Ten years ago, Bishop Gaydos provided the opportunity for the priests of the diocese to participate in a leadership program called Good Leaders, Good Shepherds. About twenty-five priests participated gathered together regularly over eighteen months to go through the course provided by the Catholic Leadership Institute. I have tried to incorporate the many practical lessons from the course in the intervening years. I feel like I have barely begun making these best practices part of my daily routine, but when I encounter significant problems or roadblocks in my life, I pull down one of the six giant binders and I know I will find some lesson that can help me and others move forward.

One major building block of the program—useful for personal growth, dialogue with a few, or enterprise-wide management—was the identification of values. Jesus understood this, as we read in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” The pursuit of what we value is what motivates us. If there is a conflict among people, you can be assured that it is because there is a perceived competition among core values.

With the presence of Father Stephen Jones this weekend speaking to us about what it will mean to be a total stewardship parish, I thought it would be good to identify some of the key values that faithful stewards hold dear. Our work as a parish in the coming years will be to ensure that everything we do as God’s people either implicitly or explicitly puts these values into practice.

· Accountability:  The parables of the Kingdom are powerful lessons in accountability. Masters and servants, fathers and sons, bridesmaids and wedding guests, land owner and laborer:  all are gifted with some precious resource and are held accountable for those gifts. In the end, the Lord himself will ask an account of us, and that accounting will bear witness to how we loved Christ in our fellow human beings.

· Community: No one is saved alone. The New Covenant in and through Christ—the reconciliation he effects between humankind and God—forms a community:   the new People of God, the Body of Christ, the Church. Each of the baptized is therefore called to be a steward of the community of believers.  

· Eucharist:  The Eucharist is stewardship celebrated. The Mass is more than a ritual. It is an actual encounter with God, with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our prayer of gratitude is joined with the most perfect thanksgiving prayer of Jesus Christ in the Sacrifice of the Mass. We need to engage in the Eucharist with our complete selves, following Christ’s example. What we experience in the Eucharist should, in turn, translate into our daily lives. We are committed to the Church, which is Christ’s body. We show our love for his body by acts of charity and generosity. 

· Generosity:  In a fallen world where fear and greed blind us to a vision of God’s goodness, our generosity turns perceived scarcity into abundance. Our generosity thus becomes an act of faith in God.

· Gratitude:   More than an emotional experience, gratitude acknowledges that God is the source of all our blessings and that our thanksgiving is incomplete until we share those blessings with others. 

· Hospitality:  In a world of people on the move, among the transitory events of this life, within the temporary confines of this passing world, we open our door to others and welcome them as our own. Everything we do is either going to make a stranger welcome or close the door to their need. Hospitality values and facilitates personal, face to face contact as the best way to call forth individual disciples, following the example of Our Lord who called the first disciples to his side by name.

· Mercy:    Pope Saint John Paul II set the Church on a path—in her catechesis, in her worship, and in her charity—that in the first place and in the last place, evangelization must reveal God who is the Father of Mercy. “Mercy constitutes the fundamental content of the messianic message of Christ and the constitutive power of His mission.” Christ our Redeemer shows us that goodness and justice is restored by giving, not by grasping and taking. 

Parishioner:  Choosing to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, a parishioner registers and participates regularly and actively in the liturgical and social life of the parish community. The  parishioner, as a steward, makes a commitment to the parish to share his or her gifts of time, talent and treasure, which are expressions of the very gift of self. 

· Sacrifice:  We have been given the gift of Eternal Life through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. True discipleship will cost us the things of this world—status, time, personal comfort, and the lure of self-sufficiency. We let go of the things of this world so that we more easily can give of the greatest gift we have, our very selves in service to our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

· Service:  Stewardship asks of us to number our loaves and fishes and share them in service of our neighbor. Stewardship also is more than accounting for what we have. It calls each person to become a personal resource to further the parish’s mission of evangelization, worship and charity. Stewardship begins by asking the question how can I be a neighbor to my brothers and sisters through committed service to our common mission.

· Stewardship:  The receiving God’s gifts of time, talent and treasure with gratitude, accounting for them as precious signs of God’s care for us, and sharing them generously, sacrificially and proportionately in justice and love with others, that these gifts of grace may be returned with increase to the Lord.

· Tithe: The tithe is the portion of a disciple’s treasure, with a goal of committing 8% of income to the parish and 2% to favorite charities. It includes a 10% parish tithe of the parish to the diocese, and being open to contributing above and beyond according to our blessings.

· Vocation:  The secular world defines us according to our function or role, what we do and what we produce, and by the temporary affiliations that make up human society. A Christian vocation is who we are in relation to God. Stewardship springs from an awareness of a baptismal calling as a member of the Body of Christ, especially in His servant-kingship, finding true dignity and worth in imitating Christ who was the Servant of God and the servant of all, responding perfectly to the Father’s will.