They're Not Giving Less. They're Giving Differently.

If you've ever been married, you know that conversations about money rarely stay focused on dollars for long.

My husband and I have had plenty of those conversations. I grew up in Canada, where budgeting, planning, and saving were simply part of everyday life. My husband grew up in a barrio where stability depended less on institutions than on people. When someone was in need, neighbors showed up. Food was shared. Resources were pooled. Community wasn't an optional extra—it was how people survived.

Over the years, I've realized we weren't really talking about money. We were uncovering the assumptions we'd each learned about security, generosity, and belonging.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that our experiences shape what we believe money is for. The communities that form us influence how we think about saving, spending, giving, and what we expect from one another.

Which brings me to Ministry Shares.

We often describe Ministry Shares as a funding system—and of course they are. Churches contribute financially so that, together, we can support ministries that an individual congregation couldn’t accomplish alone. But underneath the budgets and spreadsheets is something much older: the biblical practice of God's people sharing resources so that the whole body can flourish.

As I've visited churches across Canada, I've occasionally heard concerns that newcomers aren't participating in financial giving in the same ways as long-time members. I understand those concerns, but they've also made me wonder whether we're asking the right question.

What if we're not always recognizing the forms generosity already takes?

What if Ministry Shares is actually describing something much older than a system? What if many of the newcomers sitting in your pews already understand the heart of it better than we realize? 

If you've come from a place where community was your safety net, giving often begins with people before institutions. It looks like helping family members get established. It looks like sending money back home. It looks like caring for neighbours, sharing meals, watching each other's children, opening your home, helping someone find a job, translating forms, driving people to appointments, and carrying one another through difficult seasons.

In other words, it looks a lot like the early church.

That doesn't diminish the importance of financial giving to the church. Healthy ministries require faithful financial stewardship. But understanding one another's experiences can help us appreciate that generosity is often broader than what shows up on our budget reports.

The challenge is that many of us were formed in cultures where generosity is often measured through organized systems. Today's newcomers are frequently arriving with experiences shaped by very different realities. Many historic Christian Reformed congregations in Canada were built by immigrants who came through a period of post-war rebuilding into a society that offered increasing stability and opportunity. Those communities worked incredibly hard to establish churches, schools, ministries, and structures that could serve future generations. 

But many newcomers today arrive from places marked by economic uncertainty, political instability, or systems that have proven unreliable. They may not arrive with the same assumptions about institutions, but they often arrive deeply formed in the practice of collective care. They know what it means to depend on one another and share resources. They know what it means to belong to a community where nobody gets through life alone.

That's why I think Ministry Shares has an opportunity that is bigger than funding ministry: It can become a bridge.

One of the most underappreciated gifts that comes through Ministry Shares is access to resources like the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). The IDI is actually a powerful tool because it helps churches understand the cultural assumptions they bring into everyday conversations - like conversations about money.

If I’ve learned one major lesson after years of working with money, it’s that money conversations are rarely about money. Give people ten minutes and you'll discover you're not discussing dollars at all—they're conversations about trust, responsibility, belonging. About who we believe will be there for us when things fall apart.

When churches engage tools like the IDI, something interesting often happens. The conversation begins to shift. Instead of asking, "Why aren't they giving?" people start asking, "How do different cultures understand generosity?" and wondering, "What might we be missing?"

Those questions create space for curiosity instead of frustration. They create room for listening instead of assumptions.  And perhaps most importantly, they help us recognize that our systems like Ministry Shares aren’t disconnected from the global church that is increasingly sitting in our pews. In many ways, it reflects values that Christians around the world have been practicing for generations.

And maybe the future of Ministry Shares isn't simply helping newcomers understand our systems. Maybe it's allowing newcomers to remind us what those systems were trying to accomplish in the first place.