The purpose of the Heart&Treasure Project is support congregational leaders in the task of leading people to become generous, especially in regard to their relationship with money. The Project seeks to accomplish this purpose through a web-based resource that will:

• Connect congregational leaders with each other in order to form a community of conversation regarding faith, money, and funding congregational missions;
• Help leaders to attend to the issue of stewardship throughout the year;
• Provide both resources participants can explore on their own, including select articles, bibliography, and links as well as resources participants choose to share with one another.

Basic values which I seek to express through the Heart&Treasure Project:

• Stewardship is a biblically-rooted way of understanding the purpose of human life.
• In order to become mature-in-Christ persons, we need to learn to give.
• Becoming a generous giver is one of the goals of the Christian life.
• Religious leaders should do all they can—by teaching and by example—to help congregations become communities of generous people.

Why am I trying this project at this time?

I have several reasons why I have initiated this project now.

• First, we on the seminary’s stewardship staff have talked about stewardship education for a few years now. The financial turmoil buffeting congregations has moved us from talk to action.
• Second, I believe the world’s financial turmoil represents not a mere “change in the weather” but a “change in the climate.” The lifestyle we have built in the U.S. on oil-based energy is ending. Gordon Gecko’s creed in the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good,” has been discredited (word-pun intended)—not the first or last time, surely, but powerfully and for some years to come. What an opportunity for the churches to try, again, to offer a different understanding of “value.”
• Third, this recession is likely to accelerate a trend that has been going of for many years, which we might be able to influence to the positive. That trend is for aging congregations with aging buildings and declining memberships to give smaller and smaller percentages to causes beyond the congregation proper. In the project resources, I will include a chart to substantiate this claim for the Disciples regions within PTS’s covenant area, as well as refer you to others who have written extensively about this trend. In short, the turning in becomes a vicious circle; without a significant outreach component, congregational giving will not stabilize but will continue to decline.
• Fourth, PTS is one of the “derivative charities” of the church, meaning that we depend on congregations to send us the necessities for the mission we hold in trust for the churches—resources including money and students. The healthier the congregations are to which we relate, the better for PTS.

Gary Peluso-Verdend

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