Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Transitions

If you were at the Charge Conference on Sunday, you participated in electing FUMC leadership for the coming year. If you read the list of nominees, you will see that I decided after a decade of service to step out of the leadership circle. There were many reasons for my decision. The most important is that we are in an era of transition and we seek new young leadership. John Wesley says in his covenant," let me be put to work for you or let me be set aside for you." If we will have room for new leadership, old leadership has to get out of the way.

The second thing you may notice is that there is no position of Stewardship Chair on the list of team leaders. After many years of attempting to change the way First Church understands stewardship, it seems clear that I have had minimal success. The traditional reaction to the word steward may just be too strong to overcome. The fact that for three years the nominations committee has been unable to populate a stewardship team seems to be the strongest evidence that we need to do something differently.

This change doesn't mean we will stop having an annual financial stewardship campaign. There will be a task force to carry out that important annual task, and that will be their only job so they can focus on it over the course of a year rather than make it only one of their priorities.

As for stewardship education and the broader understanding of stewardship as a way of life, not an annual financial campaign, that remains unknown. Inclusion of a stewardship education component in the Journey series is the most likely first step.

What of the Circle of Stewards? The concept has been a difficult one to for many grasp in this day of evaluation. It is my way to initiate, to ask questions, to provoke thought, and trust the spirit. You can't evaluate that and make a report. You can't count it, you can't quantify it, and you can't say it succeeded or failed.  The only real investment was my time and effort and I feel that the project has been worthwhile. I have enjoyed hearing from many of you and the conversations have been inspiring. Like most ministries, I gained a great deal by doing the soul searching to write this blog. Records show about 100 people a month are regular readers and I enjoy thinking of you out there as I write, even not knowing who you are. The blog might continue if you like, or we can make it into a forum. Let me hear from you if you have ideas.

For the remaining weeks of my term as your Stewardship Chair, I'm going to talk about the fifth dimension of stewardship, witness. We added that to our membership vows a few years ago but we haven't done much work on understanding what that means. As we go forward in making a new future for FUMC, witness will be an essential component.

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