ONE STEWARDSHIP PRACTICE

 

          I have written about generosity and stewardship over the past several months. I want to spend the next few blogs talking about stewardship practices.

          That’s right! Practice. Just like, if you want to become good at football (it is Super Bowl week!), you need to attend regular football practice, learning how to kick, throw, catch and block. If you want to become good at singing, you need to attend practice, where you learn how to breath, how to carry a tune, how to use the gift you’ve been given in the best way possible. Practice helps you to better the gifts and talents you have, to the betterment of yourself, the team, watchers and listeners.

          Stewardship practices are a little different. You don’t practice stewardship so that your stewardship becomes better…exactly. Practices are those things you do to transform your stewardship efforts and the church. Without these practices, your stewardship and your church will suffer.

          So, the first practice I want to talk about is “thanking.” It seems so easy. We say thank you when someone holds the door open for us, or we receive a gift… Or do we? I have to say, I’ve worked with quite a few churches on their stewardship theology and work, and once the stewardship campaign is over, or pledge cards have been received, or bills are able to be paid, we kind of drop the ball (a football/Super Bowl analogy??) We don’t really say thank you. Sometimes, we’ll put a line or two in the bulletin or a monthly newsletter saying “To each of you who responded, thank you.”

          That’s a start. If you’re not even doing that, you aren’t even at the tee, much less at the kick off or even really in the game.

          Make sure you make that general thank you, but don’t stop there.

·        Send thank you letters out to the folks who responded to your requests

·        Send handwritten notes (not everyone every week—but select a few people and send notes weekly). This is not a job for just one person. Pastor, Finance Committee, etc. should be participating. You don’t need to know HOW MUCH someone gave, just that they gave SOMETHING.

·        Say thank you on the quarterly giving statements (as well as telling the story of a life impacted that quarter).

·        Say thank you EVERY WEEK during offering time.

          Offering wasn’t always about the money in the early years of the church; it was about offering self back to God.