Today marks the beginning of our Year of Faith, and as our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI explains in his 2011 apostolic letter, Porta Fidei (the Door of Faith), it is a time for Catholics “to deepen faith and strengthen bonds with God.”

The Year of Faith is also a time when we are called to reach out to those who have left the Church, but still yearn for God in their lives, and to respond to nonbelievers who are searching for true meaning and help in life. “Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received, and when it is communicated as an experience of faith and joy.” (Porta Fidei).

At the very heart of this special year is evangelization. Dioceses, parishes, pastors, Church leaders, and lay people are called to act and participate.

This is a particularly bountiful time for us to enhance our stewardship efforts and initiatives by embracing the Year of Faith, and by offering unique and distinctive programs and offerings closely related to stewardship and faith.

We are the stewards of our Catholic faith — this Year of Faith calls us to gain greater understanding of our faith, as well as nurturing it and fostering it in others. Truly this is an opportunity to receive the gift of faith; care for it and share it responsibly; and return it with increase to the Lord.

Most parishes have already launched initiatives or made plans in relation to the Year of Faith. In the event you have not completed your planning and preparation, Catholic Stewardship Consultants would like to share with you these 15 examples you can implement to enhance your faith and stewardship efforts. Also included at the end of this list are some online “Year of Faith” resources you can utilize to help prepare your efforts:

1. Launch a series of small group studies spanning six weeks with the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response as the focus.
2. Dedicate two weekends during the year during which members are encouraged to invite someone to join them for Mass.
3. Begin study groups on the U.S. Catechism.
4. Review, study, and discuss Vatican II documents.
5. Assure that every family in the parish has a Bible.
6. Study the four major constitutions from the Second Vatican Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et Spes.
7. Make use of Father Robert Barron’s series. Catholicism, to enhance parish adult education and promote its use through small group reflection.
8. Make efforts to offer faith formation programs to parents of catechetical-age children in order to help them in their role as the first teachers of the faith.
9. Promote opportunities to make visits to the Blessed Sacrament at local Perpetual Adoration Chapels and in the parish church.“…knowing the content to be believed is not sufficient unless the heart, the authentic sacred space within the person, is opened by grace that allows the eyes to see below the surface and to understand that what has been proclaimed is the word of God.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei, #10)
10. Plan a significant celebration of the parish patronal feast day and the annual anniversary of the dedication of the parish church with special liturgical services and fellowship opportunities.
11. Offer increased opportunities for small group prayer and promote meditation on the Word of God through Lectio Divina. “We must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered as sustenance for his disciples.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei, #3)
12. Provide new opportunities of service in which the parish will reach out to an organization or institution in need of helping hands and loving hearts.
13. Review current efforts and policies and undertake to have regular and varied opportunities to register new parishioners in an easy and welcoming way.
14. Be proud of the good things accomplished in and through the parish and begin a new effort to send updates about parish life to diocesan publications and to local newspapers and TV stations.
15. Organize study groups on the Apostle’s Creed and reflect on the meaning and implications of the statements.

Year of Faith Links to Online Resources

I am sure many of you have already seen some of these ideas presented on the Vatican and other Catholic websites, and I hope this list of 15 examples helps inspire you to kick-start Year of Faith initiatives in your parish. If there is anything we can do to help you with your Year of Faith stewardship efforts, please feel free to contact me by email at eric@catholicsteward.com.

So often in my travels and discussions with parishes around the country, I hear questions from people who just don’t get what stewardship is all about. Many parishes are simply looking for a quick fix to boost the offertory, and are misguided in their belief that a “stewardship program” designed to increase parish revenue is the way to go.

Truth is, stewardship is all about helping parishioners grow in their relationship with Christ. To develop stewardship in a parish and experience substantial long-term growth, it takes a commitment solely focused on the ongoing spiritual development of every individual parishioner, and a desire to help strengthen each parishioner’s relationship with God. The more committed a parish is to this focus, the more likely they will experience success.

But we also don’t live in a vacuum. We know that most parishes need increases in their offertory to fund parish programs and ministries, not to mention to just pay the bills.

The parishes we work with each and every day “get it.” Our parish clients understand that true stewardship starts with bringing parishioners into a living relationship with Christ. And once a parish embraces and practices our holistic approach to stewardship development, they experience concrete results.

