Annual Meeting Stewardship Presentation

244 Annual Parish Meeting

January 27, 2008

Diana Smith, Stewardship Co-Chair Remarks

St. Mark's Church, New Canaan CT

 

Anyone ready for a little comic relief???? Let’s talk about stewardship! But first, a word about my outfit. Last year I wore green and black. This year the color of my outfit is brown and it means absolutely nothing!

 

Okay, would my charming co-chair and next year’s stewardship chair, Pat Donovan, please stand? Now, would the rest of our committee also stand and remain standing for a minute?

 

Everyone, please take a look at your stewardship committee.  If you want more quality programs around here, more full time clergy, a fabulous new rector, a thriving Sunday School program, and more publicity in the local papers, then please know that this committee is definitely doing everything it can to make those things happen. Thank you all so much!

 

Now, my job today is to try to humor you, challenge you, and hopefully inspire you into parting with all that money we know you have. Forgive me, but for the next several minutes, it is going to be all about the money!

 

We have been working with two themes this year.

 

1. The first theme is pledges as thank you notes and thank you notes as expressions of gratitude. Speaking of, I hope that all of you who have pledged have received your hand written thank you notes from members of our committee. We recognize that gratitude goes both ways.

 

2.  The second theme is that stewardship is an all -parish activity. Simply put, everyone who considers St. Mark’s to be their church, should help support it.

 

Regarding thank you notes as an expression of gratitude, I began with the theory that Episcopalians were born thank you note writers. It is what we do! Well now, imagine my surprise, when I realized some Episcopalians really don’t know how to write thank you notes! In fact, over the years, I have received some notes soooo bad that I just had to keep them, hoping that one day I would find a use for them. Well, hehehe,  since they are perfect vehicles for the message I am trying to convey today, I thought I’d share them with you to see if you could figure out what is wrong with them.

 

1. The first one is from the boyfriend of a young friend of ours. We invited them to dinner at our home, and the four of us had a lovely evening together. So, what is wrong with this note? I’ll give you a hint. Start with “Dear…” click for slide. Keeps me humble. Clearly, he didn’t know who he was thanking and he didn’t make the effort to find out.  The rest of the note is meaningless. 

 

Second one: This thank you note is from a cousin. For his wedding present, we bought him and his new bride some dinner plates in their good china. As you can imagine, this was not a cheap present.  So, what is wrong with this thank you note? click for second slide. He doesn’t know what he is thanking us for. Didn’t bother to find out. Neither note expresses real gratitude. 

 

Here is the worst thank you note I have seen yet, and from an active member of this parish, no less. …. (I’ll bet some of you are worried right now….) click for slide 3. This is an empty pledge card. Clearly, this person doesn’t know who he is thanking OR for what. As we all know, a pledge is an unconditional offering of thanksgiving to God for giving us the gift of salvation. It is not an I –will- thank -you -if-and-when –you- give- me -the -things- that- I –want offering.

 

Whenever a person pledges, the entire parish benefits. More money translates into more programs, more clergy, more music, more publicity, you name it we’ll have more of it. … Likewise, whenever you withhold a pledge, everyone in the parish is negatively affected. When you don’t pledge, you are essentially placing the financial burden of supporting your church on the rest of us. That is neither right nor fair. 

 

Second theme: All-parish appeal with 100 % participation. click for affinity groups chart. As you know, we divided up the parish into 12 affinity groups to allow for each group to take pride in their contributions to their church. These are the %s as of about two weeks ago. As you can see, some groups have a higher participation rate than others. Our goal here was to encourage everyone who considers St. Mark’s to be their church, help support it.

 

Which segues perfectly into the question, what makes a church your church?

 

Well, do you serve on or lead a committee here? Are you are a lector or a Minister of Communion? Do you sing in the adult choir, attend our book group or adult education classes, partake in a St. Mark’s supper group, send your children to Sunday school here, enroll them in one of the youth choirs? Are your children attending confirmation classes or involved in our EYC?

 

Have you or anyone in your family been baptized, or married at St. Mark’s or will you be doing so in the near future? Have you ever held a funeral for a loved one here, or should something happen to you or a loved one sometime in the future, will you hold that funeral at St. Mark’s? Do you attend Christmas and Easter services here?

