Stewardship Committee To Introduce a Pledge Campaign

Our church has been struggling for a few years now to meet day-to-day expenses.  Regular offerings from parishioners are consistently falling short of meeting our  current needs, let alone allowing our ministry and programs to grow.

It is true that Christ Church is fortunate to have more investment funds than most parishes of comparable size.  However, while it may be appropriate to use the interest earned from these funds to support daily needs, the Stewardship Committee strongly believes that eroding the principal balance of these funds for daily needs is not the way to go, for several reasons.

We have spent some time struggling to determine the most appropriate way forward, to resolve our funding needs.  In the end, we have concluded that the best thing we can try is to encourage each parishioner to examine his or her level of regular offerings, and ask: do my offerings reflect the importance of the church in my life, and have they kept pace with the church’s needs?

To encourage this process, the Stewardship Committee had decided to try something new (or at least not seen for a couple of generations): to request each parishioner, after reflecting on his offerings, to decide on an appropriate amount for the future, and to “pledge” to contribute that amount.  This is not a binding commitment, but we would hope that people will take the process seriously.  The pledging process will receive the same level of confidentiality as your current offerings.

We are working on written materials and a communication program, and we will launch this process next month.  In the meantime, please feel free to address questions to any member of the Stewardship Committee.

Robert Friend

On behalf of the Stewardship Committee

June 2004