Dear Family of St. Paul's,
St Paul’s 2024 Stewardship Campaign was a tremendous SUCCESS!!
Our parish came forward and with great generosity met the goal of almost $500,000 in total contributions needed to support St Paul’s ministries for 2024. This generosity demonstrates our sacred community’s commitment to the theme of the stewardship campaign Gather and Grow. This generosity will allow St Paul’s to continue and expand the music, children, youth and family ministries which are critical to the vision to Gather and Grow on a sustainable basis!
As shown in the graph below, our budgeted Pledge Income went from $274,281 in 2023 to $362,655 in 2024. This is a 32.2% increase. It also includes 10 new pledges. Plate Income was budgeted at $110,000 in 2023. Our actual was $165,250. Some of this includes donations to our second ask. Plate Income is budgeted for $135,000 in 2024. Both Pledge and Plate Income ran positive to budget in the first 3 months of 2024. Further below, we have included our original Stewardship Goals & Presentation from late 2023.
Let us Bless the Lord!
Our 2024 Stewardship Campaign theme of Gather & Grow focuses on this sacred community’s articulated vision for its mission. Specifically, we have understood that music, children, youth, and family ministries are critical to the growth of gathering in worship and fellowship, and growing in faith and love. Please reach out to Lisa Schmierer at lisaschmierer189@gmail.com or anyone on the Vestry for more information.
Our focus groups in 2018 and 2019 worked to discern God's vision for us and put into place some achievable steps toward it. In 2020, we took a few more steps, preparing to search for permanent musical leadership and establishing a task group to assess what resources were needed to support a staff position for children's ministry. The Covid pandemic halted both processes but not the desire for the ministries as means for living out God's mission through St. Paul's.
As we emerged in 2021 from pandemic restrictions and began to gather again in person, we also resumed our journey of mission growth. In 2022, we added two excellent staff members as Music Minister and Children's Ministry Coordinator for St. Paul’s. Both positions started as part-time with the hope and intention of growing them into full-time positions over three years, by growing our resources to support them.
The past year has seen an increase in average Sunday worship attendance and also has number of people we connect with beyond Sunday mornings. The beauty of our music is drawing more people to worship with us, and St. Paul's offerings like vocal boot camp, children’s choir, Evensong, and community concerts engage even more who haven’t yet joined us on Sunday mornings. The same is true for our ministry with children, youth, and families, in that we are seeing and welcoming more of them in our Sunday morning worship, and also regularly connecting with and serving them through Parents’ Nights Out, collaborative youth group with our Methodist siblings, children’s choir as already mentioned, seasonal events, and provision of children's church curriculum for use at home. That we are gathering and growing in ways both traditional and new is worthy of celebration!
Experiencing current realization of our vision and glimpsing its potential future is possible because of good stewardship and also action taken in faith. In 2022 and 2023, we funded the Music Minister and Children's Ministry Coordinator positions primarily through savings/reserve funds.
The Vestry has determined that our 2024 expenses will be approximately $525,000 to continue our current ministries and support the above noted goals. Given our expected total recurring pledged and non-pledged contributions of $374,000 for 2023 and that we will no longer have sufficient savings/reserve funding options, we urgently need everyone’s help to address this $151,000 gap. This means we need a 40% increase in giving across the board for 2024.
This is a significant challenge, but one we can meet with prayer, gratitude, and faith in God’s provision for us. We have met previous big financial goals (raising more than $200,000 to replace the roof and renovate the Old Stone Church) – and trust that if we are indeed called and led by the Holy Spirit to continue this ministry, we can do it again.
To better discern our call to these ministries and identify challenges and possibilities, we hosted cottage meetings in October, gathering your valuable insight. If you were not able to participate in one of these meetings, you can access the information presented here (3-minute read).
Please don’t hesitate to contact any Vestry member with your ideas and questions so that we can learn where God is moving in your life, what wisdom you might bring to the goals we have set for the year ahead, and what means might exist to meet them.
Please join in prayerful consideration and direction of St. Paul's ministries and your investment in them.
Lisa Schmierer, Susan Cahoon, Bruce Givnish,
Stewardship Committee
