Stewardship season is again upon us. This Sunday we will kick off our month of reflection and discernment of how we give our time, talent and treasure, culminating in Ingathering Sunday on Nov. 10. On that day, individuals submit their financial pledges, estimating their 2025 financial giving. That, in turn, helps us anticipate income as we draft our 2025 budget.
This year’s theme is “Walk in Love” based on Ephesians 5:1-2. You’ll recognize it as the little prayer that I pray each Sunday before we transition from the sign of peace to the offertory Anthem and Eucharist. “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God.”
In our Stewardship Campaign this year we’ll reflect on this walk, and the investment it asks of us in “time, talent and treasure.” The walk of Christ is one in which we share the gifts that God gave us with others; we pour ourselves out so that God can fill us back up with the Spirit of love.
Special thanks go to Rebecca Fellerman and Robin Dixon who are co-chairing our efforts this year. We are also helped by resources from The Episcopal Network for Stewardship, which has provided thematic materials as well as guides to foster a consciousness of stewardship all year round. Look for parishioner reflections at the end of the liturgies, and a new theme song that I’ve written for the occasion, and even a labyrinth walk to help us along the way.
The Stewardship Campaign overlaps with the conclusion of our incredibly successful Warm Regards Campaign, which in the last year generated more than $110,000 to pay back the savings that we invested in our new boiler system. Those funds, helped pay for the new system and helped replenish money taken from our investments.
In contrast to Warm Regards, the annual Stewardship Campaign measures the income we can expect from regular giving, which supports our general fund, salaries, programming and worship-related expenses, as well as building maintenance.
Healthy stewardship allows us to dream big and to discern well what God is calling us to do as a church that Walks in Love in the wider world.
This year we invite everyone to prayerfully consider what they can afford to give in 2025. Pledging is a deeply personal and prayerful act, involving an honest assessment of one’s financial health compared to the previous year. Read my 2023 blog posts on how to prayerfully discern one’s treasure as well as how to discern giving time and talent. The lessons from our past campaigns still apply today.
Remember that the stewardship pledge is just an estimate of your giving for 2025. It can be adjusted up or down, and ultimately will take the form of what you can afford to offer to help sustain St. Peter’s staffing and programming throughout the year. Pledge cards, which are turned in on Ingathering Sunday, will be available starting next week. You can also send your pledge online right now using this link.
Your actual financial giving can come in weekly contributions placed in the collection plate, in gifts made online or scheduled regularly.
On this year’s pledge card, you’ll notice that there is also space to capture other ways to share time and talent. Stewardship after all is more than fund raising. It is over-all caregiving for the parish and its mission and ministry. And this we know is something that happens in hours spent in ministry, and fellowship and worship and more. So many hands, heads and hearts make this place go. And for that I am thankful every day.
This year’s Stewardship Campaign comes at the end of an incredible year of giving. In addition to our Warm Regards Campaign, here is what we experienced this year in Stewardship:
Last year 55 people made pledges by Ingathering Sunday, and that number rose to 76 by the end of December last year.
Last year’s Stewardship Goal was to surpass what we received the year before, with the hope of securing about $180,000 in promised giving. The total pledged by the end of December 2023 was an estimated $187,672 for 2024.
Our actual giving this year has regularly surpassed our year-to-date budgeted estimates. With a combination of pledged giving and new giving from new members, we may just surpass our budgeted $200,000 in donation-based income by the end of this year. And that does not include funding from the Warm Regards Campaign.
Our hope for the Stewardship Campaign, of course, is to grow our financial giving from last year, and to pass 2024 giving benchmarks if possible. This year we created a bare-bones budget to help us better control and monitor spending. The bulk of our expenses tend to be personnel and building expenses, and we expect cost of living increases to drive those up in the next year. Most of those expenses are paid for with parishioners’ donations and income from our tenants. An update on parishioners’ total giving appears in the e-newsletter and leaflet each month, so we can track how we are doing.
This past year has been an exciting time of growth, as we’ve welcomed new parishioners, celebrated new ministries and ministry leaders, and continued time-honored programs and traditions. As we enter a new program year and anticipate our financial and spiritual health moving forward, I have all confidence that Christ will continue to show us how to “walk in love as he loved us” leading us, empowering us and keeping us on course.
Thank you for being part of this exciting effort!
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