The Learning Commons is intended to be a trove of resources to help parishes thrive. One of those resources is a webinar created by the Stewardship Resources Hub in partnership with The Episcopal Network for Stewardship (TENS) that about 40 people from across the diocese attended online on Oct. 28. A video recording of the webinar will also be posted in the Learning Commons section of the diocesan website as a resource for any parish accessible any time.
TENS is a ministry of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and the Anglican Church of Canada. It is an association of church leaders that provides resources and training at low or no cost to clergy and lay stewardship leaders. The Anglican Diocese of Ottawa is a member, which means that all the parishes in the diocese can access all of TENS stewardship resources.
The webinar featured a conversation with Davey Gerhard, executive director of TENS, and the Rev. Debra Bennett, a TENS board member and the priest at Church of Our Savior in Akron, Ohio.
Derwyn Sangster, chair of the the Stewardship Resource Hub moderated. The following excerpts offer a glimpse of the rich discussion:
“From your perspective in the Anglican faith, what is stewardship?” Sangster asked Bennett.
“On a number of levels, it can be understood as an act of worship. It’s our relationship with God and how we respond to God’s generosity in our lives, in all facets of our lives. Where are the blessings? Where are we grateful?” she said. “And it is a part of our spiritual disciplines —when we are intentional around attending to those things of God that we understand are part of how we live and move and have our being. And so, when we engage in service to community, that is an act of stewardship.”
Sangster then asked Gerhard what stewardship means in the day-to-day life of a congregation.
“If we think about stewardship in general as caring for all of God’s creation, the entire kingdom of God, the reign of God, we think about our congregational context as our own little corner of God’s reign, of God’s kingdom. And while we are called to serve all of God’s people, the parish context gives us the opportunity to serve our local community and the local ways that our community needs us to be present, to stand up for it, to advocate for it, to heal and seek and serve.… I look at our congregations as our local place to engage God’s work and to keep that recognition of abundance, gratitude, and generosity flowing out to our neighbors.”
Sangster also asked Gerhard, “What are the essential elements of a successful stewardship campaign? And… how can TENs resources be brought to bear in support of parish campaigns?”
“What TENS does, in addition to creating an annual pledge campaign, which is about the mechanics of how we raise money in a congregation — pledge cards and statements of faith and letters and prayers —all those things are very important and touch on the spiritual and the human components of our stewardship. But then we also give an enormous number of resources for ongoing formation throughout the year. My worry is that when congregations only talk about stewardship as a coded word for fundraising, and they only do that once a year or one month a year, then we’re missing all these other amazing opportunities to draw that connection between gifts received and gifts given, and gratitude….”
“We inspire, we nurture, we grow Christians in their faith and in their love. And part of doing that is then for us to see stewardship, not as just transactional, but transformational. … Our resource library is chock full of things. Our webinars all through the year get into work that’s not just how to run a stewardship campaign, but how to evangelize, how to talk about money and faith, how to see what your community needs from you and bring that back into your budgeting process and your planning processes.”
Enjoy the full webinar online and contact Carole Breton, director of Communications and Development, for more information:
St. James, Morrisburg — Stormont Deanery