. Mieke encourages nonprofits, congregations and religious leaders as they work to fund their ministries; this work comes out of a deep knowledge of the particular exhilaration and stress of working for long-term structural change and beginning and sustaining programs.
Prior to her consulting work, she was the Executive Director of Parity, where she founded a program for LGBTQ Future Pastors, as well as Not So Churchy, a new worshiping community. This post spanned from 2003-2014. Mieke and the Future Pastors Program is a feature of the documentary film, Out of Order.
Mieke is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Presbytery of Southern New England. Mieke’s work at Vandersall Collective has also been recognized as a validated ministry by the Presbytery of Southern New England.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Stewardship during an election
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
I have been asked by a number of people about some top tips for what to do this year with giving and the upcoming presidential election. There is concern that divisive politics may monopolize the attention of those in our communities. Or, alternatively, how our communities respond to the election may cause givers to rethink their life choices and keep their annual gifts. Recently a pastor asked me if I could send a top five list for ensuring success this election year.
I want to honor that question and also acknowledge the reality that many of us are tired, feeling the relentless weight of holding too much. The truth is we often look for Top 5 Lists because we need quick help and support. Top 5 Lists offer us the promise of easy to digest information and easy to implement action steps.
Each of us deeply desires to know how to eat right, lose weight, save enough for our retirement, and raise our children. We want to know how to have/be enough. Yet, most “How to” lists are full of things we already know. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read a magazine headline promising to change my life in three easy steps only to be disappointed when I already knew the answers. There is no silver bullet, no step-by-step process, to the perfect life.
So it is with stewardship. Really, what we need is not “How to raise money positively/effectively,” but to ask what is keeping us from living into stewardship as a holistic ministry while reflecting the context of the moment. I bet the answers to that list would be considerable!
Here is what we know about giving and the upcoming election. In the 2016 presidential election, I made a hypothesis about how the election would impact giving to congregations. I thought it would be congregations that aligned themselves with one presidential candidate or another that would see increases in giving as advocacy and “rage” giving were at a high.
However, the giving data and statistics that would emerge months and years later would show my hypothesis was wrong. Giving was high in congregations that mostly identified as one political party or another. And yet, it was also high in a number of churches considered purple or with a mixed set of views within the congregations.
Instead of my faulty hypothesis, giving was propelled in congregations that clearly reflected what was happening outside their church doors, made a connection between where people were with their giving and how their giving to the church would be meaningful given that moment in the nation’s history, and invited others to be part of the work.
What this demonstrated to me was there were pastoral needs felt by a congregation and giving became an opportunity to meet people where they were. The work of stewardship, in all its wholeness, was not about meeting a budget so the ministry could take place. Rather, stewardship was and is a contextual ministry, one that asks what are the needs of those in our congregation and how do we shape our ministry accordingly.
The work of stewardship leaders is the work of creating connective tissue between the motivations of givers in the wake of emerging national issues and concerns, and a life-giving invitation to explore how their giving can bring healing and repair in the world.
2024 began with some people concerned about the outcome of the presidential election in the United States this year. Regardless of the outcome, we as a country have seen the fallout and experienced the painful divisions from recent presidential elections.
And so, unpacking what stewardship means this year will be important. Stewardship is so much more than a fall drive to meet the regular operating costs of a congregation.
When we think about gifts, there has been a long-held focus in the church on the 3 T’s: time, talent and treasure. I believe initially the idea of holistic stewardship was amorphous, too hard to wrap our minds around. Instead, leaders offered tangible things that could be offered to God. However, our bodies, and souls are not limited to just these three T. We are more than the time we give, our skills and expertise, more than the money we provide. We are flesh and blood bodies. Our minds and souls, connected in profound ways, were created by the same divine power that made the earth and the heavens and called it good.
Stewardship is not limited to these three components. It includes the totality of our beings. In the ministry of stewardship, we bring our whole selves to the Divine.
What does stewardship of our bodies, our minds, our souls look like this year with the election?
Our family has begun having conversations about our values. What does God call us to be and to do the next day after the election? Identifying our values now allows our family to move beyond places that may feel out of our control, to plan proactively who we will be on Day One.
Once our values are identified, we articulate who the people are that may be most impacted by the election. How might God call us to invite, to manage, to give to and to thank in the midst of that reality?
In this season of the election, I invite you to consider stewardship in its totality, to do the work of connecting others' needs to the abiding values of your faith community, and to live in the hope that through giving of our whole selves, we can work for repair of the world.
Erin Weber-Johnson
Erin Weber-Johnson is Senior Consultant at Vandersall Collective, a faith based, woman-led consulting firm and Primary Faculty of Project Resource. In 2017 she co-founded the Collective Foundation, which worked to address the gap in giving characteristics in faith communities of color. In 2022 she co-founded The Belonging Project, a movement designed to reimagine belonging across the ecclesial landscape.
Previously, Erin worked as the Senior Program Director at the Episcopal Church Foundation, as a grants officer at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, and served as a missionary for the Episcopal Church. She holds a BS from Greenville University, a Masters of Public Administration for NYU and is currently completing a second masters in Religion and Theology from United Theological Seminary.
