Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

101
Chapter XII
Start Your Stewardship Renewal
Program Without Asking for Money
Recognizing the need to recover Christian stewardship
from the deleterious impact of secular fundraising is
one thing. Actually recommitting one’s parish to stewardship
renewal is another. What, then, are some practical steps to begin
liberating the Church, the faithful, and our tired old practices from
the treadmill of fundraising and secularism?
Christian stewardship embraces every aspect of our lives and
our giftedness. It cannot be reduced to money and the management
of our financial resources alone, but is rather triune in nature—time,
talent, and treasure. If we are going to renew our understanding of
stewardship as a matter of Christian vocation, individually, at the
parish level, and at the level of the wider Church, we shall have to
begin by restoring time and talent to their proper place. Moreover,
statistics and experience confirm that time and talent properly
precede treasure in the exercise of stewardship, so that any
stewardship renewal program needs to treat time, talent and treasure
in precisely that order.