This coming Sunday, November 19th will be the launch our Annual Renewal Campaign (ARC). ARC is the name we give to the kick-off, of our year-long stewardship. Year-long stewardship is about the way we nurture and care for the development of our community. ARC is about the renewal of our financial commitment. On November 16th to coincide with the celebration of my installation by Bishop Knisely as the 12th Rector of St Martin's, our ARC will end with an ingathering of financial pledge commitments for 2015.

You don't need me to tell you that money matters. It matters because like every other aspect of our lives money goes to the heart of our spiritual values. Episcopalians are used to thinking about our financial pledge as giving to the parish budget. How unsexy is that?

If we are under an illusion that the church has lots of money then we may feel less compelled to give realistically - realistic giving is between 3 and 5% of net income. Maybe this is why Episcopalians give so little to their churches. Giving to the budget puts the Church on the same footing as any other worthy non-profit. Consequently, for many of us, our financial support of our parish is not a very spiritually, fulfilling experience.

Would you be surprised if I were to say to you that your pledge is a reflection not of your relationship to the parish, but your relationship to God? Our pledge is an expression of our debt of gratitude, a debt we owe to God for the generosity we experience at God's hand.

It's difficult to connect with gratitude to God if we think the enjoyment of our lives is the fruit of our own hard work. The debt of gratitude we owe is the realization that the things we treasure most - are things that are given to us often against the odds of probability and not the fruit of our own self-assertion. Being mindful of our gratitude to God bears further fruit through our willingness to risk living more generously and less fearfully.

Following this coming Sunday's launch, over the following week you will receive from me a personal invitation. I know that these days we are deluged with mail. If you are like me you might open the letter and then put it aside with the thought, oh I will get to that later. One person in my last parish declared to me, oh I saw that and put it straight in the bin.

Could I ask you to read my invitation, in which I outline how to reconnect with your debt of gratitude to God. In order to help you consider ways you might act upon my invitation, I offer you an anecdote from my own personal experience of gratitude to God.

Invitation was the theme of last Sunday's Sermon on the parable of the royal wedding feast. I must confess I will be relieved when we come to the end of Matthew's parables of the Kingdom. Each week the challenge of interpreting these parables within the context of our own personal and community life becomes more, and more demanding. You can discover more of what I mean at relationalrealities.com .

It's good to see so many of your returning after the summer break. So, see you on Sunday, in Church!
 

Yours in Christ,

Mark+