 

If you answered yes to ANY of these questions, then you consider St. Mark’s to be your church.

 

To all of you who give faithfully, generously, and in proportion to your means, regardless of the amount, we are most grateful. It is difficult to imagine St. Mark’s without you. We are also grateful to the 40 parish families who actually upped their pledges by 25% or more just this year. Under rather challenging circumstances we have raised almost $983,000.  I consider this is a huge achievement!

 

This next slide shows us who is giving what. click for 2008 chart.  Keep in mind that based on a parish size of 325 families, the average cost per family to meet our stewardship goal of $1.2 million is $3700. That comes to $71 per week.

 

1. At the low end of the spectrum, of the 63 parish families who are listed under “nothing”, approximately 20 of them have NEVER pledged or donated. The other 43 families are those who pledged last year, but have not yet done so this year. If these 43 families would pledge just what they pledged last year, then we’d raise close to another $85,000. Of course, if they would like to give more, we won’t stop them.

 

2. Add the first two columns together and you will find that 1/3 of our parish is giving $500 or less. Now, don’t get me wrong. For some of us, $500 is a real sacrifice, we are aware of that, and are truly grateful. But, I refuse to believe this is true of everyone in this category.

 

3. At the other end of the spectrum, the bar graphs in green represent the families who pledge or donate at least $3700. These three columns represent only 28% of the parish and yet produce 75% of our funds.

 

You can analyze these statistics from myriad angles, but bottom line, there is a huge discrepancy between what you want -more quality programs, more full time clergy, a fabulous new rector, a thriving Sunday school, and more publicity in the local papers - and what you are willing to pay for.

 

The mean/median? of pledges is $2000. The average pledge is $3751 (a deceptive number.) number of pledging families:262?

 

Now, moving right along, there are two groups of people I’d like to touch on: young families and the malcontented.

 

First, it came to our attention last year that we needed to do a better job educating our young families about the importance of pledging, including how much to pledge, because a large number of them were of the belief, as a young mom recently told me, “church was the one free activity in town.” So, the first thing we did over the summer was to invite some young families who DO pledge and whose service to St. Mark’s has already been recognized, to serve on our committee so that they could reach out to their friends peer to peer. We are making some progress but more needs to be done.   

 

As for the malcontented, they are cutting back on their pledges, not pledging altogether, or “not stepping foot into this church” until they get whatever it is they want. For most of these people, it is a new rector.

 

The IRONY is, however, that by not participating in our stewardship appeal or by substantially reducing their pledges, the malcontented are actually DECREASING our chances of attracting the kind of rector we want. Also, since this is the budget our new rector is going to inherit, it would be great if, for no other reason, the malcontented would pledge - and pledge generously - so that we can give our next rector a fighting chance to succeed.

 

If we want a new fabulous rector, then we have to be rector magnets. It is that simple. We all know what a chic magnet is. Well, I want us to be rector magnets.  So, let us all look deep into our souls and decide whether we are pledging enough or conducting ourselves in a manner conducive to attracting a new rector. We must change the buzz words around here from “I’m not going to do x until I get y” to “What can I do to help?”

 

Now, having said that, a rector is not the church. WE ARE!  And I think we are pretty fantastic! I love coming to church.  I love working hard for a good cause with other smart and dedicated parishioners. And I love catching up with everyone after church at the coffee hour. I am having a great time here and I know others are too. So, it is high time we start focusing on all that is good around here. Having a positive attitude is not only more productive, but also a lot more fun!

 

Do we still have problems around here? Absolutely. And I’ve got news for you; we always will. It is how we deal with our problems that defines us as a parish.

As you can imagine, I just happen to have some suggestions for us:

  • First, count your blessings.
  • Second, demonstrate gratitude.
  • Third, think positively, pledge generously, and whenever possible, ask “what can I do to help?”
  • Finally, become a rector magnet.

If we can follow these suggestions, then I just know the day will come very soon when I can announce to our entire congregation that ALL of us at St. Mark’s have received some very nice and well-written thank you notes!