Socio Pastoral Institute expresses gratitude in report

Archbishop Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference, with Bishop Julio X. Labayen, OCD, Chairman of the Board, Socio Pastoral Institute, at the 2009 Conference in Tagaytay City, Philippines.

Socio Pastoral Institute would like to affirm our mission partnership with St Thomas More Parish. We praise God that together we have accomplished a lot in promoting stewardship as a way of life of a Jesus-disciple that builds the Kingdom.

The following summarizes the significance of our partnership. You will also find, attached to this, a paper on the concrete actions and interventions we were able to implement here for the year 2009.

The Long-Term Substance of our Partnership

Significance SPl's work in promoting stewardship in Philippine Church:
1. There is no institute or NGO that promotes stewardship on a national and all year round basis in the Philippines other than SPI.

Claretian Publications used to promote stewardship seminars to market Fr. Dan Mahan’s book but recently it has been inactive.

2. SPI has adopted and inculturated the St. Thomas More model of stewardship. This is what we are propagating in the Philippines.

Historically, there were many attempts to promote stewardship in the Philippines but they failed because they were unable to integrate the dynamics between spirituality and fund raising. STM's model of stewardship provided us with the integrated, holistic spirituality that is needed by the Philippine church.

3. SPI's approach mass promotion und model's work is also unique in the Philippines. While we give one-shot stewardship retreats and seminars to all groups and local churches that are interested, we more importantly help build stewardship parishes and dioceses around the Philippines by mentoring involved churches over long periods of time until they develop their own stewardship councils and stewardship programs.

SPI is the only institution in the Philippines that accompanies local churches and dioceses in their journey to become stewardship churches. This long-term intervention is not possible without St. Thomas More Parish’s assistance because most of our targeted partner parishes and dioceses are scattered around the Philippines and are generally poor. Thus they cannot afford to pay for our services.

4. Thanks to initiatives of St. Thomas More Parish, he integrated model of spirituality of stewardship was shared with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and its  Episcopal Commissions. This generated a lot of interest among the bishops to learn more about stewardship with a view of adopting it in their own dioceses.

5. Through the intervention of St. Thomas More Parish, SPI became a member of ICSC (International Catholic Stewardship Council). We are therefore able to access the insights and the best practices of fellow stewardship practitioners in the United States which we, in turn share here with others.

6. By supporting SPI’s stewardship program, St. Thomas More Parish has significantly contributed to the concretization of the vision of the Philippine Church to become “a community of disciples, a church of the poor.

This is so because stewardship is understood as Christian discipleship tht encourages everybody to share their time, talent and treasure with others especially the poor. SPI is convinced that this is the key spirituality that will enable us to realize the vision of the Philippine Church to become a church that practices preferential love for the poor.

While STM has been supporting SPI for many years how and a key course or direction of stewardship is self-sufficiency, SPI still needs STM’s support. The proposed methodology of asking partner parishes to share their “tithe of the tithe” to SPI is at the moment inadequate. So far, only Mount Carmel parish is doing this. Nakar parish has signified that it is willing to share also but has not yet don3e so. The reality is that the sharing of the “tithe of the tithe” is a cultural innovation without precedence in the Philippines and the building stewardship parishes with its requisite conversations on many levels and renewal of the church organization and program takes a long time.

Given our ambitious plan to promote stewardship throughout the Philippines by building model stewardship parishes in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, and our preferential option and love of the poor local churches, we are counting on STM’s sustained support. The logistical demand of accomplishing this grand but worthwhile vision is, at this point, beyond our means.

God bless and more power to STM!

By Sister Frances Mangabat
Coordinator, Stewardship Task Force