 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | | PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS |
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Is finding leaders for your congregational stewardship ministry more of a chore than a joy? Is lack of leadership limiting your stewardship ministry to your annual funding appeal? Perhaps it's time to take a fresh look at your stewardship ministry team structure. Bruce Barkhauer of the Center for Faith and Giving of for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) suggests that congregations have three teams for stewardship ministry leadership: the Finance Team, the Stewardship Team, and the Legacy Gifts Team. The Stewardship Team The Stewardship Team's responsibilities focus on Christian stewardship as discipleship, giving as an essential part of our life as Christian stewards, and connecting generosity with the church's mission and ministry. Activities for the Stewardship Team include educating the church on the many facets of stewardship, overseeing the annual stewardship campaign, and regularly communicating about how the congregation's generosity is supporting its mission and ministry. Creative, visionary, and spiritual persons who are good communicators have important gifts for this team. The Legacy Gifts Team Legacy gifts are a unique type of generosity, and persons should have the necessary knowledge, discernment, and trust of the congregation to be members of the Legacy Gifts Team. This team needs to make sure the required policies and relationships with the appropriate supporting financial institutions exist to receive legacy gifts. This team invites legacy gifts, celebrates the gifts and the givers, and upholds donor intent. The Finance Team The Finance Team is the manager of the gifts received and how they support the congregation's mission and ministry, including monitoring income and expenses and generating financial reports. They also should take responsibility for thanking the givers. Persons with accounting and business experience are often good fits for this team. Other important characteristics are the abilities to analyze trends, understand and interpret the church's vision, and be realistic without being alarmist. |
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| | REGISTER NOW TO ATTEND PATHWAYS TO GENEROSITY: SIGNS OF HOPE CONFERENCE |
Pathways to Generosity: Signs of Hope Conference April 3-5, 2018 | Dallas, TX Register now to attend the 2018 Pathways to Generosity conference hosted by The Ecumenical Stewardship Center. During the conference, you will explore paths to faithful generosity with insights from experts in keynote sessions and workshops. You will see signs of hope through inspiring worship and stories in "Bright Spot" presentations, and you leave ready and able to create new paths of generosity in your church or organization.
Keynote presentations will be delivered by The Revd. Dr. Katie Hays, pastor of Galileo Church, Fort Worth, Texas; The Rev. Dr. Eric H. F. Law, author of Holy Currencies: Six Blessings for Sustainable and Missional Ministries; Aimee Laramore, Philanthropic Strategist at Christian Theological Seminary; and The Rt. Rev. Pedro Suarez, Bishop, Florida-Bahamas Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. There will also be more than two dozen workshops about faithful generosity.
If you can't be in Dallas for the conference, you can participate online.
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| | IDEAS THAT IMPACT: STEWARDSHIP |
Congregations often plan and budget as though planning were one thing and budgeting another. But the budget is part of a congregation's plan for ministry. The budget must express the congregation's ministry priorities, writes a former Alban senior consultant.
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There is one asset that nearly all churches possess-land. Placing buildings on church land does not have to be the land's sole function. Land can also be used advantageously to fund ministry, writes the former executive pastor of Marble Collegiate Church (New York, NY).
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| by Craig A. Satterlee
Both new and veteran preachers alike find the annual stewardship sermon a challenge and are eager for encouraging, practical advice. In Preaching and Stewardship, Craig Satterlee offers a nuts-and-bolts handbook on preaching stewardship, raising issues preachers need to consider when preparing stewardship sermons and offering advice on how to address them. Satterlee argues that stewardship preaching must include a bold and concrete proclamation of God's love, will, and justice, as well as an invitation to grow as stewards in response to this proclamation. He focuses each chapter on a question preachers ought to ask themselves as they prepare the stewardship sermon, beginning with, 'What do you mean by stewardship?' and 'Why should we give to the church?' In chapters 3 through 6, he explores what the Bible says about stewardship. In chapter 7, he names some of the assumptions both preachers and worshipers bring to the stewardship sermon. The final chapter a variety of ways congregations can support the stewardship sermon. Satterlee illustrates the premise of each chapter with anecdotes from congregational life. Preachers who desire examples of stewardship sermons will especially appreciate stewardship sermons he shares from various preachers to illustrate points in the main text. |
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