Growing Together – Stewardship Message on April 16, 2023, The good news is… God loves us and there is abundance of life and love all around us. As happens every year, Easter reminds us of the life force that springs forth at this time of year and we are inspired by God’s creation. As you know, your Stewardship Committee is inviting you to join our Stewardship journey. We are calling it “Growing Together”. Before Easter, we invited you to reach out to friends and family to invite them to join us for Palm Sunday and Easter services at St Paul’s. We want to “grow our congregation and community” as we return to services after the pandemic. In Karen’s weekly bulletin and again today, she noted how we are growing together in “faith” and she included the words of gratitude from someone who attended church at Easter. This week, our message is “growing our givings together”. The church has very real expenses and some of them, such as heat and hydro, have increased this year by more than expected due to inflation. As you know, a core of our expenses are to ensure that we have the wonderful staff in place to help us be the church – our Minister, Music Director, Administrator, Office Secretary, Tech Support and now that we and other groups are back in the church in person – our Custodian. It is you and I and our congregation who ensure that we can meet these expenses, by the financial contributions that we make to the church. As has been pointed out, we have a shortfall in our givings, some of this in part because we have lost many members. It falls on those of us who are here in person and online, to show our love and commitment to the church by supporting its work through our financial contributions. We need your help to reduce this gap between our expenses and our givings. The good news is that we know that we can do this! You may recall that we were in a deficit position at the end of December last year. We asked for your help and you came through –  allelujah – and we ended our year without a deficit. We also paid for our new furnace in full. Your generosity extended to supporting the sponsorship of refugees and the many other mission and service activities here and abroad. Our gratitude to those of you who give to our church knows no bounds – it is heartfelt and joyful. But we cannot wait until December to reach out for your help again. One of the key messages that we learn at church is generosity – to share with others and to live out our faith by our generous actions. This is called different things – stewardship, discipleship, generosity, gratitude for God’s blessings, addressing inequality, social justice, building community, and honouring those who have passed away. Whatever the words are that give meaning to you – it is such an important part of our job as a church to teach this message, as this generosity also spills out into our lives in the community. It is known that those who give to their church don’t stop there –they often give time and donations to many other different worthy causes in the community. For whatever reason that you give to St. Paul’s, we ask  you to consider increasing your givings – if you can and when you can. There are so many ways to give: 

1. A one-time contribution towards the deficit will really help at this time.
2. Increasing your weekly offering envelopes or your cash donation in the offering plate or your monthly PAR contribution, if you are able.
3. Other ways to donate – e-transfers, donations online through Canada Helps, donation of shares, and bequests. You can also participate via our fundraising activities, such as the monthly dinners. If you have other ideas, please let us know.
4. For those of you who do pre-authorized monthly givings through your bank (PAR), I can tell you that this method really helps us plan, as it tells us how much we can count on each month. 

We have lost some PAR donors and we would like to increase our number of people on PAR by ten. Would you be one of those ten people to make this commitment at this time? In the coming weeks, we will be setting up a table after church with more information about how to get set up for PAR or do e- transfers or other forms of giving. We invite you to stop by to learn more about this and whether this might work for you for donating to the church. We will also prepare information for those of you who watch online or who get our weekly bulletin. Please pray on this message and for your vision and hopes for St. Paul’s and how you see yourself joining us on this faith journey as we grow together. Bless you and thank you for everything that you do to be the church here at St Paul’s and wherever you go in the world. Amen.

-Pat File, on behalf of the Stewardship Committee.