Pentecost Offering 101
How to Fund your Service or Advocacy Efforts - From The Educate a Child Toolkit
How is my gift used?
A gift to the Pentecost Offering helps the church encourage, develop, and support its young people, and also address the needs of at-risk children. 40% of the Pentecost offering can be retained by individual congregations wanting to make an impact in the lives of young people within their own community. The remaining 60% is used to support ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Give at pcusa.org/pentecost.
The Pentecost Offering As Revenue Sharing
This offering is appropriately received at Pentecost, just as the church is remembering the coming of the Holy Spirit with its wondrous animating activity in the life of the church. The children and youth who benefit from these gifts are themselves an animating presence in the church of today, whether members of Sunday schools or neighborhood children who receive hospitality and homework assistance.
The Pentecost Offering should be an integral part of every congregation’s participation in the Educate A Child Initiative, since through this Special Offering:
- Each church serves the larger ministry of the PC(USA) by enabling programs for children at risk and supporting Young Adult Volunteers and Ministries with Youth, which includes Youth Triennium.
- Each church expresses its goodwill for children beyond its own neighborhood by joining a portion of its treasure along with others in a coherent Presbyterian voice for children.
- Each church retains 40% of the offering, which can serve as start-up funds for an Educate the Child program or sustaining funds for ongoing ministry.
The Pentecost offering is a Christian discipline of stewardship in which, through revenue sharing, the whole church witnesses to Jesus’ injunction that “whoever welcomes one of these little ones, welcomes me.” It just makes sense – dollars and cents!
To learn more about the Pentecost Offering, go to pcusa.org/pentecost.
- Introduction: Why Education?
- Congregational Assessment Tools
- Direct Action Asset Identification Process
- School Board Advocacy 101
- Pentecost Offering 101
- Tell Us Your Story! Vignette Guidelines
- Keep in Touch!
- Bibliography
