Telling God's Story in Your Parish
Thanks to the presentations by three skilled speakers: the Reverend Lucy Price, the Venerable Alan Perry and Susan Graham Walker, Telling God's Story in Your Parish was a very successful day dedicated to learning about how we can use our parish vision to create our parish story, and the financial story of the parish through narrative budgeting, and… also… how to recruit and build a stewardship team that can plan and execute an annual stewardship plan.
Approximately 100 participants gathered at the Synod Offices of the Diocese of New Westminster on Saturday March 17, primarily in parish groups. However, there were those attending on their own, representing their parishes and a number or registrants from out of town including Richard Felton from the Episcopal Church, the Venerable Geoff Woodcroft from the Diocese of Rupert's Land and the Venerable Terry Leer from the Diocese of Athabasca.
The first speaker of the day was Assistant Curate at St. James, Vancouver, the Reverend Lucy Price. Prior to ordination to the transitional diaconate in 2016 and her priesting in 2017, Rev. Price worked in the world of corporate recruitment. She is also a very talented and accomplished artist and designer. Early in her presentation she displayed a power point slide projection of a quote from Rachel Gilett of Fast Company (Fast Company is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes 10 print issues per year) which really set the tone:
“If you want someone to remember your message – in a presentation, an article, or a report – TELL THEM A STORY.”
In an energetic, fast-paced presentation containing a major audience interactive component, Rev. Price provided information about what needs to be present in a “story” and what approaches help to construct compelling stories. She gave examples of "story" and what makes "story" different from "description". Once she had laid the basic groundwork for how to construct a story based on a parish’s vision she introduced Storytelling Speed Dating.
After lunch, the Executive Archdeacon of the Diocese of Edmonton, the Venerable Alan Perry gave a very detailed but easy to understand presentation aptly titled, “Letting Money Talk.” Archdeacon Perry has worked in many small parishes and has created many narrative budgets. He used examples of narrative budgets and worked through the process of how to create a narrative budget from establishing the best possible list of line items, moving them into a spreadsheet and then into narrative text with graphics (pie charts) to create another form of financial story telling
After a break, the plenary welcomed the third keynote speaker, Susan Graham Walker. Susan is on the staff of both the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada in the area of congregational giving and generosity. Susan has created the Giving our Thanks and Praise program for the Anglican Church of Canada and has created many stewardship teams. She has a well-deserved reputation for being one of the best people available in the Church to speak about building stewardship teams.
As with a number of stewardship educators in North America, Susan is not a big fan of the word “stewardship.” She said,
“stewardship and discipleship are difficult when they are divorced from Faith…When we see stewardship as a transaction and not as a component of our relationship with our faith and community, then there is a problem…It needs to be about what the money does, not where it goes.”
Susan recommended some names to replace “Stewardship Committee” such as, “Giving Team” and “Generous Living Group.”
Overall, the day was considered a great success and many thanks were offered to retired Synod Staffer, Glen Mitchell for organizing the event.
IMAGES
- Participants engage in some enthusiastic Storytelling Speed Dating
- The Reverend Lucy Price
- Archdeacon Perry offers some instructions on spreadsheets
- Susan Graham Walker addresses the plenary during the second afternoon session
The preceding article is an edit of the full length article that will be available in the May 2018 issue of Topic the publication of the Diocese of New Westminster delivered to parishes and parishioner's homes as a section of the national church publication The Anglican Journal.