On the morning of Saturday, May 3rd, the Stewardship and Gift Development Committee of the Diocese of New Westminster (Chair, Tony Sauder; Staff Support, Glen Mitchell) presented a workshop at St. Alban’s, Burnaby about the development of Narrative Budgets and the composition of inspirational stories to encourage the generosity of parish’s in pursuit of their mission and ministry.
There were approximately 40 in attendance with the majority consisting of parish groups of three or more. Of the 40, nearly ¼ of the plenary were clergy.
Following a reflection on the day’s Gospel by St. Alban’s incumbent, the Reverend Faun Harriman, Glen Mitchell began the presentation on sourcing content for narrative budgets. With Tony Sauder handing out charts to be filled with parish budget information, Glen guided the group through the assembly of budget line items as they would function best in the narrative context. He pointed out how it is essential to include percentages of clergy stipends under different budget headings in order to provide an accurate representation of the use of church resources. There was plenty of time allotted during Glen’s presentation for hands-on work as the parish groups present and the individuals formed table groups to develop their own narrative budgets based on the information in Glen’s presentation and their own ministry budget items.
The second part of the workshop was presented by Communications Officer and Topic Editor Randy Murray who gave the group some basic instruction in writing content for narrative budgets and for creating narrative budget headings that accurately but expressively communicate the nature of the ministry budget item being described.
The second half of Randy’s presentation consisted of a brief look at “Inspirational Writing” and how that currently popular style can be included in pew bulletins, web pages, blogs and more to motivate and uplift the reader when sharing ministry stories.
Glen Mitchell, Director of Stewardship and Gift Planning with the help of others in the diocese are preparing a major all day, diocesan-wide stewardship event for October 18th, 2014.
The powerpoint presentation and charts from the May 3rd workshop will be available on thegoodsteward.ca
Images: Top and homepage, The Reverend Roberta Fraser, priest-in-charge of St. Helen's, Surrey listens to Heather Friesen, Treasurer of St. Anselm's, UBC with the Reverend Christine Wilson of St. Faith's, Vancouver in the background. Right, a table with parish groups from St. George, Maple Ridge and Holy Cross, Vancouver. Lower left, Tony Sauder and Glen Mitchell. Below, the "host" table (with the folks from St. Alban, Burnaby) works on their assignments.