By Gretchen Keiser

Holy Spirit parishioner Ruth Maguire is sold on stewardship.

On a recent visit to Chicago, she found herself spontaneously encouraging Catholic friends there to investigate stewardship as a positive response to financial hardships plaguing their church communities.

In her north Atlanta parish, where she is officially the director of religious education, and unofficially helps in a variety of other volunteer roles, she sees the benefits. The annual evaluation by parishioners of their gifts of time, talent and treasure to the church has produced a bumper crop of volunteers willing to give of themselves to parish programs, she said. "I have had an overwhelming response."

Her view is a long one. A founding member of Holy Spirit, she recalls the late Monsignor John F. McDonough promoting tithing, the giving of 10 percent of one's income to charity, in the parish from its inception in the 1960's.

The stewardship program now being utilized in the archdiocese emphasizes the giving of time and talent, as well as financial support to the parish and other charitable causes. The ideal presented for finances is to give five percent of one's income to the parish in a planned manner over the upcoming 12 months, and to give another five percent to other charities, including among them the archdiocesan Annual Appeal and second collections, and civic, educational and other causes one supports.

"The first time you hear it, you think, 'I can't do that. There is no way I can give five percent to my church and five percent to charity,'" Mrs. Maguire said. In her experience, "it's a matter of starting, and doing (what you can) consistently."

After evaluating their support, many people discover they can give more than they thought they could, she observed. Others are surprised to find how much they give to causes other than the church and reevaluate their priorities.

She has found the time of evaluating her commitment to be an opportunity to reflect on God's blessings in her life over that year. "I hope I have grown each year (in gratitude) and I can count my blessings," she said. While she fears it sounds pietistic, she knows that she experiences God providing for her everyday.

If the parish can be run on the basis of stewardship, other than spontaneous contributions, programs can be planned and strengthened and energy that once went to fund-raising endeavors can be used for ministries and outreach, Mrs. Maguire noted.

"All the programs are able to function. You don't have to spend your time fund-raising... You can have the carnival, you can have the ice cream social, but you don't have to charge anything."

The stewardship pamphlet to be mailed to every Holy Spirit parishioner next week has over 80 options of services, from stuffing envelopes to gardening, from planning a blood mobile visit to praying for the sick of the parish.

The responses, coordinated by stewardship chairman Jane Bourdier, will be stored on computer at the parish and, as appropriate, passed on to those who head up relevant parish ministries and organizations.

Christian service has expanded as a result of the stewardship program, Ms. Bourdier said.

Holy Spirit now has a core group of volunteers who cook meals and serve as overnight volunteers at the night shelter at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The parish has been able to send $1,000 a month to a Redemptorist priest, Father Joe Maier, who works in slum areas in Thailand. Two elementary schools in the area of Klong Toey have been built with Holy Spirit donations, Ms. Bourdier said, and the ongoing monthly donation enables the priest to provide meals, uniforms, supplies and other necessities for the schoolchildren.

Ms. Bourdier, who joined the Catholic Church at Easter 1988 in Holy Spirit parish, lived in Bangkok with her husband, Jim, while he was Associated Press photo editor for Southeast Asia.

They returned to Atlanta when it was discovered Jim had cancer. "The doctors gave Jim four months, but God gave Jim and I a year and it was in that year of his living with pain and his devotion to his rediscovered God that I also began to see the true love of God," she wrote in a talk given to Holy Spirit parishioners last year on stewardship.

Support from the parish during Jim's illness led her to seek a sponsor to help her join the Catholic Church. "The church became my family," she said. "I couldn't get enough church."

A freelance photographer herself, Ms. Bourdier was quickly asked by Mrs. Maguire to photograph a First Communion class at the parish on Mother's Day. This led to more opportunities to use her talent in photography around the parish. Her next step was to join the parish Women's Guild, which she eventually represented on the parish council.

She also found joy in teaching three-year-old children about God, something she did for three years in religious education. One day she volunteered to cover the phones at the parish office while someone was on vacation. She now works there six hours a day, and sometimes more.

When the stewardship responses come in, she will be there with a crew of seven or eight volunteers phoning people in the parish who do not respond. "We do find a lot of people who are ill, who we did not know were ill," she said, and the parish can then respond with appropriate help. Only about three percent of the responses are negative.

"I think our parish has always been family oriented. That's why it became my family when Jim died," Ms. Bourdier said. The personal contacts Monsignor Edward Dillon, the pastor, makes with parishioners strengthen the family atmosphere immeasurably.

Over $2 million has been raised at Holy Spirit to build a new church sanctuary, a plan which has not yet reached groundbreaking.

From her personal experience, "church family" includes everyone, especially the single person who can't even think of himself or herself as "family."

Stewardship "lets someone, wherever they are in their life, express what they can do within the church."