The Missing Piece Most Churches Never Talk About When It Comes to Christian Education

Emmi McCabe
Mar 18
8 min read

Updated: Mar 24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzn3R9LfWyU

What if the reason Christian schools are struggling to stay affordable isn't a funding problem — it's a vision problem?

For over 60 years, the Catholic Diocese of Wichita has quietly been running one of the most remarkable models in Christian education in the United States. Their schools are filled. Their communities are thriving. And the funding doesn't come from aggressive tuition hikes or desperate fundraising campaigns.

It comes from a way of life.

In a recent episode of the Wise & Otherwise Podcast, host Dalena Wallace sat down with Father Jarrod Lies — Vicar of Evangelization, Discipleship, and Stewardship for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita — and St. Francis of Assisi parishioner and stewardship veteran Phyllis Kuckelman to unpack what makes this model work, why most churches have never attempted it, and what Christian communities of every denomination can learn from Wichita's six-decade experiment in stewardship.

What Is the Wichita Stewardship Model?

The Diocese of Wichita's approach to stewardship didn't appear overnight. It started with one priest, Monsignor McGread, who began applying stewardship principles at St. Francis of Assisi parish in 1969. It didn't go diocese-wide until 1984 — a full 25 years after the idea first took root in 1959.

That timeline is important. Father Lies was careful to point it out early in the conversation.

"There's a lot of high expectations and desires," he said, "but it took a 25-year period of development before it got to what people now know and identify."

So what exactly is stewardship, as the Diocese of Wichita defines it?

Their definition — arrived at through years of prayerful discernment by priests, bishops, and lay faithful — is this:

"A grateful response of a Christian disciple who recognizes and receives God's gifts and shares these gifts in love of God and neighbor."

Notice what's missing from that definition: money. Programs. Outcomes. Tuition relief.

Stewardship, in this framework, is not a fundraising strategy. It is a way of life rooted in the identity of a Christian disciple.

Stewardship Is Not a Program — It's a Culture

One of the most powerful moments in the conversation came from Phyllis Kuckelman, who has been living this way of life as a parishioner at St. Francis for decades.

"Stewardship is a way of life," she said. "It's not a program. It's something that you live and breathe in every aspect of your life. It permeates your being — the way you think, the things you say, the books you read, the movies you see, the way you treat people, the way you help take care of the poor."

This is the part most churches miss.

When a congregation approaches stewardship as a program — a seasonal campaign, a pledge drive, a tithing sermon series — it may generate short-term results. But without a cultural foundation built on genuine faith and gratitude, those results eventually collapse.

Father Lies put it plainly: "If anyone starts with the outcome, the warning is you won't succeed."

The outcome — in Wichita's case, a thriving, community-funded Catholic school system — is a result of the culture, not the starting point. And that distinction makes all the difference.

The Biblical Foundation for a Stewardship Way of Life

One of the richest parts of the conversation was Father Lies walking through the scriptural basis for stewardship — making the case that this is not a cherry-picked New Testament concept, but a thread woven throughout the entirety of Scripture.

He traced it from:

Genesis — Adam and Eve called to care for and cultivate creation as God's stewards
Abraham — tithing a tenth to Melchizedek as an act of worship, not bribery
The Widow's Mite — Jesus pointing out the woman who gave out of her substance, not her surplus
The Parable of the Talents — the call to grow and multiply what God has entrusted to us
Acts 2 — the early church sharing everything in common as the first expression of Christian community
1 Peter — the explicit call to be "stewards of the manifold gifts of God"

And ultimately, Father Lies pointed to Christ himself as the supreme model of stewardship:

"The greatest act of stewardship is the person of Jesus Christ, who though He was in the form of God did not deem equality with God as something to grasp, but rather emptied Himself and took the form of a slave."

Stewardship, at its deepest level, is not about what we give. It is about who we become in the giving.

Why Stewardship Cannot Be Transactional

One of Father Lies' most pointed observations was about the danger of approaching church — and stewardship — with a consumer mindset.

In a culture shaped by corporate thinking, it's easy for congregants to see their church as a service provider. Attend services, give your tithe, receive ministry in return. Show up, pay up, get your access.

But this transactional model, Father Lies argued, is "not scripturally based" and ultimately leads to resentment, disengagement, and the slow death of a community's shared mission.

The alternative? A community where people belong not because of what the church offers them, but because they are one body in Jesus Christ — genuinely caring for one another the way a family does.

"We don't treat our household families like transactions," he said. "Mom and dad, you owe me a bedroom. We don't treat our parents as resources."

The same should be true of our church communities.

When people experience genuine belonging — when they feel known, loved, and connected to a shared mission — generosity flows naturally. Not because they've been asked. Not because they'll receive something in return. But because it's who they are.

How Christian Education Fits the Stewardship Model

So where does Christian education come into the picture?

In the Diocese of Wichita, funding Christian schools is one of the outcomes of the stewardship way of life — not the reason for it. And this distinction is critical.

