This afternoon marked the first day of O’Meara Ferguson’s summer conference, Development, Financing and Catholic Education in a Turbulent Economy. As Catholic professionals experienced in the Church’s temporal affairs, O’Meara Ferguson is presenting this conference to provide bishops, religious superiors, and their leadership teams with the tools to become more effective stewards of the Church’s human, physical, and financial resources.
The conference, which runs through August 12, features more than 20 speakers from various Church and secular organizations including the Archdiocese of Chicago, Archdiocese of Louisville, Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, Moody’s Investor Service, Oppenheimer & Co., and William Blair & Company.
O’Meara Ferguson Mission Advancement Services president and CEO, Dan Conway, provided the capstone for the first evening with his talk, Mission Advancement in a Challenging Economic Environment. In his presentation, Conway, a noted speaker, author and consultant, described the importance of those who work closely with the leadership of the Church to help those leaders recognize that stewardship is more than “the Church’s latest fad”.
Rather, Conway said, stewardship is fundamental to our mission “to proclaim Jesus Christ and to be the seed and beginning of His kingdom.”
“For us, Jesus Christ is the one true hope. He is the only source of lasting joy. And we are called to be good and generous stewards of all His gifts, both spiritual and material,” Conway said. “We are called to advance His mission in the best of times and in the worst of times.”
