The first year of the four-year "Christ's Love, Our Calling" stewardship program is being relaunched at the district conventions this month.

The program was originally released after the 2009 synod convention. Dave Kolander, pastor at Christ the Lord, Brookfield, Wis., and one of four pastors working on retooling materials for this year and writing resources for the second year, says that the program was re-released because it didn't receive the emphasis it normally would have due to other weighty issues facing the synod at the time. Personnel changes and financial cutbacks also affected the release. "We felt that the concept is so good it would be better not to go into year two until we have more opportunity to really get people more deeply involved in year one," he says.

The first year emphasizes refocusing our time to nurture relationships with God, with family, with the body of Christ, and with neighbors. "Our goal would be to help people see what a precious gift time is so that we can reassess how we have been making use of this gift . . . and to also seek God's help and encouragement to use the time he gives us to grow personally in our spiritual life and then be of service to others in their spiritual lives," says Kolander.

Future years will look at the use of self, finances, and witness.

Resources include sermon helps, worship resources, Bible studies, and more. Congregations can use these resources as part of a seven-, four-, or three-week program. The committee recommends that the emphasis culminate on the last Sunday of the church year.

Materials can be downloaded for free on Connect, the synod's Intranet: http://connect.wels.net/adult-discipleship. A user name and password is required. For more information, contact Adult Discipleship at 414-256-3278.