Congregational Stewardship
Written for Giving: Growing Joyful Stewards in Your Congregation, Vol. 22, No. 1, By the Ecumenical Stewardship Center Living Closer to the Hub of the Wheel Year-round stewardship is not about repetitive, one-time church programs. It’s about helping people become more generous in many dimensions of their lives. This includes becoming more joyful and faithful…
Worship October 13, 2019 Foothills United Methodist Church, Cameron Park, California Theme: Faith as Resistance Invocation Dear God, thank You for being with us all year long, every day, every season, even when we forget. You are the God of miracles and possibilities, and the miracle of the seasons. Fill our hearts with Your gifts…
This is the first week of fall, and I’m beginning to see the signs. When I lived in Europe, the seasons changed dramatically from one day to the next, and they certainly do in other parts of this nation and the world. But in Northern California it’s usually a more subtle change. The night temperature…
We can grow in wisdom if we reflect on and learn from our experience. After writing the chapter on “Growing as Becoming” in Growing Generous Souls, I thought about wisdom as less of an achievement or endpoint, and more as a process of becoming the wise person each of us is meant to be. A…
“To worship God in truth means to worship God with our whole being,” says the pastor of the Church of the Resurrection Online Congregation. This statement fits our understanding of one’s “soul” as the whole of who we authentically are in relationship to God. Worship is our whole-person response to God’s grace. The Greek word…
L. Roger Owens’ book What We Need Is Here (Upper Room Books, 2015) is not what my longtime-pastor side might call a “spiritual self-help” book. Its subtitle points to this: Practicing the Heart of Christian Spirituality. Not content to settle for surface religious “how-to”s, Owens seeks to reach the heart of Christian spiritual life, by…
Lenten Study on Spiritual Disciplines Text: Growing Generous Souls by Betsy Schwarzentraub Growing Generous Souls can offer an excellent small-group study and themes for the six weeks of Lent. This Lenten study focuses on five basic spiritual disciplines while encouraging six core attitudes in our Christian journey of faith. It can fit various formats…
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…