Stewardship: A Way of Life
Following on the success of two stewardship cafes, the stewardship section of the diocesan website has been updated to help you to introduce the “Way of Life” toolkit and resources to your congregation. Way of Life includes year-round stewardship ideas with an annual financial stewardship focus in the fall as well as legacy and planned giving information.
Way of Life Stewardship Tools and Templates
A variety of tools are available to help you build the ministry of stewardship into your parish’s culture. Featured are ideas for year-round stewardship, a sample stewardship plan, a stewardship timeline, bulletin inserts, an outline for preparing a narrative budget, and customizable templates for developing a stewardship package based on your narrative budget.
The stewardship templates are designed to be customized for your congregation and to help you develop a stewardship package, based on your narrative budget, to use as your primary communications tool during your annual financial stewardship focus. The booklet in the package is also helpful for introducing newcomers to the mission and ministry of your church.
The customizable stewardship package templates include: introduction letter, how to make your commitment guidelines, offering commitment form, time & talent offering commitment form, questions and answers, stewardship booklet, bookmark, outside envelope and return envelope. The customizable Legacy giving booklet and brochure are options for inclusion in this package. The sample stewardship plan in this section of the site outlines how the stewardship package and your annual financial stewardship can work together. Six bulletin inserts with Gospel reflections and questions are part of this plan.
Way of Life Stewardship Resources and Links
Although we are accustomed to thinking of stewardship in terms of an annual financial stewardship campaign that happens once a year, stewardship is not an annual event; instead, it is what we do with all that God has given us, all the time. The resources in this section move stewardship beyond being an annual occurrence. These resources include a link to a year-round stewardship calendar. Each month the church season is explained, and a theme is identified around which individual and congregational activities might take place in five categories: Spiritual Growth, Ministry Spotlight, Financial Health, Outside Ourselves and God’s Creation.
Other resources available are: information about electronic giving options, ideas for promoting pre-authorized giving to your congregation, stewardship best practices, ideas for talking about God and money, engaging volunteers in stewardship ministry, generational stewardship and a stewardship bibliography. This section of the site features many excellent stewardship links on a variety of topics including: The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter, 50 Ideas to Revitalize Your Congregation and EDGE — a living web of new and renewing ministries.
Way of Life Legacy Giving Resources
Legacy giving is one way in which each of us has the opportunity to participate, either now or in the future, in seeing our dreams for our church come to fruition, over the long term, through sharing the gifts God has given us. Legacy giving is not separate from Christian stewardship; rather it is an important part of it. When you make a legacy gift, it refers to gifts made from assets accumulated during your lifetime. Often these gifts are bequests in a will and are part of an overall estate plan, but many people use legacy gift planning approaches to make a gift now.
This section of the site includes descriptions of all of the legacy gift planning vehicles as well as resources for introducing legacy and planned giving to your congregation, ideas for promoting bequests and customizable templates for memorial giving.
Written by: Jane Scanlon, Stewardship Development Officer for the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.
Originally published: Crosstalk, May 2016.