A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The Cost of a Body
Photo by Eddi Aguirre on Unsplash
What is a body worth to you?
What is a body worth to God?
On the surface, one might be inclined to answer that bodies are priceless. Bodies are sacred. Bodies are beloved.
Yet, this language doesn`t translate consistently. There is a tension that occurs when we talk about one’s hourly rate or the value of one’s time. When a person is injured or killed, insurance adjusters quantify what a life is worth in terms of monetary reimbursement. When considering prison reform, school reform, hospital reform, analytics are made of the cost of a single body in order to determine cost/benefit analysis. How do we make sense of this question in the modern world?
Recently, the nation was horrified at the brutal murder of Eliza Fletcher, a woman out on a run one morning. Initially described in the news at a pre-kindergarten teacher, major news headlines quickly changed to read ‘billionaire’s heiress grandaughter murdered.’ Within 24 hours new information was provided that her grandfather was not a billionaire; that initial headlines didn’t accurately reflect Eliza’s identity. In the midst of this question of her worth, others asked important questions about why this case gathered more attention compared to similar cases of women of color. Why does one human’s body garner extensive attention and public outcry while others remain unseen?
In the Twin Cities where I live, after the murder of George Floyd my family watched as the national guard’s tanks made their way through our streets. Palpable pain and loss gave way to fresh visual expressions of grief. Strangely, the national guards presence seemed to focus their protection at predominantly white owned businesses. The news began to speak of the cost of the protests to local establishments. One business owner of a nearby Indian restaurant was featured saying, “George Floyd’s life is worth the loss of my business. I can always rebuild again.”
How one views our bodies, as vehicles for productivity, as estimable by hourly wage or as beloved impacts the ability to engage in conversations about money. The powerful relationships between body and money impacts our relationship to God.
What can we say about how God moves in our world when even our notions of stewardship and giving are often rooted in the sense of ownership of our material goods. Having created us in his/her/their image, the creation story tells that God entrusted the land and animals to Adam.
Edgar Villenueva further problematizes this idea in Decolonizing Wealth by saying the concept of colonization took place around the time when humans became farmers and concepts of ownership, managing or controlling the land gave way to owning plants and animals.
Somewhere stewardship began to resemble ownership. And, in developing systems of hierarchy and control, ownership didn't stop at land and animals.
I would take Villenueva’s wisdom one step further as colonization connects to bodies. Our body’s worth, with roots from our nation’s history of slavery and the selling of bodies is embeded in our DNA. We feel it in our bodies and in our relationships with others. It translates now to overwork, insurmountable anxiety, and vocational burnout. Folks describe their fear of being replaceable, disposable, or not of worth. Overwork becomes a defense mechanism when asking, “what am I worth?”
Psalm 139: 14
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
As we move into a season often called that of annual giving, stewardship or fall giving, we are often asked to consider our relationship to money. Yet, the weight of this question about the worth of a body lays heavy. How do we pray to a God who forgives us our debts as we forgive our debtors when this language is also linked to scriptures of how God loves us so much that he gave his only son? Ultimately, this drives the question: what was Jesus’s body even worth?
The question of bodies and worth emerges both in theologies of giving as well as the lived experience of those inviting others to give. In thinking of stewardship and faith leaders, I’ve both experienced and read painful stories from leaders (people of color, women, those differently abled, etc) in the church where they`ve described the impact of code switching, of leaving the identity of their body at the door in order to raise money. In other words, these beloved were forced to measure the cost of their body in order to receive funding for ministry.
What am I worth? What are you worth?
Sonya Renee Taylor writes in her powerful book The Body is Not an Apology, “When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable.” The work of monetizing bodies was historically crafted and rigorously maintained to enforce the notion that some bodies are worth more than others. Some bodies would cost more than others.
The theology of decolonizing stewardship invites us into a new way of thinking about our money in relation to both our bodies as well as other beloved of God. This moment calls us to an unpacking of the ways our minds as well as bodies have been colonized in ways that apply a cost to the body, to the soul. Our work, in exploring our relationships to money and bodies, is one of asking difficult questions, living in ambiguity, avoiding prescription, and celebrating diversity as holy.
This moment calls us to bear witness not only inherited sinful systems that would see a body as something to possess, own, or monetize. It is one not of only tearing down the colonial mindset, but of hopeful imagination as we invite the holy spirit to reorient ourselves to God and each other in the world.
Erin Weber-Johnson
Erin Weber-Johnson is Senior Consultant at Vandersall Collective, a faith based, woman-led consulting firm and Primary Faculty of Project Resource. In 2017 she co-founded the Collective Foundation, which worked to address the gap in giving characteristics in faith communities of color. In 2022 she co-founded The Belonging Project, a movement designed to reimagine belonging across the ecclesial landscape.
Previously, Erin worked as the Senior Program Director at the Episcopal Church Foundation, as a grants officer at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, and served as a missionary for the Episcopal Church. She holds a BS from Greenville University, a Masters of Public Administration for NYU and is currently completing a second masters in Religion and Theology from United Theological Seminary.
A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.