Stewardship Moment 2024

Going on at St.

Thomas, which is, I shouldn't say it this way, but I can't help myself, more than the other three churches combined.

So thank you.

And because I'm not preaching today and Paula was really short, we're coming up on stewardship season.

We are, right?

And the way we do this in the Episcopal Church, you'll hear this in weeks to come, is that we ask people to make pledges, not just financially, but pledges towards ministries, so that we sort of know how we're going to budget financially for the year, but also what ministries we want to support, and if there are new ministries we want to begin.

Now, the letters are going to come out to you in two weeks.

I have them today if you want them, right?

And uh, why do we do this?

So that we can be good stewards, right?

So that we can be the good stewards of your time and your faith and the money, frankly, that you give to do this thing that we believe is birthing new life into the world.

You'll read in the letter that, hey, pledging is not just a thing we do, but frankly, it's a chance for us to reflect on our values.

And for me, it's always helpful to make a decision in advance and then live into it.

I mean, I've always found that to be the case as a volunteer, as a giver.

So we do this for very practical reasons.

And I think more and more what I realized nine years with you guys is that frankly, I'm just proud to belong to you.

I'm proud to belong to you and pledging as a way I get to show my pride.

We belong here.

We belong here.

We belong together.

One of the things you're going to read in this letter that I do ask you to pray for this week, our vestry has thought really hard about how we use our campus.

And I'm very happy to say we're supporting foster kids and families from the beginning post-adoption here with the sanctuary.

It's a fabulous ministry.

As a foster dad, I can tell you, I wish I'd had them.

But we also have this really big hall called Christ Hall.

And it's banquet most of the week.

And your vestry, together, we've had this dream about something that we don't have in our community, which is respite care for people who have dementia.

What is that?

It's an opportunity to take somebody who has dementia and give them four hours, two or three times a week, to have a break.

Their caregiver can go shopping, can take a nap.

Sometimes we think, oh boy, you know, it's just the caregiver that needs a break.

Usually the person with dementia needs a break too.

From their caregiver because there's so much anxiety.

Now I can tell you, my father needed this when he had Alzheimer's.

I can also tell you that there's one place in Clear Lake that does it.

And they do it as daycare.

They don't have a chapel, they don't have service to the community cooked in.

They don't have arts, they don't have singing.

We want to do all of those.

And so we are in strong conversation with a group called Respite for All that has done this in 13 other states.

They've opened 51 chapters, they've only closed three, and they know why.

We would be the first in Texas.

We would be the first in the diocese.

We're dreaming this up.

And this week, the diocese is considering a grant application that we wrote that would help with the initial funding.

That's going to happen Thursday.

So I bid your prayers.

Because I believe we need it here.

In this congregation, we need it.

In this community, we really need it.

In this interfaith network we're a part of, something has to be done, and I think we have the space to do it.

So I bid your prayers for this grant, which will help.

But as you're going to read in the stewardship letter, we want to do even a little bit more.

We want to do a little bit more.

So I'm going to hold on to that, but we are, I want to, a couple weeks in advance, I really want to ask you to pray for for this particular stewardship season and what it is we're going to be able to do in ministry to make something new that's not just for ourselves.

We never do stuff for ourselves here.

Right?

We don't just do stuff for ourselves, but that is truly for the whole community.

We're looking, just to spoil it, part of the grant will help us to hire somebody to run this ministry part-time.

What I would love for us to be able to do is to add another piece to have somebody full time.

Full time who not only looks after respite care, but expands and grows some of the other ministries that we're doing and offers something new, like a men's ministry and a Spanish speaking service, who's able to tie together our food things that we're doing between growing food and the distribution.