We recently conducted an analysis of our parish clients to see how developing the spirituality of stewardship has impacted them during the 2011-12 fiscal year, and the numbers are impressive. Listed below are just a few of our findings:

♦ On average, our parish clients experienced 501 NEW commitments to parish ministries.
♦ Our clients also saw significant commitments to personal and family prayer, reporting an average of over 1,750 new prayer commitments.
♦ On average, our parish clients experienced a 27% pledged offertory increase resulting in an average total increase of $146,000.

Your parish can experience similar results and do amazing things with a year-round, holistic, spiritually-focused, and practical approach to stewardship. If you are interested in finding out how Catholic Stewardship Consultants can help you make this a reality, feel free to email me at eric@catholicsteward.com. Or, for those of you heading to Chicago this weekend for the International Catholic Stewardship Council Annual Conference, feel free to stop by the Catholic Stewardship Consultants booth at the ICSC to meet with me or one of our representatives. We will be happy to give you more information.

I would like to share with you an article that ran earlier this week in the National Catholic Register about how the Diocese of Wichita’s emphasis on stewardship has enabled the diocese to completely fund their parish schools since 2002. It is truly a remarkable story of stewardship in action.

As parishes throughout the diocese grew stronger and had more resources through stewardship, diocesan schools gradually did away with tuition. Since 2002, all of the dioceses’ 38 schools — including four Catholic high schools — have been without tuition, educating just under 11,000 students.

At a time when Catholic school enrollment continues to decline and schools close across the country, the Diocese of Wichita is bucking that trend, thanks to stewardship and the model developed by Msgr. Thomas McGread more than 30 years ago.

Click here to read the article in the National Catholic Register.

As many of you know, Msgr. McGread is a longtime advisor to Catholic Stewardship Consultants and contributor to The Catholic Steward Blog. His story is chronicled in our 2011 book, Grateful and Giving: How Msgr. Thomas McGread’s Stewardship Message Has Impacted Catholic Parishes Throughout the Country, and is the model for the work we do at CSC in helping parishes develop stewardship as a way of life.

Our organization has helped hundreds of parishes across the country experience stewardship success following Msgr. McGread’s model. For more information on how CSC can help you and your parish develop stewardship, contact me at eric@catholicsteward.com.

I’m often asked by pastors, business managers, and other parish leaders what is the No. 1 thing that a parish can do to “increase” stewardship.

Of course, there are many initiatives a parish can implement to help develop stewardship. But there is only one way to answer the question.

The answer is to conduct an EFFECTIVE stewardship renewal, and to do so once a year.

The stewardship renewal, in a nutshell, is a process that entails parishioners making concrete pledges of their time (commitment to prayer), talent (commitment to ministry involvement), and treasure (commitment to the offertory) once a year.

Sounds easy enough. But, in order to be truly EFFECTIVE:

√ The Stewardship Renewal needs to be done with equal emphasis on each of the     three Ts: Time, Talent, and Treasure, and there needs to be proper follow-up so as to welcome people into parish ministries with open arms.
√ Hospitality needs to permeate the parish at all times.
√ It needs to be a process that educates parishioners and offers parishioners an invitation to grow in their faith.
√ And, above all, it needs to be a positive and formational time during which parishioners put more of their trust in Christ and take concrete steps in their faith.

If each of these steps are carried out, the results can be no less than miraculous:

√ You will see inactive parishioners return to practicing their Catholic faith and see parishioners who sporadically attend Mass suddenly begin attending each Sunday.
√ You’ll see parishioners young and old becoming more involved in the life of the parish.
√ Your ministries will see significant increases in participation.
√ Your parishioners who have never given anything financially will suddenly begin giving regularly, and those who are already giving regularly will increase their financial contributions.
√ You’ll see individual parishioners beginning to increase their personal prayer and hear stories of parish families now regularly praying together.

These amazing results are not too good to be true. I’ve witnessed similar transformations in hundreds of parishes all over the country, and I know firsthand that these types of results are attainable for any parish.

For the past 16 years, it has been a great joy of mine to be able to assist hundreds of parishes across the country, and across the world for that matter, to increase the practice of stewardship. Whether you have tried in the past to run your own “renewal” with limited success, or if you’ve never before conducted a renewal, I would be happy to learn more about your parish and share with you how conducting an EFFECTIVE and LIFE-CHANGING Stewardship Renewal can become a reality.

As always feel free to contact me at eric@catholicsteward.com and I’ll share with you what I can to help you and your parish.