The
spirituality of stewardship
by Wayne Pelzel, Director of Schools and Development
Stewardship presentations
were recently held in the parish communities of
Let’s for just a moment
reflect on the power of his message and the impact it could have. Imagine. . .
.each of the 80 parishes in the diocese has a
representative who came to the workshop and who goes back to their home parish
where they talk with others about the spirituality of stewardship. (To make
this simple we’re going to pretend that it pertains only to wills.)
Then, these 80 parish
representatives convince just 5 people to include a 10 percent gift or tithe to
the Church in their will. We now have 400 people giving 10 percent of their estate to the
Church. By today’s standards of wealth, these are pretty normal people.
Let’s say they each have a home valued at $100,000 and that same amount in
various savings accounts and investments. So, their estate gives the
Church $20,000. Those 400 people will leave a combined gift to the
Church of $8,000,000.
Think of the tremendous work
that 8 million dollars could do in the Church! And all that
from only 400 people giving only 10 percent of their estate.
Imagine if we could get every
parishioner in each parish throughout the diocese to leave just 10 percent of
their estate to the Church! The idea really isn’t that outrageous when you
think about it. And if we believe that all that we receive is a gift from
God, it’s really quite logical that we would want to give at least that much
back to God. Wouldn’t we want our final act on earth to include recognition of
the Lord’s gifts in our life? Actually, it would seem like a pretty spiritual
way to “close the books” so to speak.
An important part of the
stewardship message is that our generous God gives us our life, our abilities and
the sustenance we need to live. We simply need a generous heart to give some of
it back.