It Is What It Is – Giving in a Zambian Archdiocese: An Existential phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract

Background: Church financing innovation has not been widely studied in faith-based organizations. The church has largely been viewed as a spiritual organisation which needs to be managed differently, possibly that there is no need for it to be involved in business undertakings. The purpose of this study was to test the assumptions of the theory of constraints if it holds in accounting for church financing innovation in the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lusaka.

Methods: This was a short ethnographic naturalistic inquiry rooted in existential phenomenology. The analysis was based on samples of archdiocese leaders, parish council leaders and priests across strata of churches in the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lusaka. We integrated our analysis using Van Manen's methodical procedures for interpretive phenomenological analysis and methodological procedures for framework analysis by Braun and Clarke.

Results: Based on the data we collected, we categorise our participants' lived experiences in six themes and giving is shaped by the socio-cultural and religious practices as well as congregational culture in which giving is enacted. Meanings of giving show are multifaceted and complex. They exhibit an interplay of patterns, across all themes.  Generally, participants agree that the amounts they give are not adequate specially to maintain infrastructure, meet staff and leadership salaries and stipends, the operational needs of the clergy and a number of welfare activities like supporting seminarians and catholic community schools.

Conclusions: The findings provide initial evidence that believers in the Archdiocese ought to learn from the teachings of New Testament teachings on giving. The Church leadership has a moral obligation to teach about giving throughout its structures. Catholics just and like all other Christian believers must reunite the virtues which are received from God and by which Christians transformed in reality as new beings in the pursuit of the supreme goodness ought to abide into giving from the centre of the heart and cheerfully.

Key words: Archdiocese, Church, giving, lived experiences

DOI: 10.7176/JPCR/56-07

Publication date:August31^st 2023