In The News

The Stewardship Foundation is in the news? No, at least not directly. However, we exist because we specifically believe in the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious freedom. The latter is tearing up the recent headlines. Liberals celebrated when Pope Francis seem to soften his approach to gays and lesbians, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” And more recently, Indiana Governor Mike Pence is headline news with the proposed Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

To help our readers stay informed, we’re passing along a couple of recent articles that we believe present some semblance of unbiased sanity.

CNN (subject of allegations of liberal bias) published an article Indiana’s religious freedom law: What you need to know. What caught my eye was the comment by CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, “The only reason these law have passed is because of same sex marriage.

The Weekly Standard posted social media comments from Ashton Kutcher and Hillary Clinton, and other celebrities, politicians and journalists who are absolutely outraged saying that this law is a “license to discriminate against gay people.”

If indeed CNN’s Toobin is correct, same sex marriage is the driving force behind the outrage. As Christians, we live in perilous times. Pope Francis calls us not to be “tempted by confusing presentation of sexuality, marriage and the family” which he says are “under attack from powerful forces which threaten to disfigure God’s plan..” As Cardinal, he called same-sex marriage “anti-value and destructive to the plan of God – the envy of the devil.”

If the outrage over Indiana’s bill (here in its entirety) is not an example of evil at work in our world today, nothing is. Pray for America and its people in these times, and use the power of your purse to support charitable organizations that defend our religious liberty and God’s plan for creation.

Meet Me in St. Louis

st louis downtownFor several years now we have been blessed to partner with Heartbeat International whose mission is to provide pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the U.S. They represent the very touchstone of the foundation’s mission. In past years, we’ve always exhibited at their annual conference, but this year we are additionally blessed with the opportunity to present a workshop at the 2015 Annual Conference in St. Louis, April 7-10.

Our workshop, in many ways, reflects our own story of tenacity and survival. Like many of the pregnancy help centers across the country, we too have a bootstrap mentality. Competition in the donor pool is fierce, and it takes hard work, a creative mind, and constant prayer in order to survive.

For those involved with attracting donations and planning for sustainable growth, we hope to offer a compelling story. Our workshop, Beyond Survival: Generating Sustainable Gifts, is part of six workshops in the Fundraising Dynamics track. If you are going to the Conference, we hope you will choose to join us on Wednesday, April 8, as we share some of our creative techniques to turn cash donors into sustainable donors with gifts of stock and property. We’ll present simple to understand material that crisis centers can easily adopt into their everyday conversations with donors and supporters, and we’ll share how and why having a foundation backing development efforts is a wise move.

We will also once again support the work of Heartbeat International as Exhibitors. We look forward to networking with everyone and talking about how we can help organizations not just survive, but thrive in the coming years with sustainable gifts.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, we can’t help but say, “meet me in St. Louis.”