STEWARDSHIP
A Way of Life for our Parish
. St. Francis of Assisi Parish, the Catholic Community is Weston, began practicing Stewardship in 1992. Seven ministries were created to carry our the mission of the church in the parish-Worship, Education, Social Action, Communications, Social Life, Buildings and Grounds and Finance. The parish mission statement was formulated: "In the spirit of St. Francis to know Jesus and make him known." Three major goals --Evangelization, Spiritual Renewal, Community Building--were set.
. In 1997 we took a further step to make a conscious concerted effort to practice Stewardship in a radical way: gratefully giving to God our time , talent and treasure. The foundation that we now build on is fortified and firm, the future can only continue to bring about the kingdom of God more vibrantly and effectively. .
. Annually, we celebrate Stewardship. Each year we invite people to renew their commitment to the giving of themselves and their resources to the parish. We ask members of our community to pledge their time talent and treasure to God. This is commonly called Stewardship Sunday. During this time, we also encourage members of the community who have not pledged their time talent and treasure to do so. We confidently ask everyone to participate in building up the community to which they belong, the body of Christ.
. Much of religious has to do with relationships. Religion addresses the relationship between God and his people. It speaks t the relationships among the people on this planet, among the people in our parish right now. At the heart of any relationship lie give and take. No believer can deny that God has given, and continues to give. In the daily celebration of the Eucharist. In the public life of the parish. In the personal lives of everyone who walks through the doors of our church. Few of us have any problems taking what God has given.
. Our religious demands that we give back to God some of what God has generously bestowed upon us and our families. Repayment is obviously out of the question. We can never repay the Lord for all that he had done. The impossibility of our task, however, does not free us of the responsibility to spend our whole lives trying. In the attempt comes the fulfillment of the Lord's commandment to stewardship. The giving of our time, our talent and our treasure.
. The invitation to stewardship goes out to everyone in the parish: young and old, well and infirm, rich and poor. Stewardship extends into every area of human life; time and talent are inseparable; the smallest act of kindness, Jesus told us, will not go without its reward. Even those who might be suffering from ill health can offer their prayers, their sufferings in spiritual communion with people less fortunate still.
. A pervasive program of stewardship simple reminds people that opportunities for prayer, for service to God and neighbor are all around us, all the time!
. Too often the glorious life-principle of stewardship is reduced to a mathematical principle, a percentage, a multiplier that one is supposed to apply to pre-tax income to arrive at a figure acceptable for contribution to the parish. Too often a new program of stewardship is received as little more than a glorified fund-raising mechanism. Nothing could be further from the truth.
. Stewardship is nothing more than being honest with God. While it is certainly possible to offer a figure that will help in determining an appropriate sharing of treasure with the Church and with those less fortunate, it would usually be a mistake to assign a strict percentage to a specified aggregate of income as the sole quantifier of a tithe or startle gift.
. Think for a moment of the chaotic charismatic arithmetic of Jesus' life. After telling us to turn the other cheek, he suggested that if a person forces us to go one mile with him, we should offer to go two. A one-hundred percent increase in responsibility. Jesus fed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes. An increase beyond calculation.
. The word "tithe" occurs thirty-nine times in the Hebrew Scriptures, eleven in the Christian. The world carried with it the notion of "ten percent." Perhaps two percent reserved for worthy causes and eight percent directed to the parish, the diocese and the good work of the church here and abroad.
. In strictly human terms, the greatest lesson of Jesus' life was that he gave until it hurt. If a person thinks nothing of the check they write to fulfill a stewardship pledge, the person hasn't thought enough about the size of the pledge. Jesus paused in the garden of Gethsemane to consider, in a bloody sweat, the magnitude of the sacrifice he was about to make. If our own sacrifices do not give us pause, we're really not sacrificing.