From Scarcity to Abundance: A Complete Guide to Parish Stewardship

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review, an instructor of
Liturgy in the Anglican Studies Program at Regent College, Vancouver,
and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Hope, B.C.

This book is an all-in-one manual for clergy and laity, for those with
stewardship experience and those with none. The first section,
“Getting Started,” focuses on personal and parish education for a
life of stewardship. The second, “Parish Stewardship,” covers the
annual tasks of a stewardship campaign and budget preparation.
“Planned Giving” gives practical advice on fundraising through
bequests and various devices such as life insurance policies and
charitable remainder trusts. “Parish Capital Campaigns and Fund
Raising for Special Projects” deals with the once-in-a-decade or
-generation exercises to fund building projects or new ministries.
Appendixes provide all sorts of resources that can be photocopied for
use in parishes.

Ultimately, there is nothing new in this book. Rather, it provides a
complete package of stewardship advice, information, and resources in
one very readable volume. But by focusing on the “how-to” aspect of
stewardship in the local church, on a business-as-usual basis, it fails
to address two important issues. First, why is stewardship (i.e.,
fundraising) necessary? There are models for providing religious
services other than the expensive “big building with one or more
clergy” model that dominated 20th-century church life in Canada. These
require much less money, so why not make more use of them? Second, does
stewardship as many churches know it—raising money to provide
ministry—put things in the right order? There are congregations in
many denominations that do no fundraising for the parish budget. They
practise a model of providing ministry and “letting the money
follow.” On the whole these congregations seem to have no less money
than “stewardship parishes.” So, as helpful as this book is, it has
avoided the much-needed questioning of existing ways of organizing and
financing local ministry.