By Joe Winter
Catholic Herald correspondent

Parish promotes stewardship with ministry fair

NEW RICHMOND -- Three years ago, the finance council at Immaculate Conception Parish was trying to decide how to best attack a failing budget, and they came up with a novel approach that included a recent ministry fair after several Masses.

For two years in a row, the church in New Richmond had been deficit spending, using general investment income as a stopgap measure, and forcing all programs to cut expenses, even from needed items, said parishioner Jo Germain.

As the parish accountant, she is aware of the need for a healthy revenue base, Germain said, but she also knows there is more to stewardship than "the 'M' word" (money). Germain also runs the Rite of Christian Initiation program, is on the stewardship committee, is a lector and Communion minister, and for ten years headed the religious formation program.

Germain understood that a multi-faceted program that included a fair with educational booths, and several other promotional methods, such as having volunteers speak on what brings them forward, could reap benefits.

One of the parish council members, Pat Derrington, had a priest friend familiar with a stewardship method used in the Diocese of Wichita, Kan., that seemed to increase revenues, although, Derrington added, the first emphasis is volunteering time and talent, "and the money will come."

The parish council had nothing to lose, Germain said, and gave Derrington the go ahead to get further information on the model.

It had a proven organizational method at not only the parish, but diocese level, and succeeded because it focuses on needs and how to develop plans to meet them, Derrington said.

He called the priest for information, got a manual from the Wichita diocese that's been used as a model throughout the United States, and brought back what Germain called pertinent information.

"Stewardship is not about money," was the main theme, according to Germain. "It's a way of life."

It may take two to four years before the full benefits of the program is seen, Derrington said, but they are substantial.

"Stewardship is a way of life that embraces the idea that everything that we have is a gift from God," Germain explained. "In gratitude, we give back to God what he has already blessed and graced us with, and in the end we become blessed and graced again."

Derrington and parishioner Jesse Skramstad went to a national stewardship conference in Chicago that same year, and came back with many ideas on how stewardship could be developed in a parish.

The first step was to build a stewardship committee that could begin to sift out ideas, and start Immaculate Conception in a direction that would make it a stronger community, Germain said. The Wichita method encouraged a year of formation for this committee, which included prayer, direct invitations for people to join in the effort, and planning.

What is called In-Step Ministries was one of the first things that the stewardship committee instituted, where each week someone was recognized for some talent that they shared with the parish.

The plan developed so that each fall a given set of weekends would include a person or persons speaking during the Masses about stewardship and how they were living that out in their lives .

Parishioners were encouraged to make a recommitment to stewardship, each year, choosing to begin in a new ministry as they felt called, or to continue in the efforts in which they were already involved. Each parishioner would be asked to take stock of their giving situation, figure out the percentage to give back to God, and make an intentional commitment for the year to come.

A ministry fair was planned, where parishioners involved in various ministries could display their "wares." Immaculate Conception celebrated its first ministry fair in the last weekend of September and first weekend in October. In the gathering hall in the lower level, 40 of 69 ministries were represented on a couple of dozen different tables, with different parishioners manning their "booths" after each Mass.

A total of 325 attended the different portions of the fair, which Germain said is not bad for the first year, although they may scale it back from two weekends to one the next time around, which may enable people such as herself to "spread themselves around more." She noted that by far the largest group gathered after the initial offering, following a 9 a.m. Mass.

"This was amazing because it enabled all the volunteers to see each other, and know that there are a lot of us," Germain said. "This will help in building a community among us."

She added that many people attending the fair said they didn't realize there were so many opportunities to serve. "There are these possibilities, all these things to get involved with," she said. "And many of them don't require a lot of time; they can be one-timers."

"This helps all the parishioners know what different ministries are active in the parish, and what parishioners can do to make these ministries better," Derrington said of the fair.

Christian formation used a poster that said, "We all plant the seeds of faith." Each ministry planted seeds that might later become fruitful with another person's sharing of their particular talent.

Almost all the ministries had people that were interested in becoming active immediately, Germain said. Several booths had playful competitions as they shared with each other the numbers of people they were able to, essentially, sign-up.

Fr. Jim Brinkman, pastor, had his own explanation. "People coming down to the ministry fair are like people going to buy a car. If a person goes to a dealership, they already know that they want to buy a car," he explained. "Now all the salesman has to do is to show them the right car, and complete the deal."

The people coming to the ministry fair have a desire to become involved in the activities of the parish, Brinkman believes. "We just have to help them find the right fit, and show them how to begin."

Perhaps a person loves music, and because it's a gift from God is able to sing or play an instrument, Germain said, their stewardship comes through and they're able to see that part of their time should be spent praising God through their music.

"They share their talent during liturgy, or with the youth ministry of the parish, or maybe with the community at large in a way that is good and wholesome," Germain said. "Every family has the adults that are earning the money to run the household. Since the ability to work, reason and earn money comes from God, the stewardship (focused) person realizes that we are only tenants in God's earth. Therefore, God receives a portion of our earnings."

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2005