FRUITFUL PROPERTY STEWARDSHIP 2027+
Extending the Impact of CBCP
2024 St. Francis Zionsville Groundbreaking
Thanks to CBCP, amazing ministry is happening through space sharing and community partnerships at Episcopal churches throughout Indiana. CBCP’s teaching and other activities end at the end of 2026. We hope you will continue to discover hope and vitality through fruitful stewardship of the property God has entrusted to your congregation. Here are four ways to help you do just that.
1. Recognize and celebrate the missional impact of church property.
Regularly rejoice over how your church property plays a big role in your congregation’s service to others. Talk about it! Include stories in newsletters. Consider holding a yearly celebration of the missional impact of your building and grounds.
Too often we don’t recognize this as all that meaningful, shrugging and saying, “AA has always met here. Not a big deal.” Or “We started operating a food ministry during the pandemic, but lots of churches do that.”
Those activities ARE meaningful and impactful. If people don’t realize the full value of the building God has entrusted to you, they may not consider how to use the property or care for it in ways that extend ministry. So tell them about it, regularly.
For story examples, visit the CBCP website blog page.
2. Strengthen your property stewardship.
Stay ready to offer your space to new opportunities. This facet of property stewardship includes understanding what types of potential space users are good matches for the mission, passions or priorities of your congregation. If you have not considered these or a few years, explore the Mission Matters Tool Kit on the CBCP website.
Strong property stewardship keeps you ready for space sharing opportunities, limiting anxieties and concerns over security, how people will access the spaces, and who is ultimately responsible for the safety of people and property while on campus, etc., etc.
The CBCP website’s “Preparing to Share” Tool Kit contains several resources to strengthen your readiness. These include an ASSET INVENTORY WORKSHEET, and a PROPERTY ASSESSMENT FOR PROPERTY STEWARDSHIP. You can access these individually in the Preparing to Share section of the Resource Library. Working through either of these is a valuable activity for a Vestry retreat.
3. Spiritually strengthen Stewardship Ministry.
Property Stewardship requires everyday maintenance, and sometimes it requires major capital improvements too large to be funded in the annual budget. This is a scary prospect for many people, resulting in deferred maintenance and an ever-growing price tag for what needs to be done.
How to overcome this fear? Spiritually strengthen your Stewardship Ministry.
A healthy, spiritually-focused Stewardship Ministry creates the environment for extraordinary giving for special needs beyond the annual budget.
If your congregation has always assumed that the duty of its stewardship committee is to raise more money, consider a different focus. Ask the Vestry to join the committee’s volunteers in creating a Stewardship Mission Statement. Take time to pray and study scripture to discern messages that reflect the spirituality of responding to God’s abundance in ways that particularly relate to your faith community.
Think of it as, “what stewardship means to us.” Once written, the Stewardship Mission Statement should be published and referenced frequently.
To learn more, explore the Capital Fundraising Tool Kit on the CBCP website. Another idea: begin a reflective study for your Clergy and Vestry using the Workbook Edition of A Spirituality of Fundraising by Henri Nouwen.
4. Believe what God can do when people are invited to support a vision for the church they love.
Stewardship Ministry strengthened by a spiritual focus provides an excellent foundation for special fundraising for major capital improvements. Also critically important is defining WHY capital projects are important to the ministry and presence of your congregation.
Your Property Commission can define the WHAT… structural, boilers, HVAC, bathroom remodels. Their expertise can create cost estimates. Those details are very important, but sometimes seem rather boring.
“The WHY” of doing those things is anything but boring because it describes the exciting ministry impact of the projects. Take time to articulate a vision for the impact of the completed projects. When people understand the future impact of their giving, they will be more open to making an extraordinary contribution.
The Rev’d. C. Davies Reed, Rector of St. Francis-in-the-Fields in Zionsville, explains that their capital campaign planning was enhanced by community partner conversations as encouraged in the Church Buildings for Collaborative Partnerships (CBCP) project. Those conversations revealed deeper reasons why the proposed campaign projects were important.
“When we explained that the planned improvements will enhance the way we serve our community, that emphasis gave us a relevancy that helped us appeal to more people. After all, churches are about things that are bigger than us, so our reasoning for making changes should also be about things that are bigger than us,” explains Father Davies. [Quote from the Capital Fundraising Toolkit article entitled “Five Keys to a Successful Capital Campaign from Indiana Episcopal clergy who’ve been there, done that.”]
Once “the why” is explained, move forward in faith. Even faith only the size of a mustard seed will do. Vision is powerful and God is faithful. Believe what God can do when you cast your vision.
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As we reflect on the impact of CBCP, we give thanks for the gifts Christ gave us to carry out this project. We have been inspired by the foundational work of Partners for Sacred Places that resolutely affirms the value that church buildings and their congregations provide in their communities. Partners President Robert Jaeger and a team of consultants have creatively led, guided and taught people from nearly every Episcopal congregation in Indiana.
We have been blessed by the support and expertise of David Frederick and all at Indiana Landmarks’ Sacred Places Indiana. And of course we are grateful to Lilly Endowment Inc for its support of CBCP through its Thriving Congregations initiative.
May all Episcopal faith communities in Indiana continue to discover hope and vitality through fruitful stewardship of the property God has entrusted to them.
By Linda Buskirk, Project Director, Church Buildings for Collaborative Partnerships project (CBCP) of the Episcopal Dioceses of Indianapolis and Northern Indiana - 2026
For more information contact: Info@cbcpindiana.org