Sunday 8th November 2009
My name is Andrea D’Agosto, and I am the Administrative Assistant of this parish, chair of the Stewardship Committee and also, in another hat, treasurer of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. I’ve been asked to say a few words to you about the practice of pledging.
A pledge is basically a promise, and in terms of the church, it is a promise to support the work of the church through financial aid, and with your time, skills and labour. It works on two levels. Firstly, it aids the church in planning its budget, its mission and ministries for the coming year. Even more importantly though, a pledge is a symbol of your personal commitment to the church, the Body of Christ, and is one of the spiritual disciplines that we as followers of Christ are called to cultivate, in response to the infinite generosity and love of God, our Creator, and of his son Jesus Christ, our Saviour.
Every person in this church this morning is here by choice. It may be the first time you’ve walked through the doors, or you may have been a member here for forty years, but basically we are all here because we have chosen to worship God together in this place. We form a parish family, a community, because we chosen to do so. And just as in any family, there are bills that have to be paid, and chores that have to be done. Just as in any family, we like to be able to plan our activities in advance, and this means that we need to know, in advance, who we can count on for physical help, and how much money we can count on for the budget.
Let’s consider time and talent for a moment.
If you look around you this morning, you will discover that in order to produce the liturgy each Sunday, we require the help of between 25 and 30 people. The celebrant, the ministers of Communion, acolytes, the choir and organist, the ushers, counters, readers, welcome table personnel, the altar guild, the coffee hour personnel and church school, nursery care and youth leaders. (Have I forgotten anyone?) Not to mention those who work behind the scenes on Vestry, on committees, helping in the office and running the Refugee Centre. Mostly you don’t need any special skills to take part in these activities, just the willingness to get involved and to meet people. And for many of these activities you don’t even need to give up much (if any) time that you’re not already giving simply by coming here.
We have a joke in the Convocation, where most of our churches have a very high percentage of transients; that one day you walk into the church, the following week you’re put on the ushers rota, the third you’ve been put on the property committee. After a month you’re on Vestry and after six months you’re gone… The point is, please don’t be reticent about offering help just because you’re new. We can’t afford to wait, otherwise you’ll have left before we’ve had a chance to get to know you!
Now let’s consider money.
In all the time I have served on stewardship committees and participated in conferences, I have heard a lot of arguments against pledging. ‘I don’t want my money to support the church budget, but I’m willing to give to special projects’ is one. ‘Why should I tell you in advance how much I’m going to give? You should be grateful for what you get’ is another.
Well, let’s have a teaching moment on budgeting: The budget of any church organization is divided into two parts: administrative expenses (salaries, taxes, insurance and the electricity bills, donation for the support of the diocese and so on). Now here’s the thing: the administrative expenses are pretty much fixed in stone, by contract, or by bills received, and we know pretty much what we need to spend each year in order to keep this building open, clean, warm and operating. Then we have the program budget – in our case this is how much we spend on the Refugee Centre, the Latin American Community, Outreach projects, our own youth group, the music program and so on. And this is the area that benefits immediately from an increase in pledge income. In effect, your pledge, however large or small, will allow the church to expand its program budget. We will be able to send more participants to Convocation conferences and youth events; help more refugees with food and language lessons; send more funds to outreach projects elsewhere, fund more concerts or start the international organ series again – anything that will further our mission goal in this city and in the world to be a witness to a dynamic, living Christian faith, open to all and rejecting none.
This morning you have received, or will receive, your information packet for the annual Stewardship Campaign. This year it contains a letter from the Stewardship Committee, a prayer card with Scripture references for further reading, and your pledge cards for time, talent and treasure. What we are asking you to do is to take these home with you, read them, think about them, pray about them, ask us questions if you want to, and then fill them in and return them by Ingathering Sunday, which this year will be 22 November. We are hoping for a response by every single person, offering both financial aid and time and talent for next year. Our vision for our mission here in Rome depends upon it.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, Creator of all that we are and all that we have; Teach us to be ever thankful
for all the abundance of your blessings;
and give us the grace to use our resources wisely in the building and nurturing
of Christ’s mission here in Rome,
that the community of St. Paul’s may be strengthened
and the nations may see your love
working in and through us;
in the name of Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forever.
Amen.
Sunday 15th November 2009
Good Morning. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Vincenzo Racana and I joined the St. Paul’s community three years ago when I relocated from New York City to Rome.
As you have just heard, I will be talking about our stewardship campaign for 2010, specifically financial contributions and pledging.
I can start by promising that I am not here to manipulate or make any feel guilted into stewardship, particularly in making a pledging a commitment of money.
What I will talk about is what I know about St. Paul’s, my involvement here, a little about myself and my experience with stewardship.
Before I get into talking about stewardship I have a few things to confess:
- While I am a confirmed in the Anglican church, and spend a good amount of time here: attending service, being on vestry, heading the finance committee, among many other interesting requests Fr. Michael and Andrea send my way – I do not consider myself a religious person, rather a person of faith who always tries to do the right thing.
- Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever see myself speaking from a church pulpit!
For me being such an active member at St. Paul’s has been easy from the start – because immediately after my attending my first few services it was clear that this church was all about doing the right thing.
St. Paul’s for me, is about being sincere and doing everything in the Gospel values, and putting the community at large first. Examples of what we do every day include, that we:
- Feed the hungry
- Clothe the naked
- Care for those in prison
- Shelter the homeless
- Care for widows, orphans and children
- Visit the sick
- Love the loveless
- Care for the elderly and poor
- Reach out to the outcast and rejected
And if you go into your parish office on some random week day for 15 minutes you are likely to witness a lot of other good deeds!
But how does all this apply to me and my experience?
My stewardship story has taken numerous paths at St. Paul’s. It began when I started coming to services here and learned about the refugee center and the request to donate such basic necessities such as soap, razor blades, tooth brushes, socks, ecc.
I realized that just with some extra change in my pocket, I could go the Euro / discount stores, or various markets in town and with 3 Euro in loose change I could buy a tube of toothpaste, toothbrush and a pair of socks.
So I started making small gifts, coming back to the parish hall, ringing the office door bell to drop off my packets, and it just seemed easier and natural for me to help more.
What I started to witness was that if St. Paul’s did not have a formal ministry such as the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, it was obvious that Fr. Michael or member of the congregation stepped forward to do whatever it was that had to be done.
To me it seemed like a nice, hardworking and honest team, and one that I wanted to be a part of.
But regarding “money” and my stewardship experience, when I first moved to Rome, I was on a self imposed sabbatical and unsure what the next part of my life would be, I was not producing income, and was transferring US$ to Euro at an exchange rate – and well let’s say I “was losing money.”
Although I was in a period of life to relax, reflect, and calmly assess what the next phase of my life would be, I was concerned about not having enough as I had no permanent form of income in my near future.
However, something at St. Paul’s compelled me to formally pledge money and make a commitment.
I can not explain it other than it happened of free will with no pressure and it felt natural. In the end, I found that I still had enough money for me and my heart felt big because I knew that I was helping those in need.
Doing all “the right things” we do at St. Paul’s takes considerable resources. As we are a church, the considerable resource we often rely on is “stewardship” And for us, all forms of stewardship are valuable treasures, whether it be:
- providing finance support/pledging
- volunteering on an outreach program
- being a part of the choir
- helping in the office
- donating supplies to the refugee center
- or the numerous others I did not list
When anyone donates their gift of time, money and talent, to St. Paul’s we are beyond grateful.
Let’s be honest, talking about pledging money makes almost anyone uncomfortable. The main reason I am happy to have this conversation today, is that is my responsibility as Finance Director, to understand and help St. Paul’s plan and prudently manage how it uses its money and again, like everything else: We are the church that does the right thing, even with our money, because we always put the community first.
In my last formal report to Vestry, I started by saying “we watched the pennies, and the dollars followed.”
The history behind that statement was that we started 2009 in a very difficult position given the global recession, reduced income from assets -- and I had some very stressful moments, as I am very scrupulous with money, as I had to approve a budget with a considerable deficit.
Things did not look good about this time last year and I expressed my concern to Fr. Michael and I just remember him saying to me “have faith, the Lord will provide.”
As we are about to close the books shortly for this year - it looks like we were provided for and it call came down to doing the right thing, as we:
- trimmed back anything that was unnecessary and made some sacrifices
- stayed focused our ministry to the congregation and our community in Rome at large
- and then all these gifts started to arrive: some substantial financial contributions from visitors, computers were generously for the refugee center, and numerous other pleasant surprises.
For me, our financial story in 2009 has been almost like the miracle in the Gospel of Matthew of the Feeding of the 5000, where Jesus is followed by masses of people into a solitary place near Bethsaida and the disciples wanted to ask everyone to leave and go back to their towns because there were no resources to feed them.
But the story goes that Jesus took 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, looked up to heaven, and somehow the food multiplied and 5000 people were able to eat!
Personally, I still struggle whether the miracles in the Bible are true or just parables for a good code of conduct, but for me it always comes down to the same thing:
- Do what is right and good
- Have faith and belief in what you are doing
- And things, in general, work out for the best
The reality for St. Paul’s is that we need any and all financial support that we can get to keep our doors open and continue the work that we do in the community.
Remember that to have this ministry, we need to keep this beautiful roof over our heads, which means things like maintenance, electricity, and heating – all of which are not free as there are bills to pay.
We made it through 2009 with your generous support and we need to plan for 2010 and beyond - your continued help is needed to do this.
If you choose to pledge, please remember the amount of money is not important, we are pleased with any offering you can provide - we consider all of it valuable treasure ... as I said earlier St. Paul’s we watch the pennies and the dollars follow.
In closing, I simply ask you in to consider what gifts you can give to St. Paul’s in 2010.
If you decide to give, it is very important that you do so only if it is out free will and because you have personally chosen to do so.
I thank you for listening.
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