Jack Hemple grew up at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Toledo, Ohio. His parents were married there. He was baptized there.
“I remember being there a lot as a kid,” Hemple said, adding that back then his mother loved to knit.
“She was always knitting. She had a specific hat pattern that she used and she’d knit hats and give them to the church,” he remembered.
But in the late 1980s, a lack of support caused the church to close.
Since 2012, Giving Tuesday has reminded people that the holiday season is more than a time for receiving gifts. Held on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving and “Cyber Monday,” Giving Tuesday reaffirms the joy of giving during a season of celebration.
Knowledge of who gives, and how much they give, in a congregation is essential to successful stewardship. This was the message delivered last week by pastors Louise Westfall and Justin Spurlock at the Stewardship Kaleidoscope session titled “You Ask for It: Conversations on the Giving Spectrum.”
Many church leaders fear that emphasizing planned giving can damage the annual stewardship effort or an ongoing capital campaign.
But in fact, the opposite is true, says Karl Mattison, Vice President of Planned Giving Resources for the Presbyterian Foundation.
In his session titled “Endowments 101” at the Stewardship Kaleidoscope gathering in San Diego last week, Stephen Keizer, Vice President of Ministry Relations at the Presbyterian Foundation, taught key concepts around church endowments including their inception, management and eventual use.
Leaders of small churches sometimes spend so much time looking back at how things used to be that they don’t appreciate the blessings and assets their church still has, says Olanda Carr Jr., Senior Ministry Relations Officer for the Presbyterian Foundation.
A new study by the Lake Institute was recently released that delves into how American congregations “receive, manage and spend” financial resources.
Attendees at the annual Stewardship Kaleidoscope conference received a summary of these findings during the gathering’s opening plenary session, guided by Melissa Spas, Managing Director of Education and Engagement for the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving.
Union Church in Seattle is “a church with a day job — a very involved day job,” says Scott Lumsden, Seattle Presbytery Co-Executive Presbyter.
Stick around for a few days at 415 Westlake Avenue N. and you’ll see he’s right.
The Cook Christian Training School, one of the U.S.’s most well-known and renowned institutions dedicated to training Native people to become leaders in the church, closed its doors in 2008, leaving behind a 16-acre campus — and its mission of Christian ministry in Indian Country.
