Do you have The List? You should. The List isn’t the one that has all the stuff you need to pick up at the grocery store.  The List is your wish list.  Or rather, your church’s wish list. What would happen if the family of a deceased parishioner told you they wanted to buy something […]

Do you know Tom’s Shoes?  It’s a shoe company that was started about five years ago.   Yes, they’re sold at Nordstrom’s and yes, they’re overpriced.  But that’s where Tom’s and most designers separate. Tom’s One for One program gives away a pair of shoes for every pair that is sold.  But it’s not like a […]

As the news broke in Japan it wasn’t too long before I got thinking about UMCOR and its role in the relief effort of many of these disasters.  We are blessed to have Japan as the center of much of our United Methodist missionary work in Asia so we had “people on the ground” who […]

Last week’s stock market fluctuations aside, the economy seems to be on the upswing.  Economists point to statistics like orders for durable goods and slowly easing unemployment rates as their proof. I knew it was better in late December by the mail we didn’t receive. At the Foundation we have investments from about 160 local churches […]

I was blessed to be able to preach yesterday at Orchard Path UMC, one of our new church starts.  Reverend David Rittgers is leading a great group in suburban Cleveland and asked if I would talk stewardship with his people. Having been part of a new church start years ago, I have great empathy for […]

When my daughter was younger we bought her a traffic jam game.  It was a puzzle that had a red car that you needed to get out of a parking lot by moving other cars forward and back so the red car could get to the exit.  (I know that was the worst description in […]

If you started the year with a new financial secretary he or she is probably pretty depressed seven Sundays into the new year.  He or she may have taken the total amount pledged, divided it by 52 and figured that was what you would receive each Sunday. Or you may a pastor who, while, new […]

A couple of years a young, brand-new pastor starting attending our stewardship training.  Not some of them, all of them.  It looked like she was a stewardship junkie.  I like stewardship junkies. Hers was a church all too typical in our conference.  Located in a blue-collar Cleveland suburb the congregation was aging and declining.  The […]

Last fall Christianity took a kick to the teeth when Florida pastor Terry Jones decided he was going to burn the Koran. It must have been a slow news day.  I don’t think it’s newsworthy when a pastor of a small church decides to do something stupid, but the national and international media picked up […]

When I was growing up you didn’t get braces until your teeth had all come in.  But today the approach is to do braces much younger, often at age 8 or so.  That way they come in straight rather than trying to correct them later.  Many churches equate stewardship with dentistry (getting our members to […]