“The church needs to do a better job talking about money. And in order to do this, the church might want to consider talking a lot less about giving…Another way to come at this issue is to say that the church has been trying to send one message (such as “vibrant faith always bubbles over in generous sharing”), but the culture has been receiving a different message (such as, “give us your money, we want it”). This is about weighing explicit versus implicit content, about the denotative meaning of our preaching versus connotative meaning. And the message is: church leaders mainly tend to talk about money when we want to get it out of someone else’s pockets and into our own.”
Rolf A. Jacobsen in Rethinking Stewardship: Our Culture, Our Theology, Our Practices, ed. Frederick J. Gaiser (St. Paul, MN: Word & World, 2010) 2-3.