Stewards of Mission

From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, March 2009

The Church is missionary by its very nature, and Christians, disciples of Jesus Christ, are called to be stewards of the Church’s mission. This is the “great commission” that the Lord gave to his disciples before he ascended into Heaven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Mt. 28:19) As stewards of this mission, we are called to be the guardians or caretakers of all the gifts we have received from God. To exercise this stewardship responsibility we must participate directly in the Church’s prayer, in her proclamation of the Gospel, and in the service she provides to all members of the human family through her apostolic work. And we must share gratefully and generously all the blessings that have come to us through the Lord’s gift of the Holy Spirit, which was bestowed on the whole Church at Pentecost and which every disciple receives individually on the day of his or her Baptism.

This very special form of stewardship is what makes the ministry of stewardship and development, also called mission advancement, much more than a series of techniques for recruiting volunteers or raising financial resources to carry out the Church’s ministries. We do not apologize for undertaking these very necessary, practical functions of planning, communications and fundraising, but we understand them in a broader context, and we refuse to let them become “the tail that wags the dog.”

– Read the full article –