14 Years of Stewardship in CTK: A never-Ending story of Gratitude
This year, Christ the King Parish celebrates its fortieth year since it was established in 1979. The parish also marks its fourteenth year since the Stewardship Program began. As a stewardship parish, we begin yet another chapter of its mission. One of the things we learned early on as we got immersed in the concept of stewardship is that it never ends. A parish’s stewardship mission begins on the first day of its existence and ends only when its last parishioner has gone to meet his Maker.
STEWARDSHIP IS A JOURNEY
The first steps in the CTK stewardship journey began in the early 1980s for the communities around the Barangay Ugong Norte area. The following twenty-five years saw faithful stewards—clergy and lay people alike—build the physical structures, grow the ministries, conduct formation sessions, celebrate liturgical events, and reach out to the poor through social projects. Yet it was only in 2005 when it gained new impetus with the official launch of the CTK Stewardship Program through the Balik Alay Program. Parish organizations hatched social services projects and implemented them to help communities in the peripheries of the parish as well as further out in nearby poorer communities outside our jurisdiction.
Bishop Honesto Ongtioco, then CTK parish priest, with his assistant Fr. Dennis Soriano, and the diocesan promoter, the late Fr. Manny Sarez, watered the first seeds of stewardship. The main push was to get everyone to adopt stewardship as a way of life—to look at one’s need to give versus giving to a need, as a grateful response to a generous God who has given us everything that we have. We had to learn to embrace a life of love and responsibility for God’s creation and caring for one another. Through the next fourteen years, we saw a steady growth in stewardship offerings, from half a million pesos to more than nine million pesos per year. Mass offerings also steadily increased as the message of stewardship flowed freely through formation talks, the Mass homilies, banners around the church, and mostly through the giving examples of the early adopters of stewardship.
STEWARDSHIP IS ABOUT GRATITUDE
Stewardship is acknowledging that everything comes from God, that you are responsible and accountable for each blessing, and that you should respond with gratitude and generosity.
One of the most tangible manifestations of gratitude in our parish’s story is the Christ the King Gawad Kalinga project that started in the latter part of 2008. It was an ambitious project—one started by Couples of Christ (CFC) but eventually embraced by the entire parish. The parish built a new village for the residents of Sitio 1 in Libis whose homes were going to be demolished to give way to what is now the Libis flyover. More than a hundred families were going to be affected, but only half opted to relocate to this new village in Zabarte Road in Novaliches.
In less than a year, CFC and the parish, under the leadership of Msgr. Dan Sta. Maria, were able to raise enough donations to buy a property and build homes for the fifty families. Various groups led by CFC, conducted values formation, leadership training, and good neighbor (kapitbahayan) sessions. CTK parishioners also joined the beneficiaries and their families in building the homes. Together, they painted houses, planted trees, helped families find nearby schools for their children and assisted them in seeking livelihood opportunities or creating small businesses near their new homes.
Today, that community is known as the CTK GK Zabarte Village. Once a hotbed of drugs and crime, it is now a vibrant, giving community. They even share their experiences and treasures to the Pabahay ng Diocese project, a housing project of the Cubao Diocese for its employees. Several residents are now actively serving in church and have received numerous praises from their parish counterparts for being a model community. The receivers have now become the givers.
STEWARDSHIP IS A WAY OF LIFE
Stewardship is practiced every day, wherever we are, not only in church, but more so in our homes, workplaces, and community.
Our family’s stewardship journey started with a Parish Renewal Experience or PREx seminar in Christ the King in 1998. We are both retired from the corporate world, our children are all grown up, and we are jokingly regarded as taong simbahan because of the length of time we spend in church. Even though we both came from very devout Catholic families, with parents on both sides active in church work, and attended Catholic schools, our main involvement then was limited to Sunday Mass.
PRex changed all that. Without fully understanding what had transformed in us, we started to be more involved in church work—the music ministry and Knights of Columbus for Benjie, then we finally joined Couples for Christ (after five years of patient and persistent follow-up by a neighbor and an officemate). We have been part of the Stewardship Committee since its inception in CTK and continue to be its advocate in the parish and the diocese. As a result, we became much more than Sunday Catholics. We immersed ourselves in the work of the church, whether it be parish work in worship, family life, formation or social service. We embraced each and every service that the parish and community assigned to us, giving the best that we could offer.
We also tried to give more than Mass offerings and endeavored to be as generous as we could. We also factored in the financial detail of giving into our balance sheets even if we had both retired. But we had enough. We had enough for our daily needs. We had enough for some fun and entertainment. We had enough for occasional vacations and dining out. And still, we were left with enough to give more. But our greatest learning in stewardship is to be circumspect and discerning in the choice of what we spend for ourselves knowing truly well that we do not own what we have and are only stewards of what we have been given.
WHAT SPURS US TO CONTINUE AS STEWARDS
Stewardship is a never-ending story that doesn’t tire us out. We say, as long as we have resources to be shared, we know we have a mission. We keep our eye on the prize of storing treasures in heaven. We pray that each day brings us a chance to become better stewards and inspire others to do the same. We continue to ask the Lord to tell us what He wants done, and how to give back more so that we can carry out His plan for us and, hopefully, leave this earthly life as His good and faithful stewards.
