Year-End Stewardship Update
FROM THE RECTOR
I love celebrating the new year—a new semester, a new calendar, a new plan. Whatever was unfinished last year can be let go. We can focus on what lies ahead. And, in a strange way, because what lies ahead is already here, we can stop worrying about what will happen. Even though the future holds unknown promise, we are drawn more deeply into the present now that the previous year is over and we need not anticipate what will come. In a faithful way, therefore, the fresh start of a new year is a chance to accept Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 6: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”
This has been a great year for St. Paul’s, and next year promises to be even better. Instead of spending all of our time and energy trying figure out how to be the church in a pandemic-restricted world, we have used our resources to be the church we know and love while maintaining connections with people whose access to our church is limited because of Covid. Tons of new people are in church each week. Children and youth programs are growing again. Outreach ministries are operating at full capacity. Our choir and music program are as robust as ever. We have experienced some difficult staff transitions, and more are ahead of us, yet, in each one, the strength of our church has attracted the right candidate.
As the year comes to a close, we have the opportunity to finish strong in order to start well. In the Episcopal Church, the fiscal year is also the calendar year. That means that, when December 31 becomes January 1, we close the books on what has been and turn to a clean page in the ledger—sort of. It takes a couple of weeks for all the post-marked contributions to make their way into our financial reports. And, although we use cash-based accounting, which means that each year’s budget starts at zero, as with any organization, a deficit experienced in one year put us in a weaker financial position for the next. In other words, as eager as we are to move from last year into the next, how we complete our giving this year affects what we can do in the year ahead.
As you might expect, December is the month in which St. Paul’s receives the most pledge income. As each of us finishes our giving before the tax-year ends, we catch up on our commitments to the church and also make year-end gifts to other worthwhile organizations. I hope you will consider not only completing your estimate of giving to St. Paul’s but also giving a little bit more to the Special Offering, which helps address the needs of the community. You can make your gifts online here (https://www.stpaulsfay.org/give) or place them in the offering plate or mail them to the church postmarked by December 31.
While part of our focus is on finishing the year strong, we are also in the process of adopting a budget for the coming year. When I ran the numbers a week ago, we had received financial commitments from 299 households, including 46 that were new this year. There were still 106 households that turned in a commitment last year that had not responded yet, and I hope they will before the vestry adopts a budget for 2023. On the whole, I anticipate that participation in stewardship will increase both in the number of households that make a commitment and in the overall amount of our giving. If you still need to turn in a commitment, you can do so here (https://forms.gle/tVQHpYUNUN8oxtjd8).
In our stewardship education, we emphasize percentages instead of amounts, inviting each family to devote the first ten percent of their income to God’s work in the world. Recently, costs have been rising, and all of us—including the church—are facing increased expenses. In particular, the purchase of the two Bassett buildings on College Avenue, which we have financed through a loan until we can develop a plan to use them for expanded ministry and then raise the money to pay for them, is costing us around $60,000 more in 2023. That rise in interest rates might mean that some church programs must be cut back in the short term, but the vestry and I believe that the value of that property to the future of the church is too important to pass up. A discernment committee to help us decide how to use them is being formed, and I eagerly anticipate the vision that will come from their efforts.
Along with rising costs, some of us have seen our income go up, while others have not. If your income has increased, I hope you will also increase your commitment to the church both to grow your relationship with God and to help us grow the ministries we pursue. And, if your income has declined, know that your giving should decline, too. We are a generous congregation, and the generosity of others will sustain our church when some of us must live on less.
We believe that God has given us more than enough to do the work God is calling us to do. That is the real purpose of stewardship—to deepen confidence in God through intentional giving. I think the next few years at St. Paul’s will be some of our best ever, and I believe that the growth we have seen over the last several years will continue in the years ahead. Thank you for making this a fabulous year for our church, and thank you for helping ensure that our future is bright.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan D. Garner