Tips for successful stewardship given at workshop

Friday, Oct. 16, 2015

SALT LAKE CITY — The pastor of a parish that is recognized internationally for its stewardship model spoke to Diocese of Salt Lake City priests and laypeople in separate presentations the first week of October.

Father Charlie Mitchell, who for 21 years has been pastor of St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Altamonte Springs, Fla., spoke to the priests at their fall convocation in Park City, and also to laypeople at a stewardship seminar arranged by John Kaloudis, the diocesan director of stewardship and development.

In his introduction of Fr. Mitchell, Kaloudis said he heard the priest at a national stewardship conference and was so inspired that he wanted to bring him to Utah. 

“What they do there in their parish works; it’s not just theory, it really, really works,” Kaloudis told those at the seminar, held Oct. 6 at St. Vincent de Paul Parish.

Before stewardship took hold, St. Mary Magdalen Parish had 90 ministries; now there are more than 200, Fr. Mitchell said, and the parish, which he describes as working class, has 3,000 registered families. “Before we were a stewardship parish we brought in on average about $12,000 a week; we now bring about $40,000 to $50,000 a week,” he added.

Getting to that point took a lot of effort as well as trial and error, he said, and cautioned his audience to accept the fact that they would make missteps, “which are intended to keep you humble and prayerful and … to teach; you learn more from your missteps than from your successes.”

Fr. Mitchell emphasized that those involved with stewardship must take their parish’s culture into consideration: “This is not one size fits all,” he said.

Some of the successful stewardship efforts at his parish include allocating funds from the annual parish festival to the various groups so they can dedicate more effort to their ministry rather than fundraising, and also offering training to potential ministers that helps match them to ministries that take advantage of their strengths, which “makes all the difference in the world,” he said. “Rather than being burned out, they catch fire and they want to stay in the ministry and grow the ministry.”

The support and participation of the parish pastor is essential to successful stewardship, Fr. Mitchell said. “He’s got to believe in the full value and the full breadth of stewardship, and that it’s not just another collection-enhancement scheme, but that it is a change in the culture of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”

Once a stewardship effort is up and running, it requires ongoing effort to continue as new people move into the parish and others leave, he said. “There’s always the temptation to fall back into maintenance because it’s just easier. Discipleship is not easy, and stewardship and discipleship are really interchangeable.” He then quoted Thomas J. Murphy, Archbishop of Seattle: “The commitment to stewardship is a commitment to mission; a commitment that the Church is alive and well and we are contributing to making that Church more alive and well by using our resources well.” 

Among the workshop participants was Lynn Miller, who for a number of years has been the parish council chairperson at St. Francis Xavier Parish. Of all of the points that Fr. Mitchell made, the one that struck her the most was one he discussed at length: that all of the parish ministries need to share the same mission. 

“We have a lot of energy at St. Francis, and we need to be united in our vision,” Miller said.

Several of Fr. Mitchell’s points struck Jeffery Martinez, a member of the St. Marguerite parish council, who agreed with the priest that young married men who have children are noticeably absent from the pews – Fr. Mitchell described several ways to “make Church matter” to this demographic group.  Martinez also liked Fr. Mitchell’s suggestion that priests should spend more time and energy with people who will work to benefit the parish rather than those who are always criticizing but never help. 

Like Martinez, Father Anthony Savas of the Greek Orthodox mission parish at St. Thomas More Parish felt that Fr. Mitchell’s talk supported some of his own philosophy of stewardship. 

“Stewardship has nothing to do with fundraising, nothing to do with dollars, ultimately,” Fr. Savas said. “It’s about relationships, it’s about discipleship, it’s about engagement. As churches, when we can begin to think of stewardship in that way – as service, not as receiving – then the other things that stewardship is traditionally encompass, that follows. What’s the purpose, anyway? To be able to have more to do more.  Once you’re doing more, the ‘have more’ will come.” 

Fr. Savas said one new idea he learned from Fr. Mitchell was to separate the “time” and “talent” aspects of stewardship from the “treasure” aspect; at St. Mary Magdalen the ministry fair in the spring emphasizes the first two aspects, while the push for financial stewardship comes in the fall, Fr. Mitchell said.