Stewardship Resources

2008 pamphlet showing What Do Mission Support Dollars Do?
Spreadsheet Showing Your Congregation's Mission Support at Work

Mission Support Form for 2008
Upcoming Events
Program Possibilities ( 5-2-08)
Mission Interpreter Program
Resources
Monthly Stewardship Tip Archives
Faith-based Stewardship: An Overview

Mission Support Form for 2008

God calls us to share our time, talents, and money so that the church might fulfill its mission in the world. Sharing these God-given blessings reflects our commitment to building up the Body of Christ.

As partners in ministry with the whole Church, we ask each other to grow toward and beyond tithing as a fundamental expression of faith and as one aspect of healthy and gracious stewardship.

Here is a copy of the congregational mission support form for 2008.

Your Mission Support at Work!

See your congregation's mission support at work!

You can make up your own spreadsheet that will help your congregational members understand how your congregation's mission support contribution is used. Just request a copy of the spreadsheet from your associate of the bishop. Then enter the dollar commitment figure for your congregation for 2008 and the spreadsheet allocates appropriate amounts to different synodical and churchwide ministries.

Click here for an example of the results for a congregation whose mission support figure is $15,000.

Upcoming Events

For information on upcoming events, contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at or by phone at 610-395-6891.

Program Possibilities

Bring a stewardship workshop to your congregation!

Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at 610-395-6891 or michael.bennethum@ecunet.org to schedule one of these five workshops for your stewardship leaders. The only requirement is that you invite two or more neighboring congregations to join you.

Stewardship as Faithraising: An Introduction to Stewardship Ministry
This three hour workshop focuses on nurturing a healthy, bible-centered approach to financial stewardship in a congregation. We will also discuss the 10 best practices of congregations with strong stewardship programs and share resources for carrying out those practices year round. Your stewardship program need not be limited to a once a year effort.
Blessed to Be a Blessing: Herb Miller's Consecration Sunday. This three hour workshop introduces the basic concepts of a faith-based approach to inviting folks to make an annual estimate of giving and provides you the materials to conduct a Consecration Sunday annual response. This is the most effective approach. If you have never done a financial response campaign in your congregation (and may be scared to do so), this workshop is for you.
Choosing a Financial Stewardship Response Program. You have done Consecration Sunday and are ready for something different. This one hour workshop surveys a variety of response methods. Some materials will be available for preview.
The Great Permission: Asset Based Planning. This one-and-one-half hour workshop will introduce you to an approach of discovering your congregation's resources. Too often we start by looking at problems and what we do not have. It is much more fun—and productive—to start with what we do have and what those gifts from God make possible.
10-10-80: What to Do with the Stuff You Have. This 90-minute workshop focuses on youth and those who work with youth. It invites participants to see everything we have as a gift of God, and invites them to honor God in how they share, save, and spend their resources. A number of follow-up activities are included for those who want to continue the conversation at home.

Mission Interpreter Program

Mission Interpreters are "Making Christ Known" by sharing the excitement of our global and churchwide mission and ministry with their own and other congregations. Mission Interpreters are active members of local congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who tell stories of how people's lives are changed through the ministry we do together. Click here to learn more about the program.

Resources

New Stewardship Resource for Children and Youth Wrapped in God’s Love is a 40 page print resource that offers ideas for introducing many aspects of stewardship – of money, of abilities, of the earth, of self – to young people from infancy to age 18. Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at the synod office for information about how to order a copy.
Available for Download: Herb Miller’s Nuggets: Volume 31, Money Isn’t/Is Everything: What Jesus Said about the Spiritual Power of Money. Herb Miller has given the congregations of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod permission to download and copy this 42 page resource that offers ideas and insights that can form the basis for six stewardship sermons and bible studies. To download a PDF of "Money Isn’t/Is Everything," click here.
What Do Mission Support Dollars Do? Here is a pamphlet that shows where your mission support dollars go in the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod. The figures are for 2008. Share these with your congregation!
Awakening to God’s Call to Earthkeeping Looking for a resource to help congregational members embrace God’s call to care for the earth? Check out Awakening to God’s Call to Earthkeeping, a four session adult study program designed to help participants gain a deeper awareness or our connection to creation. This resource is available for purchase in booklet form from the ELCA distribution center, or it can be downloaded for free from the ELCA stewardship web site at www.elca.org/stewardship/teaching. In addition to everything a person needs to lead the four sessions, the appendix contains a theological statement about earthkeeping, a wealth of quotations, and a list of helpful resources for more in-depth study and action.
Ask, Thank, Tell, by Charles Lane, is an easy to read, exciting new stewardship resource filled with ideas for congregations just beginning stewardship ministry and for congregations looking to expand stewardship ministry in new directions. It's available from Augsburg Fortress, 1-800-328-4648; ISBN # 0-8066-5263-2, $11.99. For ideas about how to use this resource, contact Mike Bennethum, 610-395-6891 or michael.bennethum@ecunet.org.
Congregational consultations Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum by email or by phone at 610-395-6891.
Printed resources The Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod Resource Library has many printed resources for work with children, youth, and adults. This includes a copy of To the Castle: A Musical for Stewards. Come to browse or call Debbie Frey at 610-395-6891.
Web resources

