Stewardship Resources

• 2012 Mission Support Form
• Spreadsheet Showing Your Congregation's Mission Support at Work
• 2009 pamphlet showing What Do Mission Support Dollars Do?
• Information on Events
• Program Possibilities
• Mission Interpreter Program
• Resources
• Faith-based Stewardship: An Overview
  • Introduction
  • Biblical Stewardship
  • A Faith-Based Emphasis
  • Principles

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Your Mission Support at Work!

See your congregation's mission support at work!

You can make up your own spreadsheet that will help your congregational members understand how your congregation's mission support contribution is used.

Once you have downloaded the spreadsheet, enter the dollar commitment figure for your congregation for 2010 and the spreadsheet allocates appropriate amounts to different synodical and churchwide ministries.

Information on Events

For information on upcoming events, contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at michael.bennethum@elca.org or by phone at 610-395-6891.

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Program Possibilities

Bring a stewardship workshop to your congregation!

Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at 610-395-6891 or michael.bennethum@elca.org to schedule one of these five workshops for your stewardship leaders. The only requirement is that you invite two or more neighboring congregations to join you.

• Stewardship as Faithraising: An Introduction to Stewardship Ministry
  This three hour workshop focuses on nurturing a healthy, bible-centered approach to financial stewardship in a congregation. We will also discuss the 10 best practices of congregations with strong stewardship programs and share resources for carrying out those practices year round. Your stewardship program need not be limited to a once a year effort.
• Blessed to Be a Blessing: Herb Miller's Consecration Sunday. This three hour workshop introduces the basic concepts of a faith-based approach to inviting folks to make an annual estimate of giving and provides you the materials to conduct a Consecration Sunday annual response. This is the most effective approach. If you have never done a financial response campaign in your congregation (and may be scared to do so), this workshop is for you.
• Choosing a Financial Stewardship Response Program. You have done Consecration Sunday and are ready for something different. This one hour workshop surveys a variety of response methods. Some materials will be available for preview.
• The Great Permission: Asset Based Planning. This one-and-one-half hour workshop will introduce you to an approach of discovering your congregation's resources. Too often we start by looking at problems and what we do not have. It is much more fun—and productive—to start with what we do have and what those gifts from God make possible.
• 10-10-80: What to Do with the Stuff You Have. This 90-minute workshop focuses on youth and those who work with youth. It invites participants to see everything we have as a gift of God, and invites them to honor God in how they share, save, and spend their resources. A number of follow-up activities are included for those who want to continue the conversation at home.

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Mission Interpreter Program

Mission Interpreters are "Making Christ Known" by sharing the excitement of our global and churchwide mission and ministry with their own and other congregations. Mission Interpreters are active members of local congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who tell stories of how people's lives are changed through the ministry we do together. Click here to learn more about the program.

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Resources

• Stewardship Resource for Children and Youth  Wrapped in God’s Love is a 40 page print resource that offers ideas for introducing many aspects of stewardship – of money, of abilities, of the earth, of self – to young people from infancy to age 18. Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum at the synod office for information about how to order a copy.
  
   
• Available for Download: Herb Miller’s Nuggets: Volume 31, Money Isn’t/Is Everything: What Jesus Said about the Spiritual Power of Money. Herb Miller has given the congregations of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod permission to download and copy this 42 page resource that offers ideas and insights that can form the basis for six stewardship sermons and bible studies
  
   
• What Do Mission Support Dollars Do? Here is a pamphlet that shows where your mission support dollars go in the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod. The figures are for 2009. Share these with your congregation!
  
   
• Awakening to God’s Call to Earthkeeping   Looking for a resource to help congregational members embrace God’s call to care for the earth? Check out Awakening to God’s Call to Earthkeeping, a four session adult study program designed to help participants gain a deeper awareness or our connection to creation. This resource is available for purchase in booklet form from the ELCA distribution center, or it can be downloaded for free from the ELCA web site here. In addition to everything a person needs to lead the four sessions, the appendix contains a theological statement about earthkeeping, a wealth of quotations, and a list of helpful resources for more in-depth study and action.
  
   
• Ask, Thank, Tell, by Charles Lane, is an easy to read, exciting new stewardship resource filled with ideas for congregations just beginning stewardship ministry and for congregations looking to expand stewardship ministry in new directions. It's available from Augsburg Fortress, 1-800-328-4648; ISBN # 0-8066-5263-2, $11.99. For ideas about how to use this resource, contact Mike Bennethum, 610-395-6891 or michael.bennethum@elca.org.
  
   
• Congregational consultations  Contact Pastor Mike Bennethum by email or by phone at 610-395-6891.
  
  
• Printed resources  The Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod Resource Library has many printed resources for work with children, youth, and adults. This includes a copy of To the Castle: A Musical for Stewards. Come to browse or call Debbie Frey at 610-395-6891.
  
  

• Web resources

  • The ELCA has wonderful resources on their pages. Start there.
  • The Stewardship of Life Institute housed at Gettysburg Seminary has sermons, Bible studies, programs, reflections and other suggestions for "promoting stewardship as a faithful response of gratitude to God's abundant generosity."
  • Check out Luther Seminary for articles, sermons, quotes and links organized by topic.

   

• Planned Giving
  
  The Rev. Greg Kramer, a regional gift planner for the ELCA Foundation, is available to—
  • Work with a congregational member to set up a planned giving instrument
  • Conduct a "Wills, Estate, and Gift Planning" seminar in your congregation
  • Assist your congregation to set up an endowment fund

  Contact Pr. Kramer by email or by phone at 570-374-2044.

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Faith-Based Stewardship

"I will bless you—so that you will be a blessing."

The 2003 Synod Assembly of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod adopted Blessed to be a Blessing as our stewardship approach for the coming years.

Blessed to be a Blessing is designed to open our eyes to our blessings and to help us grow in our grateful response to God's abundant love. The goal of Blessed to be a Blessing is to ground us in a biblical understanding of stewardship.

Biblical Stewardship

Biblical stewardship is not about raising money to pay the church's bills. It is about offering some portion of the material resources God has given us to others as a way of thanking God for these resources.

Biblical stewardship is not convincing people to volunteer to do jobs for the church. It is helping disciples discover the talents and abilities God has given them and then figuring out how God is calling them to use those gifts in the church and in the world.

A Faith-Based Emphasis

Blessed to be a Blessing is a faith-based stewardship emphasis that recognizes our call to share our God-given blessings of time, talent and money. Sharing our blessings with others reflects our unity in Christ as Christ's Church.

God's call to Abraham is the model for God¹s call to us. God promises to bless us so that we might be a blessing to others, giving back a part of what we have received.

Stewardship is the grateful offering of all that we have and all that we are to God's service. We trust that everything is the gift of a loving and generous God. The gifts we return to the church can be a sign of both God's grateful offering to us and our trust in God.

While the world around us teaches us to fear scarcity, God calls us to trust in God¹s abundance. God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work (2 Cor. 9:8).

Principles

Heeding the call to trust in God's abundance, the following principles will guide our synod as we invite congregations and individuals to support the mission of the church:

• We will recognize how God has blessed us abundantly.
• We will acknowledge that we need to give back what we have received as a way to grow in faith.
• We will recognize that we are the stewards and not the owners of everything that God has entrusted to us.
• We will give proportionately, thankfully offering our first fruits.
• Our giving will be significant, so we experience that God provides all we truly need.
• We will give joyfully, in grateful response to our generous God.

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