From the Pastor

A Word about Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving is almost here! Having gotten to know me during the last year, it will probably come as no surprise that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. To be sure, much of it has to do with the mashed potatoes, turkey, and apple pie, but there is something besides the food which makes this holiday so special to me. I like to give thanks. There is something which is truly wonderful about standing around a table with those people in my life who are closest to me and remembering with them all for which we are thankful.

We don’t have to wait. As Christians, we don’t have to wait for a national holiday to give thanks. Indeed, one of the most essential parts of our faith is recognizing the gifts we have been given in Jesus Christ and giving thanks for them. We are taught to begin our prayers to God by giving thanks. We build our worship services around the idea that it is good to gather together and give thanks to God. Even the sacrament of communion is called the Great Thanksgiving. When we partake in the bread and the cup, it is a thanksgiving to God for the grace which is freely given.

We have much for which to be thankful! Fortunately, we don’t have to strain too hard to think of things to be thankful. God has indeed blessed us this fall. We have seen the doors of the church finally and generously completed. We have enjoyed the new sounds of music during the week as children from the New School for Music Study have begun to rehearse in our space. We have inched closer and closer to our goal of welcoming 130 new visitors during this year and now find ourselves less than ten people away. In short, there is much for which to be thankful.

Part of thanks is giving. One of the ways in which we express our gratitude to God is through our giving. We give of our time, our talent, and our treasure. On November 15, we held our annual consecration Sunday. It is a time for members of our church family to consider how we might support the ministry of the church in the year to come through a pledge. We pledge not because we want to meet the church budget, though that is important. We pledge not because we want to earn a place at the table, we have it. No! We pledge because we are thankful for the gift of grace which was given to us freely.

Work towards tithing. We each have different means and different manners of expressing our generosity. Tithing is the goal. Yet, we recognize that giving 10% of our income is a spiritual discipline which we might not all be able to achieve immediately. The good news is, giving is not all or nothing. If you cannot tithe, perhaps you would consider a pledge of 7% in the year to come on your way toward a tithe. If not 7%, than maybe 5%. The point is not to get bogged down in the mathematics, but to recognize the gifts we have been given and to respond with our own gifts. In short, part of giving thanks is giving.

The road ahead. As we have noted many times before, this church is a special place with special people. We are agreed that it deserves to continue sharing its message of hope well into the future, but that means each of us committing to it now. Our vision is for a world in which everyone is recognized as a child of God and no one is excluded. This is the way in which we faithfully respond to the commandment from Jesus to love God and to love our neighbor. Money should never be a road block for us on that journey, but as we know, sometimes it can feel like a deterrent. Friends, my hope for us as a church is that we could work together to let the prayerful vision be our guide and not the financial road blocks. Let us commit together to give what we can and work with what we have to help make sure that this church can continue to be the special place it is well into the future.

Grace and Peace,
Stephen Cady