The ELCA has wonderful resources on their pages. Start there.
The Stewardship of Life Institute housed at Gettysburg Seminary has sermons, Bible studies, programs, reflections and other suggestions for "promoting stewardship as a faithful response of gratitude to God's abundant generosity."
In August, the Institute launched a new weekly electronic newsletter, SOLI/Update. For information on subscribing, click the link on their website or send a blank email to solilist-subscribe@listserve.com.
Check out Luther Seminary for articles, sermons, quotes and links organized by topic.
Planned Giving

The Rev. Greg Kramer, a regional gift planner for the ELCA Foundation, is available to—

Work with a congregational member to set up a planned giving instrument
Conduct a "Wills, Estate, and Gift Planning" seminar in your congregation
Assist your congregation to set up an endowment fund

Contact Pr. Kramer by email or by phone at 570-374-2044.

Monthly Stewardship Tip Archives

August 2005's Tip

Go to http://www.elcic.ca/steward/indexset.html for the 2005-2006 collection of stewardship resources for congregations prepared by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. As with their previous offerings from our brothers and sisters in Canada, the set includes stories, Bible studies, Children's sermon ideas, small-group activities and other practical, hands-on ideas for promoting stewardship in a local church.

July 2005's Tip

20 Questions: How healthy are your money values? Here's a great tool congregations can use to help their members understand their financial stewardship. It's a friendly questionnaire to help families gauge how well they're balancing charitable giving, spending, saving and investing. Click here for the 20 Questions.

May 2005's Tip

Become an Energy Star congregation. Churches can save 30 percent on their energy bills, and for most houses of worship that means a lot of money freed up for mission, maintenance—or maybe the pastor's salary package. Click here for the Energy Star page on congregations. The page offers a ton of thought-provoking and inspirational resources. Click here for Putting Energy Into Stewardship, an 86-page guide for churches.

March 2005's Tip

GIVE: Living faith in daily life: Here's a four-session small-group Bible study exploring generosity and giving in our culture. Sessions are entitled, "Giving starts with receiving," "Not counting the cost," "The great struggle between greed and generosity," and "The spiritual power of generosity." Meaty, in-depth and challenging! From the ELCA and posted on the stewardship page of the New Jersey Synod. Click here for the Bible study. (PDF files require Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

February 2005's Tip

Free online Lenten devotions. Here is a wonderful resource for disciples and congregations alike—daily Lenten devotions exploring generosity. Online resources also provide prayers, activities and more. Go to www.elca.org/healthychurch/fortydays/index.html.

January 2005's Tip

Teaching Stewardship to Children: A few years ago the ELCA produced the Peli-Can project. It included a pelican puppet named Peli and three years' worth of puppet scripts and other material for teaching children about the stewardship of creation, of money, and of whole life. It's great stuff and it is available (including the puppet) through the synod resource center.

November 2004's Tip

A 12-session course, I've Got Something That Belongs to You, helps Christian adults discover how they can best use the gifts God has given them, a concept referred to as "stewardship of life." Specifically, in this view, stewardship is "the management of our selves, the Gospel, our daily work, our resources, and our relationships with our neighbors," according to the course materials. Developed by the Rev. Foster McCurley, this excellent course can be used by small groups or Sunday School classes. It is available from the Stewardship of Life Institute, www.stewardshipoflife.org, for $20.00. There is also a copy in the Synod Resource Center if you wish to preview it.

October 2004's Tip

20-Day Stewardship Devotional. Good for your stewardship committee, congregation council or general membership, here is a resource that will get your folks thinking and brainstorming. Each Bible-based daily devotion challenges and inspires. From Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City. (Note that PDF file requires Acrobat Reader.)

September 2004's Tip

Miracle Sunday program: Here's a program outline for launching a financial campaign for a major project. Through the example and experience of a local church that wanted to pay off its mortgage to save interest and free up money for mission, you'll get ideas on how your own church can manage a successful campaign. Go to http://synodresourcecenter.org/stew/program and click "Miracle" Sunday.

August 2004's Tip

Stewardship Now, inspiration for stewardship leaders, can now be found monthly (on the first of each month) on the Web: www.elca.org/dcm/stewardship/. See the icon on the left column and click to find three stewardship think pieces by Tuck Aaker.

July 2004's Tip

Four Gospels, One Stewardship: An Introduction to the Gospels with a View of Stewardship as a Way of Faithful Living. Here's a free online course on biblical stewardship that your congregation can really sink its teeth into. Four Gospels, One Stewardship pays attention to the stewardship-of-life underpinnings of the four Gospels as it provides a scholarly overview of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Be prepared to consider the "two-source hypothesis" and "redaction criticism." By Dr. Mark Vitalis Hoffman, New Testament professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.

