A stewardship trifecta - time, talent and treasure

Facebook came through for me again.

Those of you who read my last post know that I used the social networking site to find and virtually interview Catholic Floridians who had something to say about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Facebook page. And I successfully asked Florida “fans” of the USCCB page to be “friends” of mine on the Facebook page I’ve created for use exclusively in my role as managing editor of the Florida Catholic.

One of those friends, Deacon Jim Stokes of St. Joseph Parish in Palm Bay, came to my rescue last week. The Living Our Faith page in each issue of the print edition of the newspaper features the FAITHCorner, a reader’s reflection on the page’s topic of the week. The topic for the Sept. 25-Oct. 8 issue was stewardship, and a fellow editor was handling the task of enticing a reader to put themselves out there in 200 to 300 words. That editor unexpectedly had to take time off, so we had to start over in our search for a reader who was willing and able to write about stewardship - fast. I could tell from Deacon Jim’s Facebook updates that he was the one for the job, and he came through with “Treasure an important factor in stewardship” well ahead of deadline. Thanks, Deacon Jim!

To complete the stewardship trifecta, my main story for the page highlighted time and talent. Though it didn’t start out this way, the story ended up focusing mostly on parish ministry fairs, thus the headline “There’s a more than fair chance of finding a ministry for you.”

Organizers of such events from the Panhandle to southeast and southwest Florida reported increases in participation in parish ministries of as much as 25 percent as a result.

Living Faith readers, please tell us about your experience with ministry fairs and other efforts to promote stewardship in your parish by using the “Leave a Comment” function below.

Tagged as: facebook, ministry fairs, social networking