Rev. Dr. Rose Niles considers it a delight to be able to restore a sense of joy and hope to the conversations congregations are having about stewardship. In the first of a four-part webinar for the Synod of the Northeast, Niles focused on ‘Telling Your Stewardship Story.’ Niles serves as Ministry Relations Officer for the Presbyterian Foundation.

Ministry relations officers are financial and gift planning professionals at the Foundation. They work with pastors and church leaders to cultivate generosity and promote stewardship within their congregations.

The importance of a paradigm shift

“The primary way that we tell our stewardship stories is by connecting them to our passion and joy about our ministry stories,” Niles said. There needs to be a shift, she suggested, from the traditional labeling of stewardship work toward thinking of it as “unleashing the generosity within the life of the church.”

Stewardship is often thought about as annual campaign to raise money to fund the budget. “The shift we are talking about here is a shift from ‘funding the budget’ toward funding mission and vision,’ Niles said.

What do you treasure?

“It begins with your values as a congregation,” Niles said. “You need to ask what it is you treasure as a congregation, since we know that where your treasure is your heart will be also.”

Once a congregation can become clear about what it values, a year-round stewardship plan can be developed to tell the impact stories of how those programs are making a difference in people’s lives.

“The question you want to ask and then answer is, “How is our existence making a difference in people’s lives?” Niles said. Once you know the answer to that question you want to tell the story over and over again.

From scarcity to abundance

 

This shift is also a paradigm shift from scarcity thinking back to the joy of remembering that God’s abundance is for us and with us. Especially during these pandemic times it can be easy to become discouraged and to focus on what we don’t have, rather than on what we do have.

“Joan Gray uses the analogy in her book, The Sailboat Church, that we are all rowing so hard when what we need to do is raise our sails and let the Holy Spirit carry us into a joyful celebration of what God is leading us into,” Niles said.

 No ‘one size fits all’

Niles also reminded participants that there is no “one size fits all” approach. “Every church is unique and every church has a different sense of values and mission and how they are going to live that out,” Niles said. That is where her work comes in as a Ministry Relations Officer – to help congregations choose the right tools for the right setting.

Niles demonstrated some of those practical tools on the webinar. These include Church Financial Leadership Academy as well as the tool, both developed as online resources through a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.

The importance of engagement

“I have become more and more convinced that engagement is everything,” she said. Engagement includes helping the congregation see the ways in which they are involved and already participating in outreach. She gave the example of one congregation that decided to bake cookies for the teenagers who hadn’t been involved for awhile. The pastors shared this story the moment before receiving the offering so that the congregation could make the connection between why they give and their mission and vision.

“We have begun to suspect that the difference between those churches that are thriving in the pandemic and those that are not are those who have found a way to engage with their congregations,” Niles said. “One way to do that is to continue to promote the stories of how we are loving God with all our mind, soul, and strength and how we are loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

The visionary church

 People are inspired by hearing the stories of how lives are being changed. This is particularly true, Niles suggested, for younger generations. “Younger generations really need to hear about the way in which their gift is changing lives,” Niles said.

This is often the difference between a visionary church and a stagnant church. “The visionary church asks people to give because lives are being changed while the more stagnant church asks people to give to balance the budget,” said Niles.

Most importantly, Niles suggested, stewardship is actually a spiritual practice. “Giving changes the giver, and it draws us closer to God.”