In a stew about stewardship?
Each year in the spring a new stewardship packet arrives from our national office. The Givings Magazine has its own insert that promotes a campaign idea for the coming year with bulletin inserts, cover and poster, a timeline, strategy and theological underpinnings to support it. Each year our congregation orders the materials which are free, orders the bulletin covers which are not and forms a committee to adapt and implement the new idea. With high excitement we pore over the gimmick that will transform what might be seen as a duty and obligation to fun and fellowship opportunities.
We have baked cupcakes to accompany our yearly budget mailings as we ate dessert first: a stewardship campaign that challenged us to do what the Wealthy Barber suggests, “pay yourself first” – – take your savings and charitable givings off the top before you set your own personal budgets! That way you never miss it – – it’s as if you are making ten percent less but with none of the downside! We have focused on the Generations of those who came before us and those who will follow, determining to leave a legacy for our children and their children to follow Jesus. We have focused on the Psalms, on Lamentations, on Epiphany and the bringing of gifts to the Christ child. We have tried each and every idea.
This year, for the “More Than Enough” Stewardship Campaign, we have given each group in our congregation: the Session, the Board, the Mission and Outreach Committee, the Choir, the three ladies’ groups including the WMS, and the Church School $250 dollars reenacting the Parable of the Talents, so that they might think of creative and fun ways to double or triple our money, reaching out to people who are not part of our church family. So far, we’ve held dinners, luncheons, organ concerts and there’s more to come.
More Than Enough our poster says, and more than enough turkey and beef pie orders came in than the Mission and Outreach Committee and the Ladies’ Association dreamt of! Not for over fifteen years had the women of our congregation even considered making meat pies! But when this challenge was presented to the Mission and Outreach Committee, two of the ‘ladies’ on that committee remembered a time when our church made and sold meat pies. The newly retired teacher and chair person of the committee said that he thought we might be able to do that if the Ladies’ Association could help with quantities, recipes, pastry making and their share of the Talent money. So with $500 and their expertise we placed order forms in the bulletins for a few sundays, bought turkeys and roasts on sale and stored them in members’ freezers, handed out measured bags of flour and bars of lard or shortening for the great pie making week that would lie ahead. We planned to make 1000 pies but nobody thought we would get over 800 orders right off the bat!
And look at the fun we had, figuring out the best way to assemble our pies!
