10/18/2024

Stewardship and fundraising both typically involve raising money, but they are very different – and that difference can be key in a church.

10/17/2024

This is the month we devote to giving thanks. As we think about the upcoming holiday season, it is very easy to skip worship for polishing silverware, finalizing a menu, and inviting guests to celebrate in our Thanksgiving feast. It is also a time where we think of Christmas, and our budgets can be stressed and we can defer our scheduled gifts to the church. It can be exhausting, and many of us are stretched thin both in terms of finances and time.

10/16/2024

For churches that do a traditional stewardship campaign, the month November could fall at the beginning, middle, or end of that campaign. Wherever it falls for your church, this is a great month to focus on the theme of abundance. The passages at the end of Year B of the lectionary cycle lend themselves well to this theme and can provide a great capstone to both the liturgical year and the stewardship season.

9/16/2024

Over the course of 20 plus years as a Ministry Relations Officer with the Presbyterian Foundation, I have done countless planned giving presentations. For the most part, those presentations have focused on the mechanics of making a planned gift. I usually talk about the different giving vehicles such as a will, a trust, life income plans and Donor Advised Funds, while sharing an example of each that I have had the pleasure of working on with different donors. I talk about the motivation behind making such a gift like gratitude for all that God has done for us, making an impact in the world, love and compassion for others, and belief in the mission and ministry of the church. I include some information on the people who can help you carry out your plan such as an attorney, tax advisor, financial planner, and/or accountant. Then I usually conclude the presentation by encouraging my audience to make their charitable estate plan a lasting legacy of faith.

9/13/2024

Talking about money has always been a sensitive issue. That includes in the church pews, even when it comes to stewardship.

How then to best broach the subject, and is it something to tackle as a standalone subject, or is it better to weave the message of giving and gifts into other sermons? Does the message change when the audience is mostly 40-year-old families versus older retirees?

8/19/2024

But repetition alone is not sufficient for faith. If our Christian life remains only repetition of information and data, it is not a life of faith. Even scripture, if it remains as mere information that remains outside of us, it will have no influence on our lives. John Calvin wrote, “For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart.” (Institutes, 3.2.36)

8/15/2024

Who should serve on your church’s stewardship – or generosity – team?

If you are the chair of this committee, I would suggest a sit-down meeting with your pastor to discuss who your pastor believes would be a good fit, and who has good follow-through with volunteer work. If you’ve got someone ideal in mind, put out those invitations now, especially if you have a fall stewardship drive, so that you can begin meeting and making plans.

8/15/2024

I was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up there as well. As a child raised in the Northwest, I loved the tall Douglas Fir trees, the deep green of the forests, and even the rain. (Yep, can you believe that?)

However, it was the crown jewel of Oregon (and Washington) that I deeply enjoyed the most: the Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge is the part of the Columbia River that meanders through 3,000 to 4,000-foot high mountains on either side. It splits the states of Oregon and Washington and is the borderline between the two states during its 100-mile trek.

7/22/2024

As a Ministry Relations Officer serving the east region, one of my favorite topics to speak on is the effective utilization of the narrative budget. I enjoy this subject mostly because a narrative budget is an excellent way to transform the traditional line item budget into a graphic, pictorial representation of resources at work in the areas of mission and ministry.

7/19/2024

Each morning I walk three miles, a mile and a half to the local Heine Brothers Coffee and then a mile and a half back home. The path curls out of the neighborhood onto Moser Road, where it crosses Chenoweth Run.

Some mornings the creek is only a trickle, the rippling water reflecting the sunlight, the flow barely audible above cars passing by. Other mornings the run is swollen with rain, dark, fast and angry. A bit further, the route leads into the woods. The sidewalk ends. Spiders cross the path. There are deer.

7/19/2024

Sharing tends to be transactional – by assumption if not definition, the other party shares something back. Giving, though, is generosity, a gift – an equally important lesson for children and young people to learn, says Rev. Ellie Johns-Kelley, a ministry relations officer at the Presbyterian Foundation covering the Allegheny and Chesapeake region (most of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and part of Ohio). working in the Southwestern Pennsylvania-West Virginia area.

6/14/2024

Planning a stewardship campaign, or any fundraising event, typically focuses on the big-givers, the easy-picking fruit, the people with money who are comfortable with the concept of sharing their treasures.

But in these days of spiking food prices, retirees watching their savings as the markets rise and fall, and younger families wrestling with raising a family, much less paying for college or trade school … what about them?