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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Hastings parish benefiting from new stewardship tools

New online resource will soon be available to all parishes in archdiocese

Members of the stewardship commission at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Hastings have wanted to expand their efforts at the parish for a long time. But they didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel” when it came to stewardship resources and tools. They knew such resources were likely out there to draw from, they just didn’t know where to find them.

Now they do.

The archdiocesan Office of Development and Stewardship will launch a new website soon featuring a stewardship tool kit that will help all the parishes in the archdiocese enhance their efforts to nurture stewardship as a way of life.

The website will include information for parishes about the role of the pastor in a stewardship plan, the role of a stewardship committee, how to form a committee and recruit members, and even a timeline for a commitment season.

Some of the more concrete tools available on the site will be sample commitment cards, pastor letters, posters and thank you cards — all customizable to each particular parish.

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Ideas for promoting ministries in the parish and sponsoring a ministry fair are also included.

Adapting for use

After meeting with Mike Halloran, director of the Office of Development and Stewardship, staff at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton have begun using some of the tools that will be included on the new website.

“We met for coffee and I really started to become aware of all the resources he is making available to us at this time,” said Tony Mailhot, chair of the stewardship commission at the parish.

Using some of the material, Mailhot created a new job description for the volunteer members of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s stewardship commission. The parish also is using the tool kit’s guidelines to recruit new members for its commission.

“It adapts to each individual parish very well and would work for a smaller parish of about 200 families up to the size of our parish of 3,000,” said Faith Siebenaler, coordinator of stewardship and communications at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Siebenaler is also looking forward to workshops, organized by the archdiocesan stewardship office (see box), that are scheduled next month around the archdiocese to help familiarize parish staffs with the tools that will be available in the tool kit.

“We’ll all be working together, getting ideas from one another and growing from there,” she said.

“All the tools, from formative to practical, are in­cluded in the kit. So really everything from identifying and forming a stewardship committee to asking for a gift to your parish is all contained there,” Halloran said. “But what’s really neat about it is you can go in, customize it, personalize it and it’s yours.”

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Upcoming workshops

» Monday, June 6, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Lumen Christi, 2055 Bohland Ave., St. Paul.

» Tuesday, June 7, 6 to 7:30 p.m., Pax Christi, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie.

» Wednesday, June 8, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Holy Name of Jesus, 155 County Road 24, Medina.

» Thursday, June 9, 6 to 7:30 p.m., St. Odilia, 3495 Victoria St. N., Shoreview.

» Monday, June 13, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., St. Patrick, 3535 72nd St. E., Inver Grove Heights.

A light meal will be included at all of the workshops.

 


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