Weekly Clergy Letter from Mother Anne Turner
Dear Friends in Christ,
I want to convince you that stewardship season is now.
Conventional wisdom in the church world says that fall is the time for stewardship. Every church that I know sets up a pledge campaign in October so that the vestry can make informed decisions in preparing a budget for the coming year. Grace Church follow this pattern.
And yet as I think about my personal life, I am making just as many decisions about money as I was in October, if not more. I am balancing out the asset distribution in my children’s college accounts. I am talking with my tax preparer. I am re-evaluating what I save for retirement. I am making my own budget for the year.
Really, what I am doing is looking at my money to see if my commitments match my beliefs. Am I spending my resources like the person I think I am? Like the person I want to be?
At Grace Church, we continue to think about stewardship, too. This coming Sunday in the auditorium after the 10:30 service, we’ll have a forum on our budget. (There will also be shorter forums after the Little Church and La Gracia services.) Your vestry has been grappling with the parish budget from the perspective of faith. We ask ourselves the same questions. Are we spending our resources like the church we believe ourselves to be? Like the church we want to be?
This financial work—whether personal or corporate—is holy work. It is not merely “temporal affairs” (and the church canons describe it). It is an incarnate expression of our values.
Stewardship season is now, because stewardship season is always now. At every moment of our life, in every season, we are thinking about how we respond to and imitate God’s generosity. We are always trying to love better, to be more open-hearted people, to commit to our beliefs by the choices we make with our assets. We are always trying to make our faith real.
Yours in Christ,
Anne+
P.S. If you haven’t yet pledged, now is the time for that, too.