STEWARDSHIP - The Power to Change It's a great life! This Stewardship conference was held in June, 2009 in Regina, SK. The following video is a promotion made by the Stewardship office in Prince Albert.
Each following title is a link to its area on this page:
Vision Statement Stewardship is being responsible, accountable and honest with our gifts of time, talent and treasures. Stewardship development in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Prince Albert is directed at realizing the full potential of all the gifts of the People of God in fulfilling the mission of Christ, as a way of life and in thanksgiving to God.
Diocesan Stewardship Committee
Roger Lavoie, North Battleford
Finance Manager Roger Paulhus(committee secretary)
Rev. Jim Kaptein
Sister Gertrude Gareau, p.m. (Diocesan Pastoral Council representative)
Dennis and June Bleier, Prince Albert
Aurele Gaudet, Bellevue
Marianne Kramchynsky, Rosthern (committee chair)
(The Stewardship Committee meets about four times per year.)
What is Stewardship?
All members of our family of faith are called to be Christian stewards and share their gifts of time, talent and treasure in proportion to the blessings they have received from God.
Stewardship is a Christian lifestyle…By acknowledging our dependence upon God for all life, we are called to regard both material things and human capacities not as private possessions or as the property of limited groups, but as God's.
Stewardship calls us to hold in trust numerous values: natural resources, care for the poor and those who are sick, the sanctity of life, and conservation of the world's goods. Stewardship demands that we adopt an ethic of responsibility toward the earth as well as toward all human persons.
Stewardship "has clear social implications related to ecological and environmental concerns … a responsibility to care for and to share the goods we hold in trust."
Rootedness in prayer and spirituality necessarily leads to stewardship, alerting us to be sensitive to life and to the needs of others. An attribute of an authentic steward is generativity -- the willingness to move beyond self into involvement with the larger world, to mentor others in life-giving ways, to use power responsibly, to engage in wise and future-oriented decision making, and to have the courage to "let go and let God."
- The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought (1994)
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Stewardship is the proper use of time, talent and material blessings. Stewardship expresses the idea that God is the gift giver and that each one of us is entrusted with various gifts to be used in the service of God's people.
-Partners in the Harvest II brochure
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Whatever I receive is "gift" and the very nature of gift is that it be given,
not hung onto.
-Celebrating the Word, Sept. 30, 2001
A Legacy to the Church
A Legacy that Makes a Difference
You can make a real difference with a legacy directed at
making your church community the best that it can be.
Through a variety of planned givingprograms, you can establish a personal legacy which will benefit the church now
and for generations to come.on contact:
The Director of Stewardship Development:
Ph (306) 922 - 4747 Fax (306) 922 - 4754
Recruiting Volunteers in Parishes
To parishes who are struggling with the area of recruiting volunteers, I would like to recommend you get in touch with http://www.nonprofitscan.ca. This Web site provides a number of articles that deal with research done on the nonprofit sector and volunteering in Canada. The information is free and can be downloaded on your computers so there is no need to wait for it to be mailed.
I would like to especially recommend the research entitled, "An Assessment of the State of Voluntary Sector Research and Current Research Needs" and "Scan of Public Attitudes Toward the Voluntary Sector". These two publications offer a substantial amount of information on what is known about, what is currently happening and what is needed in the world of recruiting and keeping volunteers. The subject areas included are:
The Perceived Role and Value of Volunteers and Volunteering
Current Trends Affecting Volunteering and Volunteers
Understanding Motivations and Barriers to Volunteering
Satisfaction with Volunteering and Perceived Benefits
Approaches to Improving Volunteering
There is also a considerable amount of information related to the value of charities and nonprofit organizations, some of the challenges that they are presently facing and how they are dealing with those challenges.
Even though the information does not come with any guaranteed solutions, it does provide the type of information that will make sure you are not trying to reinvent the wheel.
One small note of caution. There are, if you order everything, more than 200 pages. It might be a good idea to read it first and only print the pages you want to use.
For those who do not have the capacity to download the information, we have a copy of it in the Resource Center at the Pastoral Centre.
- Lawrent Fournier, Director of Stewardship Development
Stewardship One-Liners
Good Stewards are formed, they are not forced.
Good Stewards are formed by Good Stewards.
"Good Steward" is not a title, it is a way we live like Jesus Christ
A Good Steward does not give until it hurts, he/she gives until it helps.
The first question of a Good Steward is: "For what am I responsible?"
A Good Steward accepts responsibility for:
A faith that is mature and constantly growing
A prayer life that is more about what I am willing to hear from God than what I want to say to God.
