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Faithful
Stewards
December 2009
- Volume 1, Issue
5 |
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The monthly
Stewardship e-newsletter of the Vermont
Conference
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Introduction |
| This
month I bring you articles which help us look
at Stewardship with a broader perspective. I
thought they were intriguing and I hope you will
also.
Also, this month;
some important news for local church
treasurers/bookkeepers and/or those whose
responsibilities include forwarding contributions
to the Conference. Please help me get this update
to the right person in your local church.
As a reminder,
please ensure all contributions for
2009 are postmarked by December 31st, and are
received here at the Conference Office no later
than January 8th. Any contributions
received after the deadline will be posted to
2010. Thank you for your help getting our books
closed in a timely manner.
Advent Blessings
and a Merry Christmas to you all!
Jim
Jim Thomas
Business Manager/Stewardship
Associate
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Giving From
the Hand of
God |
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by Gary
Langness
Several times each year I have
the privilege of preaching, teaching or speaking
about stewardship. Last fall I was the guest
speaker at a congregation's leadership dinner. The
large group was polite, gracious and attentive. I
immensely enjoyed everything about the evening-the
food, the fellowship and being the guest speaker.
When the evening was done, I headed for
the door and an elderly woman walked up to me. She
stopped me and said, "Pastor, I am from the
Netherlands, and we have a saying there. 'We give
from the hand of God.'"
Her words kept
running through my mind on the long drive home.
That woman understood. She spoke those words to me
with gentleness and conviction. Of course we give
from the hand of God. All we have is a gift given
to us by an abundant and generous creator.
God has big hands and generosity flows
from those hands. They run over with abundant
gifts for all people-no holding back, no sense of
scarcity, no fear of giving too much. So when we
give we do it with great joy and generosity
because there is always more where it came from.
It all comes from the hand of
God. |
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Contributions
to non-UCC
agencies |
For many years, the Conference accepted
contributions from local churches for agencies
outside the Conference and UCC and forwarded them
on to the appropriate recipient. We did this for
two reasons: to provide a service to our
congregations, and to gain a clearer picture of
the complete mission giving of a
congregation.
As the Conference Staff has gotten
smaller, and all of us are doing more with
less, we have had to re-evaluate whether our
practices are still the best way to support our
local churches. When the Conference Office
acts as a pass-through for these non-UCC agencies,
it adds workload, delays receipt of the
contributions, and often the Conference gets
credit for the donation rather than
the congregation, despite our best efforts to
identify the originator.
Beginning January 1, 2010, the Conference
will no longer accept contributions for
non-UCC agencies. Examples include:
- Church World Service (including
Blanket Sunday and Tools of Hope)
- Heifer Project
- our regional seminaries
- the Congregational Library
- etc
Please begin sending these contributions
directly to the recipient. If you need addresses,
there is a list of the most common ones on the
Conference website. Download it by clicking here.
The Contribution Remittance Form has been
revised to reflect these changes. Please download
the updated form by clicking below:
Please help me get this information into the
hands of the person in your local congregation
responsible for sending contributions to the
Conference. Please note that every donation that
comes to the Conference should be accompanied by a
Contribution Remittance Form.
If you have any questions, or are unsure
about a specific contribution, please email me at
thomasj@vtcucc.org
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Money and
Mission |
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by: Bishop Will Willamon
In many ways, this summer has revealed this
to be the worst of times and the best of times for
raising money for the work of Christ's church.
Historically, churches feel the effects of a
financial recession about a year after the
recession's beginning. We are certainly finding
that to be true.
There are many lessons to
be learned about stewardship in this worst of
times, best of times. In order to learn as much as
I could, I read J. Cliff Christopher's "Not Your
Parents' Offering Plate: A New Vision for
Financial Stewardship" (Abingdon Press, 2008).
Christopher chides church leaders like me
who sound the alarm and plead for more money for
ministry: "The church is the only nonprofit
I know of that seems to believe that the more you
cry that you are sinking, the more people will
give to you. The exact opposite is true. No
nonprofit I know of would ever send out a donor
letter stating that they are running a horrible
deficit and they just want the donors to help
balance the budget. They know that such a letter
actually discourages giving rather than motivates
it. A nonprofit board will deal with budget
matters in a board meeting but never publicize
such to its donor base. The church goes out of its
way to do just that.
