Finding Stewardship Resources

One of the biggest challenges for church leadership is finding good Stewardship resources for worship and education – and, yes, for that annual campaign that most of us start to get really concerned about this time of year, as we move ahead with planning for the fall.

Maybe you already know, in your church, what your Stewardship campaign is going to be about, this year. If so, blessings be upon you!

Or, maybe your Stewardship thinking right now sounds more like this: “Hmmmm... What to do with Stewardship, this year? Haven’t our people – especially our longtime members – heard it all before?”

There’s a wonderful website called Stewardship Kaleidoscope. It’s an outgrowth of a national Presbyterian Stewardship conference that took place last spring. It doesn’t look like much, at first. It appears to be little more than a place to hang an announcement about next year’s conference (which will take place from February 28 through March 2 in Phoenix).

Click on the link, though, that says “Resources from 2010 Stewardship Kaleidoscope.” You’ll open the door to a wealth of resources to stimulate your thinking about how to present the joy of Christian Stewardship to your congregation.

The extensive outline of Bob Sheldon’s workshop, “Annual Campaigns That Really Work,” is especially thought-provoking.

Check out, too, the notes from M. Thomas Norwood Jr.’s workshop, “Rethinking Stewardship: New Strategies for a Changing World.” His simple pie chart, “The Stewardship Process,” contains an incredibly valuable visual lesson for church leaders: how small a piece of the stewardship pie the infamous “Asking” really is. A lot of us burn up all our energy obsessing over how to do that one thing. It’s important – but not the whole story, by any means!

Good stuff, here. Check it out!

What's your church planning this year, by way of a Stewardship campaign? How about writing a comment, below, to share your ideas?