Stewardship at St. Mark's
Focusing on the Future
In
2010, we will be preparing to celebrate the145th anniversary of the
founding of St. Mark's and the 90th anniversary of our
building.
What will our parish be like? Imagine our common life if various areas of ministry were expanded and improved upon. St. Mark’s is a beautiful place to worship, with many opportunities to come together to serve the parish family as well
as the wider community.
During the past year, we participated in a visioning process to help direct our future. We identified these goals that are achievable with your support:
• Continue to support the wider community
with material as well as spiritual gifts and
offer opportunities for service to others.
• Keep up with the successful plaster repair
and painting. Improve and expand the
sacristy space. Keep upgrading the kitchen.
• Develop a sound business plan and ensure
balanced budget to ensure St. Mark's will
continue to reach out to others and to he a
witness for inclusion into the future.
• Keep reaching out to and supporting our
home communicants and ministering to
each other.
• Provide a place for a young seminarian to
come and learn and serve with us.
• Expand programming to nurture and
educate our young people, and “grow”
our families.
• Develop an alternative service.
• Develop the staff and staff positions.
How You Can Help
The average annual pledge at St. Mark’s is now$2,021, a 15% increase over the previous year’s
average pledge of $1,735, and all indication that
more of us are working toward our goal to tithe.
The dollar amount of an individual’s pledge
is less important than committing to
proportional giving.
The Bible calls us to tithe---
returning to God 10% of all with which wehave been entrusted. Some people are able to
meet this challenge now, but we can all work
toward this goal by steadily, incrementally
increasing the proportion of our gift to the
church in relation to our spending on other
things.
The Stewardship Ministry has set a goal
for each of us who are
not already tithing toincrease our pledge by 15% per year over three
years. We began last year by asking for a 15%
increase in your individual pledge. A 15%
increase for each of the next two years will
allow us to become less dependent on draws
from our endowment and will possibly enable
us to adopt a balanced budget, while keeping up
with inflation. At first 15% may seem like an
astronomical increase; however
on a $2,000 annual pledge, next year’s
15% increase works out to only about
$6 per week!
We campaign for pledges because, if we don’t
make our case vigorously, thoughtfully, and
regularly, we are not likely to fulfill
our mission.
Stewardship 2010
Year 2: Pledging with Joy
Think, pray, commit, give with joy— thisis more than a campaign formula. It’s a
fiirmula for living.
When Jesus commissioned his disciples.
he gave us authority to proclaim the
Gospel. He made us stewards of the
Kingdom of God. This is the
responsibility of a faith that calls us to
view the entire world as a gift, as held
together in the abundance of God’s love.
Where faith is strong, people will not
only joyfully rise to embrace their
financial commitment but will
continually reexamine their views about
money in church and in their everyday
lives.
If you have discovered that you truly
belong to this parish community, it is
because of the commitment of many
people to make it a place of mutual
caring. If you belong here, we invite you
to make the same joyful commitment.
