Le Mars area parishes develop stewardship plan

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
July 21, 2005

LE MARS - Through the long-range planning process of the Le Mars area parishes, last fall the people identified stewardship as one area they wanted to give a primary focus.

With that in mind, the cluster stewardship committee in the last few months has developed an organizational chart and overall stewardship plan to be used in all six parishes.

"As we collaborate with all six parishes to create faith as our most prized possession, this model helps us be able to implement it within our own parishes," noted Lisa Niebuhr, cluster consultant of the Le Mars parishes. "People have less time to give, so they are very concerned about how they can give their time as effectively as they can."

The new plan is not intended to replace, but to enhance present stewardship efforts in the parishes. Through this type of plan, noted Father Kevin Richter, the parishes can celebrate what they currently do well and look for ways to strengthen stewardship efforts.

"Everything we have, everything we are comes from God so we have an obligation to make that return to God first and foremost in every aspect of how we live our lives," said Father Richter, pastor at St. Joseph Church in Le Mars. "We emphasize the spirituality of stewardship - a complete way of looking at life."

Father James Tigges, pastor at St. James Parish in Le Mars, said this type of plan is a good idea "because of the opportunities it presents to people to keep God in the center of their lives and to be able to share their gifts and talents along with their treasures with the wider community."

Denny Bixenman, a parishioner at St. James Parish in Le Mars and member of the cluster stewardship committee, pointed out that the four pillars of stewardship are hospitality, prayer, service and faith formation. Various parishes in dioceses throughout the country have developed stewardship programs based on these four pillars.

Referring to a stewardship book by the Diocese of Wichita based on the four pillars, Niebuhr said, "It talks about how when we are baptized, we are called to serve as stewards in our parishes through each of these four different roles - hospitality, faith formation, prayer and service. No matter how we tweak that model to fit the specific needs, by having those four pillars then we can respond to that call through baptism."

Hospitality, prayer and service subcommittees will be established as three permanent subcommittees of stewardship.

"Each church is supposed to designate a subcommittee for hospitality, prayer and service. They will elect a chair and the chairperson will sit on the cluster subcommittee," noted Bixenman.

Faith formation is the fourth committee to fall under stewardship but it has been labeled as a stand-alone committee that has accountability not only to the cluster stewardship committee but also reports to the cluster pastoral council.

Ideally, the four subcomittees will meet on a monthly basis to share ideas and best practices. In addition to the four committees representing the four pillars, they noted that four groups would support the Hospitality Subcommittee: appreciation, bereavement, festivities and welcoming.

After the organizational chart was established, Niebuhr said the broader stewardship committee set about determining what they wanted to do in each of the four areas through the fiscal year of 2006, June 2006. They also discussed some ideas for 2007.

Niebuhr stressed the fact that the parishes were already doing a good job of stewardship, but now they will have a more defined structure in order to support the growing needs of the parishes.

"The stewardship committee has been pretty active at St. James for about the last four years, but not as formally structured and organized as this," noted Bixenman. "The larger you get, the more structure you have to have."

So will all six of the Le Mars area parishes offer the exact, same ministries and projects? Probably not, unless the stewardship committees at the parish levels deem it to be beneficial for their individual faith community.

Much of the broader plan centers on assessing current projects and looking at ways to improve them. The advantage of having people from all of the parishes serve on the four cluster-level subcommittees is they could hear what other parishes are doing and take ideas back to their own parishes.

"The subcommittees will be the place where the churches come together, share their activities and ideas and then go back to their own parishes to make it happen," said Bixenman.

At St. James, he said the process of assessing current programming has been helpful in identifying and affirming current stewardship.

"There are some activities going on in our parish that were not necessarily thought to be formally under the stewardship committee," he noted.

Father Tigges mentioned that they want to enlarge people's concept of stewardship.

"The approach to it will be different in each parish because of the complexity of the parish itself - for the time being," he said.

Joan Driscoll, chair of the cluster faith formation committee, pointed out that they moved to Le Mars six years ago and prior to her membership at St. Joseph's in Le Mars she attended church in Neptune.

"When you are in a small parish, everyone does everything together," she said. "We didn't have to have the organization and structure that we have now."

While the majority of these stewardship efforts deal with the parish level, some activities and ministries will be presented at the cluster level.

To stress the importance of the need to have a commitment to stewardship, the Le Mars parishes have made a parish family agreement available to parishioners.

"Our belief is that if a family is truly living stewardship by being present in the faith community on a regular basis, by giving of their time and talent to the community in various aspects of parish life and then tithing a certain percentage then we have an obligation to provide them with Catholic education," noted Father Richter, who added that again they used the model by the Wichita Diocese.

About 25 percent of parishioners have signed a contract. While it is being utilized by many Catholic school families, it has been signed by families with children in the parish religious education program as well as couples with no children in school.

"We know that when people give of their time and give of their talents, their treasures will follow," said Niebuhr.

The stewardship plan will be presented to the cluster pastoral and finance councils in the fall.

Niebuhr said parishes have already done an assessment to determine who has been on the various committees and who wants to continue involvement. In September, there will be an election of officers for the cluster stewardship committee and parishes will also seek members to serve on the various stewardship subcommittees. Fall is also the time when parishes will have parishioners sign up for ministries.

Ultimately, they would like to see every parishioner become involved in some form of stewardship whether it is something on a regular basis such as serving as a lector or is something a little more random such as one-time involvement in the Giving Tree at Christmastime.

"It's been proven over and over that you get more than you receive whenever you become involved - whether it's your time, your talent, your treasures," said Bixenman. "From that standpoint, we must do everything possible to involve people."

Through the stewardship programs Driscoll said that they are trying to reach from the youngest to the oldest parishioner because everyone has a part in the parish. For that reasons, she added, they are trying to get some intergeneration activities organized.

She stressed the importance of involvement.

"It makes you feel like you belong, that you are one with everyone else and that you have something to give," said Driscoll.

By identifying areas of stewardship and putting it down on paper, she mentioned that people will discover that they have already been involved and that will give them confidence to step forward in the future.