Father Lies shared a striking statistic: in a stewardship-based parish, roughly 40% of education costs are covered by families who actually have children in the school. The remaining 60% or more comes from parishioners with no children enrolled at all.

That number only makes sense in a community where stewardship is a genuine way of life — where people give because they are grateful, not because they expect something in return.

Phyllis described it this way: "Lifelong stewardship is about not giving to a need. It's about giving back because I'm grateful and I'm thankful. It doesn't matter that now I don't have anybody in school here. I am grateful for all that God has given me."

This is what makes the Wichita model sustainable across generations. It is now in its third generation of stewardship culture — families who grew up in stewardship parishes are now raising their own children in the same tradition.

A Word of Warning: What This Model Is NOT

Father Lies was careful — even urgent — to address a misconception that has derailed many communities who have tried to replicate the Wichita model.

This is not a tuition-free system.

"If you ever say that, you're doomed to failure," he said. "This has nothing to do with money schemes. Christian education will always have a financial repercussion. People have to be extremely generous in their financial life."

The idea that a stewardship model will save money or eliminate tuition is not only inaccurate — it's a dangerous rally cry that reduces a deeply spiritual way of life to a financial product. Any community that starts there will find the foundation crumbling beneath them.

The correct starting point is always faith. Then vision. Then culture. Then — only then — do the practical structures of stewardship begin to take shape.

What It Takes to Build This Culture

For church leaders, school founders, and Christian education advocates wondering how to begin, Father Lies offered a clear-eyed framework:

1. Start with the Gospel. Everything must be rooted in faith in Jesus Christ. Not a program. Not a vision statement. A genuine, living relationship with the person of Jesus Christ that transforms how an entire community sees itself.

2. Build a culture before building a system. Monsignor McGread didn't start with forms and pledge cards. He built relationships. He knew every parishioner by name. He created a culture of belonging long before stewardship had a bureaucratic shape.

3. Establish a vision — and champion it. A community needs a leader who can hold up a shared vision and invite people into it. In Wichita, that vision was a Catholic education that could change culture — not just produce outcomes.

4. Embrace the timeline. Twenty-five years. That's how long it took before the Wichita model became what people recognize today. Communities that want a two-year shortcut will be disappointed. This is generational work.

5. Start where you are. "Where you are now is the only place where you can begin," Father Lies said. A small church with 800 souls can still do this. God doesn't wait for ideal conditions. The micro school, the home co-op, the Sunday school class — these are not lesser versions of stewardship. They are stewardship in action.

What Protestant Churches Can Learn From Wichita

Dalena Wallace, coming from a Protestant background, asked the honest question that many listeners were probably thinking: why haven't other Christian denominations done this?

The conversation didn't shy away from the tension. Most Protestant churches teach tithing. Many teach generosity. But few have developed a holistic stewardship culture that extends beyond financial giving to encompass time, talent, and a communal investment in Christian education.

Father Lies suggested the reason may be cultural: a corporate, product-based mindset has crept into many church structures, turning what should be a family into a service provider and its members into consumers.

The answer isn't a new program. It's a return to the basics: belonging, belief, and a genuine community shaped by the love of Jesus Christ.

"The vision for education today has to be: Christianity matters to society," Father Lies said. "If Christian education and Christians in society make for a more just and virtuous society — that creates happiness among its community."

The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters Now

The United States is facing what Father Lies called "the poverties of society" — not financial poverty, but the poverty of isolation, anxiety, depression, and despair. He noted that the U.S. has higher rates of psychological distress than many developing nations — a startling indictment of a culture that has everything materially and is struggling spiritually.

Christian education, shaped by a genuine stewardship community, is one of the most powerful responses available to the Church.

Not because it produces better test scores. But because it forms human beings who know how to love, serve, and carry one another's burdens — the very thing St. Paul calls us to in Galatians.

"Carry one another's burdens," Father Lies quoted. "If we see that a parental burden is the fear for a child to have a poor life, and the hope for a child to have a life of genuine happiness — not success, not financial outcome, but genuine happiness — then my community can be motivated over time to continue to sustain that."

A Closing Thought From Phyllis

Perhaps the most moving moment of the entire conversation came near the end, when Phyllis — who admits she was terrified to speak on the podcast — offered her closing thought:

"We have an obligation both to our family members and to our community at large, our parishes, to get each other to heaven. That's our goal — to get each other to heaven, in whatever way we can do that."

That's what stewardship looks like when it's fully alive. Not a pledge card. Not a building campaign. Not a tuition model.

A community of people, bound together in Jesus Christ, carrying each other toward eternity.

Listen to the Full Episode

This post was adapted from the podcast transcript with the help of AI.

This conversation is part of the Wise & Otherwise Podcast, hosted by Dalena Wallace — homeschool mom, microschool leader, and education missionary. The podcast shares real stories from the front lines of a growing movement in Christian education, exploring how the church can lead in education again: creatively, affordably, and in true partnership with families.