Proposal of Partnership Between Treasury & Stewardship Ministries
Nurturing a God-first lifestyle is a wholistic approach to stewardship and involves the areas of personal spiritual growth, personal well-being, personal giving, and personal involvement in accomplishing God’s final mission for earth. An integrated approach to stewardship facilitates the adoption of the God-first lifestyle by our members. In this regard, the GC Stewardship Ministries and GC Treasury have developed a six-point document describing the areas of partnership in nurturing the financial domain of a God-first lifestyle. Recently, it was shared for discussion during a GC and Division Treasury Leadership Summit. It is still an evolving text, but it can help to initiate some fruitful conversations at all levels of the church organization.
Proposal of Partnership Document
Area of Partnership |
Suggested Action |
#1 Provide a clearer understanding of the connection between personal spiritual growth, personal giving, and personal involvement in accomplishing God’s final mission for earth. |
Disseminate a broad-based perspective of stewardship which articulates around the meta-narrative: “We are created and redeemed as stewards.” |
Promote the weekly offertory devotionals and the annual stewardship revival week, which invite members to embrace a God-first lifestyle. |
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#2 Promote trust and confidence of church members by communicating how resources are administered by the various levels of our church entities. |
Establish a group to study the need for amendments to the Working Policy and the Church Manual for these documents to harmonize with actions related to adopting the Combined Offering Plan and bring clarity to some offerings’ terminologies. |
Ensure that each administrative entity has a template to share about the use of tithes and offerings to their committees and constituencies. |
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Communicate to the church about finances through accessible and user-friendly platforms about the following:
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Educate church members on the importance of identifying themselves while giving and differentiating their giving into tithes, offerings, and donations. |
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Ensure that local churches are regularly audited, and the audit reports are presented to church boards, at a church’s business meetings, and preferably shared with the church at large whenever possible. |
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Provide local church leadership with resources to develop and implement an internal control system. |
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#3 Promote financial literacy, particularly from a biblical perspective, to enhance the daily walk of church members with God and their ability to serve others. |
Set up an editorial committee to develop resource materials for financial literacy seminars that local churches can adapt to their needs. |
Train a pool of financial literacy educators comprising of treasurers, STW leaders, pastors, and other resource people to provide Financial Literacy Seminars for the local church and the community as a nurturing and evangelistic tool. |
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#4 Populate a metric that shows the trend of how church members grow in trust and relationship with God through obedient participation in tithes and regular and systematic offerings. |
Add a line to the treasurers’ reports at all levels that indicates the monthly number of giving units. |
Develop and provide an instrument for conferences, unions, and divisions to consolidate data for their territory about the pattern in participation for tithing and regular offerings. |
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Communicate and analyze the trend in the participation in giving during church board meetings, church administrative meetings, other adequate local church forums, and to executive committees at all levels regularly. |
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Provide pastors or approved and trained spiritual leaders with information about individual members’ participation in tithing for nurture and retention purposes through personal interventions. |
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#5 Prepare inspiring stewardship resources in formats and on platforms that are user-friendly to the generational and geographic profiles of church members. |
Invest more resources in developing stewardship resources for children, teens, and young adults. |
#6 Assess the impact and effectiveness of Extraordinary Tithe allocation earmarked for full-time stewardship directors at the division. |
Undertake a study to assess the initiative’s effectiveness in increasing participation in tithing and regular and systematic giving. |
Rational for Partnership
This proposal rests on the concept of integrated action to improve effectiveness in growing a God-first culture. A God-first culture does not happen in a vacuum, and a single church department is insufficient to lead the church membership to adopt the God-First Commitment. This initiative represents a concrete action to move away from the silo mentality. The effectiveness of the integrated strategy could be observed in the initiative of disseminating stewardship education through the Sabbath School quarterly. Results obtained in 2019 and early outcomes for the 1st Quarter Lesson of 2023 are quite conclusive. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we can’t have a quarterly on stewardship every quarter. However, we can partner with other church ministries, departments, and initiatives to effectively vehicle the God-first principle to all segments of the church.
GC, Stewardship Ministries