Browsing by Rob Blezard
Celebrate the Harvest, Especially This Year
Where I live, it’s easy to remember the cycles of nature and the joyous, bountiful season of harvest. Mile after country mile in Adams County, Pennsylvania, brings you past apple orchards where the fruit, sometimes clustered like grapes, pulls the branches of the trees way down low, so the leaves sweep the ground. The harvest […]
Building a Narrative Budget
This year while putting together your church’s budget, take a pass on the old “line item” approach. That old spreadsheet may tell your people about the numbers, but it doesn’t say much about the ministries. Take instead a “narrative budget” approach. This pdf from the Missouri United Methodist Foundation will get you started.
J. Clif Christopher Stewardship Workshop
Here is a wonderful stewardship workshop that J. Clif Christopher, author of “Not Your Parents’ Offering Plate” and many other books, recently led for the United Methodist Foundation for the Tennessee and Memphis conferences of the United Methodist Church. The whole workshop is posted in four parts for your watching, and there’s an accompanying guidebook for free download. Wow! (Photo © xy – Fotolia.com)
A Budget is a Statement of Faith
What does your church’s annual budget represent? Is it a proud menu of the hopes, dreams and missionary ministries your congregation wants to accomplish in the year to come? Or is it a life-support prescription for how the congregation expects to pay the staff, keep the lights burning, the sanctuary heated and the grass mowed? (Photo (c) Monkey Business, via Fotolia)
Let’s teach our kids to recycle
Tut tut, Boy Scouts of America. Teaching youth to appreciate nature has long been a central tenet of scouting. But it’s time to do more to teach them to recycle! (Photo by Alx – Fotolia)
Cool it! Naturally
Give New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg credit for a creative solution to a problem that had him boiling. On these steamy summer days, he hated entering a parked car whose inside air had been superheated by the sun. (Who doesn’t, right?) But it was a bit extreme of “Hizzoner†to install a window air conditioner […]
Independence Day
As Americans who are also Christians, we are probably the freest people in the world, because while our Constitution guarantees us freedom from worldly oppression, our God guarantees us freedom from spiritual oppression. And it’s a freedom we too often take for granted. (Photo © GIS – Fotolia.com)
The Miracle Therapy
What would you pay for a therapy that would dramatically improve your health, add years to your life and life to your years? Maybe the question should be, what wouldn’t you pay? In reality, there IS such a therapy! (Photo © rachwal – Fotolia.com)
The Toughest Topic: Talking About Money
Clergy are often reluctant to raise the subject of money. They know it is a sensitive area and people might get upset. Good church members are hard to find. Why risk losing them by raising a provocative topic? And clergy are sensitive to the reputation of the church in many quarters that “the church is only after our money.†But there are smart ways to raise the issue. (Photo © Carlos Santa Maria – Fotolia.com)
Stewardship Bible Studies: Best of the Old Testament
Today’s sermon is a Bible study. You have brought your Bibles today and we are going to study them to see what the Bible has to say about stewardship. We are people of the Word. The Word is our spiritual guide for so many of our beliefs and values. We consistently look to the Word for guidance.
