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Toronto, ON
M5G 1B1
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Stewardship

• The Poor Widow Speaks -- homily Nov. 9, 2003
• Proportional giving calculator

How do we get to the future we want?

I wonder why we chose November as the time to look at stewardship. It would make more sense to examine the stewardship of time in September as we take up fall and winter commitments. I suppose this time, before the beginning of the church year and towards the end of the calendar year, is as good as any.

I have often wondered how one should figure out how much "time" one should give to the church and wider community in which we live. I have also wondered what should be included in such a tally. I have tended to take the 10% financial amount and simply transfer it to my understanding of time stewardship. Even in families with young children I think there should be one activity that does not have a high personal return. I believe in parents being Cub leaders, soccer coaches and the like but there needs to be one thing that stretches the family or individual to include people unlike themselves or global issues that are more complex and have elements of learning and growth attached.

In my reading last week I came across a statistic from the Church of Christ of the Latter Day Saints. They name 10% as being the financial guideline and one day in seven as being the "time" guideline (and I don't think they meant Sunday worship). I began to vision what that would mean in a community like ours - Would we be talking about being able to "afford" a justice worker for the parish? It could be that we see this work as core and pledge ourselves to raise the offerings to see that money for a worker is always in place.

There are several ways of coming at the funds for a justice worker and making it core. Someone with fundraising skills could figure out how we could name the work and use money from foundations to support it. Another alternative would be to figure out and embark on a program for a year so we begin with a new justice worker in an endowed position. Perhaps a small team of people feel compelled to take up the justice work as mission.

Stewardship - individual/ corporate, financial/talents. Perhaps the best markers of where we are are in our Palm Pilots and financial statements. How do we use them to get to the future we want?

What do you think?

Sara