Stewardship event is an 'adventure'

On Saturday, April 12, the Illinois Conference Stewardship team sponsored a stewardship event. It was "Stewardship Adventures: Increasing the Harvest 15 - 30%" presented by the Rev. Dr Eugene Grimm.  There were 79 participants from all parts of the Illinois Conference.

The host church, Yorkville Congregational UCC, extended an extravagant welcome and provided an excellent facility for this event. The Women's Fellowship

extended to those gathered warm and friendly hospitality.

The opening concept that Grimm focused on was to change the attitude of your church and its members from negative to positive thinking. It not only will have a positive impact on stewardship but on the whole body of your faith community. He said it more bluntly: "Banish negative thinking". He suggested that an excellent tool was asset-based planning (as apposed to needs-based thinking). The resource that is used for this process is "The Great Permission," published by the ELCA. Grimm then flushed out that Abundance Thinking is positive and Scarcity Thinking is negative. Clarence Stoughten once defined stewardship as "What I do after I say, I believe."

Another concept that the facilitator focused on was prayer. He shared with us this formula: Prayer + Gratitude = Generosity.   He suggested that a special prayer team be established to pray for the annual financial response program and for a year-round stewardship ministry. He said to ask them to pray daily that members will continually re-discover the joy of giving.

Other topics that he unpacked with the participants were:  Why People Give, Stewardship Myths and Legends, Financial Response Programs to Effectively Strengthen Mission and Ministry, From Common Sense to Dollars, and Year-round Stewardship.

Based on the evaluations, the workshop was very timely and had very practical concepts and methodologies.  Grimm was last with us November 2001, and we will not wait seven years to invite him back.

 Larry McCure