GGS Study With a Financial Commitment Program

By Betsy Schwarzentraub | August 23, 2019

Using the Growing Generous Souls Study

With a Financial Commitment Program

The Growing Generous Souls study can offer a substantive exploration of stewardship within which to place your church’s financial commitment program this year. Instead of isolating and emphasizing financial giving by itself, church members can explore generosity as a way of living with their time, relationships, forgiveness, possessions and more. Whether you hold the recommitment time in the fall or the spring.

  1. For example, the seven-week study can begin on the Sunday after Labor Day for a fall program ending with Thanksgiving (Ingathering) Sunday. Or it might start in May to culminate near Pentecost. Personally invite church leaders to participate, as well as the entire congregation. The purpose of the study is not to drum up financial giving amounts, but to deepen our understanding of generous-hearted living in all of its dimensions, helping each of us grow as joyful stewards of the Good News in our personal and community life.
  2. The book Growing Generous Souls emphasizes how we can focus on being as well as doing — helping ourselves and others become more generous souls as whole persons, instead of just asking people to do what may seem like repeated one-time financial giving.

Four weeks of worship themes for a “Growing Generous Souls” program could be:

  1. “Consumers or Souls?” — See book chapters 1, 4, and 8
  2. “Gratitude and Embracing Enough” — See book chapters 7 and 9
  3. “Getting Out of the Money Trap” — See book chapters 10 and 11
  4. “Generosity as a Way of Living” — See book chapters 12 through 15.

Congregational resources are at www.growinggeneroussouls.com, including the Small-Group Study Guide, additional sermon titles and Bible texts, and other material for leaders and members. Chapter summaries and sets of Questions for Reflection can help the preacher and/or five-minute lay speakers.

I’d be happy to support you in your plans. I look forward to hearing from you through https://growinggeneroussouls.com/contact-us/.

 Betsy Schwarzentraub, author
 

Posted in Funding Your Ministries, Theology of Stewardship