Giving Tuesday is a way for Presbyterians to hit the reset button, says Rev. Aimee Moiso of the Presbyterian Foundation. Churches can use this day to highlight special ministries and invite members to generously share all that they have.
The soup at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Glendale, Arizona, is a recipe for encouraging mission support. A Sunday school class composed of elementary and middle-school students generated mission interest earlier this year through a soup-making venture aimed at helping Presbyterian Mission. They assembled the ingredients, put them in jars they had labeled, and sold the mixture to the congregation. The children used the proceeds to give a pair of goats, a family of chickens, a piglet and six refugee food baskets through the Presbyterian Giving Catalog.
In just a little more than a decade, the Presbyterian Church of Okemos, a suburb of Lansing, Michigan, has gone from being a congregation that rarely talked about money to a church where even younger members understand the power of pledges, bequests and endowments to multiply mission and as a means to commit their life a part of a faith community.
Princeton Abaraoha was a carefree 13-year-old boy when he was snatched by soldiers and taken to a military training camp. Two weeks later, he was carrying a gun as a soldier in Nigeria’s civil war.
“Stewardship is about the joyous discipline of giving thanks,” says Robert Hay Jr. of the Presbyterian Foundation. Comparing joyous discipline with a “runner’s high” where the mind body and spirit start clicking after months or even years of disciplined training, Hay says the discipline of stewardship can bring true joy in giving.
The Rev. Dr. James Reese, now approaching the 70th anniversary of his ordination in the Presbyterian Church, believes learning about stewardship is a cross-cultural exercise. He asserts approaches to charitable giving, especially in the context of the church, are formed by a community ethos — and he has the data to back it up.
Gratitude is a deep and profound part of the story of Jesus. It is complex and beautiful — and also the subject of author Diana Butler Bass’ recent book “Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.”
At 7:30 a.m. on November 29, 2017, the church phones at First United Presbyterian Church in Tarentum, Pa., were ringing. Callers wanted to know if the church had met the match for Giving Tuesday — and indeed, they had, and then some, says Rev. Philip Beck, pastor of First United PC.
Stewardship season was in full swing at Healdsburg (California) Community Church last fall when tragedy struck. Raging wildfires in Sonoma County wiped out vast residential areas within 20 miles of the church. Every church member — even those whose own homes were safe — knew people affected by the fires.
Even before Hurricane Maria made landfall in September 2017, the Rev. Edwin González-Castillo and other Presbyterian leaders in Puerto Rico received promises of help from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).