All of the talents, abilities and gifts that God has given us, including Time and Treasure.
A Good Steward is responsible for the welfare and well being of his/her community of faith.
A Good Steward is a responsible evangelist who helps others find their faith and not bring our faith to them unless it is in the form of showing them our faith in action. -- We show them our faith, which gives us the credibility to tell them. If we don't show them our faith first, they are not going to believe what we tell them.
The first response of a Good Steward may be "Lord, I don't want to do that!" The ultimate response of a Good Steward is, "Yes, Lord!"
For disciples of Jesus Christ, stewardship is not an option, it is an obligation of our baptism.
Good Stewardship is not a destination, it is a way of getting to eternal life.
A full Stewardship parish is not a goal. It is a way of achieving many goals.
The Greater Miracle
In the context of free will, we can choose to do good or to do evil. We can choose to be generous or not to be generous.
Imagine that you're on the slopes of a hill on the north western end of the Sea of Galilee . It is sort of a cone shaped hill like the end zone of a football field. It's a natural formation in the hill.
And you've been listening to this carpenter from Nazareth , Jesus. And he's been talking about the love of God for us and what our response to God should be. He is talking about how we are called to love God with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul, and to love our neighbour as our self. And if you are Jewish, you recognized that from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. And you are enthralled by what you hear.
But you also see a commotion occur. Jesus' followers seem to be concerned about something. And what they seem to be concerned about seems to involve a little boy who brings up a basket of fish and bread. And he gives the basket to Jesus. And Jesus blesses the bread and the fish. (That's all the details we have in scripture about that.) And he gives it away.
Notice two things about that:
The little boy didn't keep any for himself. He gave it all away.
Notice, also, that Jesus didn't keep any for himself. He gave it all away.
Now Jesus was a very wise man. He knew about an ethic of hospitality that existed among the people of that time in which the sharing of food and drink, even with strangers, was what was expected. But he also knew that there was some fudging at times.
They had a very interesting way of fudging. When they went on a journey to listen to Jesus, some of them would have had to walk eight to ten miles. The men would be dressed in a shirt, a coat and a cafia (head dress). Under the coat, they could carry bags on their shoulders in a way that the bags could not be seen. The bags would contain wine and food, pita bread, dates and cheese. And as long as they kept underneath the coat, and nobody knew they had them, and this is how they fudged, they didn't have to give them away, they didn't have to share them with other people.
Dr. Joseph Barkley, a Presbyterian minister and renowned scripture scholar, suggests that when the people saw Jesus take the loaves from the little boy, and the little boy held nothing back, and Jesus breaks it and gives it away, and keeps nothing for himself, that they saw an act of generosity.
And they started to take bread, dates, cheese, dried fish from underneath their coats. And they spread their coats on the ground, and they took their cafias off and they used them as picnic blankets and they had a feast. And when it was all over, they had twelve baskets full.
Now, am I saying that Jesus did not multiply the loaves and fishes? No, I am not saying that. But let me ask you, in the context of free will, in the context of our ability to choose to do good or evil, in the context of our ability to choose whether or not to be generous, which is the greater miracle, multiplication of loaves and fish, or multiplication of generous hearts?
You don't have to answer; I can see it in the faces of many of you. As far as I am concerned, I always go for the greater miracle. And, if you have spent any time at all in this business that we are in, you know what the tougher miracle is.
I now want you to imagine you are at another scene, you are at the foot of the cross, and there you find another basket. It has the bloody crown, the bloody nails and a hammer. And it is three days after you heard that they crucified a man named Jesus from Nazareth . You've asked around and you can't find out what he did wrong. All He seems to have done wrong is to continually ask people to love their God with their whole heart, their whole mind, their whole soul and their whole strength, and to love their neighbours as themselves.
And you realize that Jesus didn't hold anything back. He gave it all. He gave it all.
Now I ask you, as Christians, as followers of Christ, and in the context of free will, to what extent are you willing to be a follower of Christ?
Stewardship as a Way of Life is about the Multiplication of Generous Hearts.
For a sample of the Stewardship Newsletter, please click here
The RSS feed to the Stewardship Minute. If you would like to receive this free resource from Parish Publishing LLC, please feel free to contact them at meg@parishpublishing.org
It may be helpful to parishes to use the following links for stewardship resources. The resource page links are:
Contact: Laurent Fournier
Director of Stewardship Development
E-mail:diostewpa2@sasktel.net
Phone: (306) 922-4747
Fax: (306) 922-4754
Diocese of Prince Albert, 1415-4th Ave. W.,
Prince Albert, Sask., S6V 5H1
