Question for the Community: Stewardship Season

This is my first post on the PCUSA Blog, so I will begin by introducing myself.  My name is Rob Monroe and I live just north of Washington, DC.  I am an Elder at Laurel Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Maryland (as well as the web site admin, so hop on over there so that I can up my hits for this week!).  I am also on the staff of National Capital Presbytery - so I have a slightly different view of the denomination.  Instead of working for one church, I get to work for all of our churches.  It's truly a blessing for me.  I also blog HERE about my family, kidney disease and life in general.

I am one of those that believes that we should be here to learn from one another and have converstation, so I plan to blog about things in a question-asking format. 

So - now onto my post:

In my role in my congregation I have been asked to help out with our annual Stewardship campaign.  Last year, for the first time in over a decade, we made a real effort to challenge people and make visits to homes and have honest conversation about the budget.  For years people were simply given a pledge form and asked to give what they could, without any suggestions or reality of what it costs to keep the church in operation.

Our committee has met a couple of times and we are unsure of how to approach things this year, in light of last years big push as well as the slowdown of the economy.  We're in the Nations Capital and I know that the slowdown has not hit our area as hard as others, but we know that we need to be careful not to push too hard.  I think that we decided to proceed as we did last year - a nice narrative budget with targeting specific giving units to increase their pledges.

I have a question for you all:
What are you doing in terms of a Stewardship drive this year?  Are you simply asking people to give?  Are you asking people to give specific amounts?  Are you being reserved in what you ask of your congregation?  Are you using a standard curriculum or do you start from scratch each year?

Please Discuss!

Monday Question of the Week . . . Stewardship Season

I don’t know would your congregations but we have started the gear up for Stewardship season. I know that this is time of year that many church professionals find particularly challenging so here is your opportunity question, share, rant, or anything thing else you feel like sharing with the class. Happy giving . . .