Good morning.

I went to the dentist on Friday.  It was a little bit unpleasant, but it had to be done and if I hadn’t gone, there would have been consequences in the long run.  Which brings us to stewardship…

This time of the year, the days get shorter, the weather isn’t quite as hot, and the church talks a lot about money.

Well no.  The church talks about planning.  It’s just that to use money responsibly requires planning.  There are things that the church does that cost money: we pay our staff, we maintain the church campus, we lay aside money for future costs, we give some money away to organizations that are partnering with St. Martin’s, and we have lavish dinner parties.  (Well no, I was kidding about that last one.)  Many of those costs can be anticipated, so we need to plan so that we’ll have enough money when the costs arise.  That’s the planning part, and for that to work, we need to have a good idea of how money is available.  That’s what pledging is about.  Your pledge is your best estimate of how much you can give to the church to support the “money things” that need to be done.  (I’m a statistician by trade, so I don’t throw around terms like “estimate” lightly.)  We recognize that it’s an estimate, and if something extreme and unexpected happens, let us know and we can adjust our plans and with it, your pledge.

If the stewardship process says we’ll have enough money to meet our needs, that’s great.  If it says we won’t have enough, then we need to find ways to cut our expenses, but since we run a pretty tight ship, cuts mean that we can do less of God’s work in the parish and the world, and it hurts to do that.  If we can raise pledges for more money than our current needs require, there are important areas in which we would like to expand what we’re able to do.  We’ll have time to talk about some of those things over the coming weeks, but not in a short announcement like this one.

For now, I hope you have a better understanding of stewardship: it’s not a “wallet-ectomy” and more a planning process. 

So now we’re officially in stewardship season.  Play ball!  Thank you,

-Neil Willits

 co-senior warden and stewardship chair.