Stewardship Tip February 2007

Good stewards are grateful for the gifts they have received – and say so! Did your parish send out “tax statements” last month? Don’t let the careful cultivation and good stewardship of your donors stop there. February is an excellent time to write a new letter of acknowledgement for gifts of $250.00 or more. And while you’re at it, write at least one more to use beginning in June and yet another to start using in October. Better yet, write a different one for every month so that the gratitude shines through (and the text doesn’t get stale) for those wonderful donors who give enough to need such a letter every month!

Does your parish report your weekly offertory income in the bulletin? Are those numbers accompanied by words of gratitude? It can be something as simple as the title for that section – “St. Anne’s thanks last week’s good stewards!” or “These gifts gratefully received last week:” or “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Or it can be a line of Scripture, quoted or paraphrased: “God loves a cheerful giver”(2 Cor. 9:7) – and so do we! or “We give thanks to God through Jesus Christ for all of you” (Rom. 1:8) or “Everything comes from you, oh Lord, and of your own have we given you” (2 Chron. 29:14) or “Honor the Lord with your wealth” (Prov. 3:9) or “Whoever sows bountifully will reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6).

Do you remember to thank, publicly, your parish donors to the diocesan Bishop’s appeal? In most dioceses, if a parish falls short of its goal, the parish must make up the difference. So if you do make your goal, thanks to generous members of your parish who understand that stewardship extends beyond the parish church to the diocese and the Universal church, too, don’t forget to thank them in the bulletin! Not individually or by name, of course. But they know who they are – and the article thanking them for their generosity and their wider vision of the church then also becomes a stewardship teaching tool for those who perhaps aren’t quite there yet.

A good steward receives God’s gifts gratefully. And we who receive the gifts of generous parishioners should be doubly grateful – to God who first gave the gifts to our donors and to those good-steward donors who then returned those gifts to the Lord by entrusting them to us. Don’t forget to say thank you! We can never say thank you too often.