Robert Hoffman has served as a stewardship consultant for forty years. He has worked with congregations that assume that stewardship ministry is primarily concerned with raising funds for the church. At some point during their work together, he would try to explain to the church leaders he was working with that stewardship is concerned about our relationship with our creator, not funding the church. At which point they would typically look at him as if he was crazy.

How could so much of the church be so misinformed? Because for the past 1,700 years, the church in the West has been giving mixed and confusing messages when it talks about money and stewardship.

Becoming People of the Way takes a long and hard look at what we have been saying and doing. The book's premise is that much of what passes for stewardship ministry today is, in fact, counterproductive. Much of what churches have been doing in the name of stewardship has led to its undoing. That is the bad news.

The good news is that the author identifies many of these unhelpful behaviors and offers suggestions on how to move in more healthy and helpful directions.

In the end, Becoming People of the Way is a very hopeful and positive book. It resolutely claims that God has not given up on the church. "God loves us as we are, but too much to leave us there."