February 2006 Stewardship Tips

Using GIA this (or any) month

In charge of the opening prayer for a parish meeting this month? Try this… Read aloud this month’s new Parable, “Love’s lessons learned,” then choose one of the discussion questions (found elsewhere on this website) and ask the assembled group to discuss it briefly in groups of two or three. At the end of a few minutes, sum up with this prayer: “Oh, God, we thank you for the gift of faith – and for people to share it with. Bless us now as we begin out meeting, that all we say and do may have its beginning and its end in You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Help out your parish bulletin editor by passing along the “Catholic Words, to Live By, to Love By” and watch empty “white space” in your bulletin be filled with good food for thought!

Give a copy of the Faith Fact -- “Sacred hearts” -- to each of your catechists and the teachers at your parish school. They’ll be grateful to have a faith connection to broaden and deepen their classroom celebration of Valentine’s Day.

Lincoln, Washington, good stewards of the gift of leadership

In February, we celebrate the leaders of our nation. In many places, Lincoln’s Birthday (Feb. 12) and Washington’s Birthday (Feb. 22) are celebrated together as Presidents’ Day (the third Monday of the month), and this celebration can help us focus on the gift of leadership. Like all good gifts, this one must be received gratefully and used responsibly. But what does that mean in today’s church, where leadership seems to be becoming less exclusively clerical and to be moving more and more into lay hands? Lay leaders who would be good stewards of that gift will need to think and act locally – to do what they can, where they can, and to try not be discouraged by seeming setbacks. They will strive to be good stewards of the possible.

We are all stewards already – good ones or poor ones, conscious or unconscious – but if we are to be good stewards of the gift of leadership, we must collaboratively define the needs that face us and step out boldly to meet them. We must become more conscious of our responsibility and more intentional about the good stewardship of our particular lay leadership roles in this time and place. And then we must trust that if we are faithful and bring our gifts to bear on the problems at hand, God will be faithful and meet the needs -– of our parishes and of the Church at large.

Ours seems to be a time of change and uncertainty in the church. But the very earliest days of the church were uncertain, too. At Peter’s trial in Acts 5, Gamaliel urged the church leadership of the time to let Peter and the others go about their business and to trust that if the endeavor were not of God it would simply wither away. But, he added, if this new direction was God’s will, they would be unable to stop it and it would flourish. Well, we know the end of that story! Let us celebrate the gift of leadership with gratitude and trust that God will bring our efforts to fruition as best suits the Divine will and purpose.