June 2004's Tip

Want a simple way to link people's gifts and abilities to ministry needs? Asset mapping helps a group recognize its assets and the abundance of God's gifts and to act on them in ministry and mission. The Power of Asset Mapping by Luther Snow, available through the Alban Institute, is a great guide for getting started. From the Alban web page: "Congregations will find the book easy to read and immediately useful. Leaders can begin with the tested Quick and Simple Asset Mapping Experience to strengthen and inspire any group in the congregation in as little as an hour. Further tips, techniques, stories, and lessons drawn from the experience of diverse congregations will help readers discover how asset mapping works." Go to http://www.alban.org/bookstore to order.

May 2004's Tip

The website www.webofcreation.org from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago is a comprehensive data base of resources about religion and the environment. Here you'll find background materials on environmental issues of all types, guides for study, workshop outlines, programs for worship, awareness-raising ideas, advocacy steps and more.

April 2004's Tip

Do you shop on the internet? If you do, you can contribute to your favorite charity at the same time. By signing up at www.igive.com and/or www.mycause.com, you can access most of your favorite shopping sites. You designate a charity and then when you make a purchase, a contribution is also sent to the charity.

March 2004's Tip

How to Improve Financial Stewardship outlines the seven most popular financial response models used by ELCA congregations. It has just been revised and is available for downloading at http://www.elca.org/dcm/stewardship/financial.html.

February 2004's Tip

Research shows that children 4 to 12 make about 15 purchasing requests per shopping trip with parents, 5 requests a day at home, and about 10 requests a day on vacation. American children, from newborns through age 22, spend and influence the spending of nearly $1 trillion per year. This is just two bits of information from Prodigal Sons and Material Girls: How Not to Be Your Child's ATM by Nathan Dungan. Complete with discussion questions, the resource helps parents to teach their children responsible money management in a culture that encourages irresponsible and dangerous over-consumption and over spending. Dungan also documents how needed such help is and challenges the church to undertake this task. Check out the book in the Synod's Resource Center.

January 2004's Tip

At the heart of Christian stewardship is a spirit of gratitude for all a generous God does for us. The website www.gratefulness.org is a wonderful site with lots of ideas about and helps for developing such a spirit.

December 2003's Tip

A very insightful congregation put together a sort of menu of gift ideas for families and other donors who wanted to give something to the church. It was a simple matter of matching a wish list of church needs—everything from new lights in the parking lot to new pew cushions—with estimated prices. Available in HTML or in RTF for easy editing for your own congregation's needs. From First Lutheran Church, ELCA, Eau Claire, Wis., and made available at http://synodresourcecenter.org/stew/ (click on "Gift Ideas" under "Memorials").

October 2003's Tip

Get 126 good Stewardship Nuggets from Herb Miller for newsletters, bulletins, and sermons for only $10.00. Go to www.Cokesbury.com and do a title search for Stewardship Nuggets. You use a credit card to purchase the right to download the 62 page document.

Faith-Based Stewardship

"I will bless you—so that you will be a blessing."

The 2003 Synod Assembly of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod adopted Blessed to be a Blessing as our stewardship approach for the coming years.

Blessed to be a Blessing is designed to open our eyes to our blessings and to help us grow in our grateful response to God's abundant love. The goal of Blessed to be a Blessing is to ground us in a biblical understanding of stewardship.

Biblical Stewardship

Biblical stewardship is not about raising money to pay the church's bills. It is about offering some portion of the material resources God has given us to others as a way of thanking God for these resources.

Biblical stewardship is not convincing people to volunteer to do jobs for the church. It is helping disciples discover the talents and abilities God has given them and then figuring out how God is calling them to use those gifts in the church and in the world.

A Faith-Based Emphasis

Blessed to be a Blessing is a faith-based stewardship emphasis that recognizes our call to share our God-given blessings of time, talent and money. Sharing our blessings with others reflects our unity in Christ as Christ's Church.

God's call to Abraham is the model for God¹s call to us. God promises to bless us so that we might be a blessing to others, giving back a part of what we have received.

Stewardship is the grateful offering of all that we have and all that we are to God's service. We trust that everything is the gift of a loving and generous God. The gifts we return to the church can be a sign of both God's grateful offering to us and our trust in God.

While the world around us teaches us to fear scarcity, God calls us to trust in God¹s abundance. God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work (2 Cor. 9:8).

Principles

Heeding the call to trust in God's abundance, the following principles will guide our synod as we invite congregations and individuals to support the mission of the church:

We will recognize how God has blessed us abundantly.
We will acknowledge that we need to give back what we have received as a way to grow in faith.
We will recognize that we are the stewards and not the owners of everything that God has entrusted to us.
We will give proportionately, thankfully offering our first fruits.
Our giving will be significant, so we experience that God provides all we truly need.
We will give joyfully, in grateful response to our generous God.

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