Stewardship: Planning and Doing

As many of our congregations are experiencing declining membership and attendance, as well as "greying", and are looking for options, we believe it is time for a message saying simply it is time to begin just using God's already given gifts. Purposeful action always begins with a plan, and in churches planning is pure stewardship--the purposeful use of God's gifts. Unfortunately, organizational planning has morphed into something with its own peculiar, secretive zen of authoritative sounding books and programs to the point that many congregations elect "to continue doing what we have always done". What makes planning seem too hard is a vocabulary with innumerable recipes for preambles, mission statements, values statements, vectors, criteria, facilitators, etc. Nothing exotic has occurred beyond determining where you are, deciding what you want to become (creating a vision statement), listing what must be done to get there and then allocating resources, both human and financial. Every organization knows where it is, determining what it wants to become is the first step in active stewardship and planning, and agreement isn't usually easy to achieve. However, everything begins with crafting a short, two or no more than three sentence descriptions of what a congregation would like to become. God gives us three Biblical tasks: (1) care for the members of our congregation, (2) care for those outside our congregation who are hurting or alone in the world (the sick, unjustly in prison, or grieving, etc.), and (3) to take His word to all the world. We then select what we want to emphasize, usually proportioned to all 3. To be effective a vision statement must be short, one the entire congregation can understand, take to heart and explain. Then the real work of stewardship begins; evaluating, changing and doing. Stewardship is not a verb, the old school litany of I run, we run, they run makes no sense as I stewardship, we stewardship, they stewardship. Using all verbs stemming from God's gifts is stewardship. A church is a system of systems, where what we experience is created by several individual gift using systems, or ministries, which all too often become stovepipes without consideration for the overall effect. Balancing the use of our gifts is stewardship, not a year-end balance sheet or committee report. As one prophetic member said, "If everyone had a close relationship with Jesus, we wouldn't need a Stewardship Committee". Studying and evaluating individual systems that use the gifts of time, talent, treasure and testimony all too frequently reveals we have concentrated our time and treasure on our buildings and programs, almost becoming worshipers of the history of our bricks and mortar, virtually ignoring the three tasks God gave his church on earth. Change sounds easy and doable, but obfuscation and obstruction inevitably arise when determining changes to budget dollars and worship practices. That is why simplicity and getting the congregation to take the goals to heart is overwhelmingly important. With a vision, actions become logical and straightforward. Prayer along the way is also essential to get past shrinking, greying and disappearance. Without taking this first step of corporate stewardship, writing an effective vision statement for a plan, our Synodical President's estimation that we will shrink by half a million members will certainly come to pass. The Stewardship Committee is equipped and available for assistance, and additional sound counsel can be garnered from Pastor Johnson's Coaching, Pastor Scheler's work at Hope in Santa Rosa Beach and Pastor Angerman's 24 to Double effort at Good Shepherd Shalimar. We are certain there are additional successful efforts in the District, will share as we learn of them. HAPPY PLANNING.

Don Panzenhagen