Institutions that
outperform others do not send ... a message that
they are dying on the vine and must have one more
contribution to stay afloat. No, they say, "We
took your money last year and we did great things
with it. If you will give us more, we will do more
great things." And people give and give to them.
People want results and these institutions give
positive results!
Above all, Christopher
stresses that "money follows mission." He asked a
group of pastors why people give. They started
blurting out, "taxes, guilt, involvement..." No
one was even close. Finally, a lady who the
executive director for Habitat for Humanity ...
raised her hand and said, "Number one is a belief
in the mission. Number two is a regard for staff
leadership and number three is fiscal
responsibility." She was right. I was stunned.
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Changing Lives
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With Our Time, Talent, and Yes,
Treasure! |
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Our Friends of the Vermont Conference
Campaign is underway. Many of you have been
specifically asked to participate. If you already
have, you have our deepest gratitude.
If not, please consider this your
invitation! We are called to be
Changing Lives. And this
work requires your prayers and support. Over the
next few months we will be sharing what some
members of the Conference tell us they think is
important about our covenanted work together.
The essays are on the Stewardship webpage.
Please send your tax deductible donation
to:
Vermont Conference, UCC
ATTN: Friends of the Conference
36 N Main St
Randolph, VT
05060
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Stewardship:
Relationships and
Responsibilities |
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by: Rufus Cushman
Often, when the word stewardship is
mentioned, we tend to think of God's gifts to us
only in terms of money. Maybe we should expand our
thinking. Robert D. Schieler, a retired pastor
from Illinois, in a stewardship/theology/poem,
reminds us that God's gifts are more than just a
few dollars.
We do not own anything to do with as
we please,
but are God's stewards,
caretakers
of all the households God has given
us to manage
* our personal lives
* our
families and homes
* our work and work
places
* our churches
* our communities,
nations, and the world
*our global
environment
* our accumulated assets after
death
taken from Genesis 1:26, Genesis
2:15
Luke 12:13-21, II Cor
9:7-11
This verse speaks to me, not only of
God's generousity, but also of our challenge.
Stewardship is not easy; it is about our
relationships and our responsibilities in a large
and complex world. It is also about how we
respond...with our whole
being.
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And, finally, a
bit of humor... |
The visiting preacher was really
getting the congregation moving. Near the end of
his sermon he said, "This church has really got to
walk," to which someone in the back yelled, "Let
her walk, preacher!"
The preacher then said, "If this
church is going to go, it's got to get up and
run!" Somone again yelled with gusto, "Let her run
preacher."
Feeling the surge of the church,
the preacher then said with even louder gusto, "If
this church is going to go, it's got to really
fly!" Once again with ever greater gusto, someone
yelled, "Let her fly, preacher, let her
fly!"
The preacher then seized the
moment and stated with even greater gusto, "If
this church is really going to fly, it's going to
need money!" Someone in the back yelled, with
gusto, "Let her walk, preacher, let her
walk!"
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Our church was saddened to learn
this week of the death of one of our most valued
members, Someone Else. Someone's passing creates a
vacancy that will be difficult to fill. Else has
been with us for many years and for every one of
those years, Someone did far more than a normal
person's share of the work.
Whenever there was a job to
do, a class to teach, or a meeting to attend, one
name was on everyone's list, "Let Someone Else do
it."
Whenever leadership was
mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to for
inspiration as well as results; "Someone Else can
work with that group."
It was common knowledge that
Someone Else was among the most generous givers in
our church. Whenever there was a financial need,
everyone just assumed Someone Else would make up
the difference.
Someone Else was a wonderful
person; sometimes appearing superhuman. Were the
truth known, everybody expected too much of
Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone! We wonder
what we are going to do. Someone Else left a
wonderful example to follow, but who is going to
follow it? Who is going to do the things Someone
Else did?
When you are asked to help
this year, remember -- we can't depend on Someone
Else anymore.
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