The Annual Giving ministry wishes to thank each of you for your thoughtful and generous pledge. Once a year parishioners are invited to pledge their financial gifts for the upcoming year. Our parish budget is based on our gift giving.

Our Annual Giving goal this year is $290,000 and we received gifts to date in the amount of $203,104. THANK you for these blessings! However, we are behind last year in pledges and we need a true number for the Vestry budget vote in December. After Thanksgiving, we will contact individuals who have not pledged to invite them to pledge.

It is not too late to pledge if you have not done so already. Please pledge your financial gifts on our pledge card and leave it in the box in the lobby or mail it to the Parish Office.

All Annual Giving information and presentations are available online.

Gracious and loving God, you have given us everything that we need.  Come now and do a new thing in us. Help us to live with open hearts and open hands.  Awaken in us the gift of gratitude, that all our works may praise you.  Deliver us from the fear that leads us to horde your blessings.  And teach us to hold what we have reverently, but lightly.  Be with us as we seek to do your will.  And give us your blessing always.  Amen.

In thanksgiving,
Annual Giving Ministry
Fr. Howie, Joy Lynam, Kristin Sausville, Helen Spence, Jinglan Redder

Hello, my name is Shonette Carew and my husband Terrance, and I are proud parents of two lively, ever-hungry, thoughtful, and God-fearing young men, Philip (9) and Cristian (5.) We have been members of St. Thomas’s for the last 6 years and truly value the continuity of the community and especially the Children’s Ministry and its impact on our family.

Also, see the YouTube version of this Annual Giving Ministry Moment.

We have always wanted to raise our children with an appreciation of God through study and understanding of His Word in a child-appropriate manner. We also wanted to raise our children to value fellowship with a community of believers. The past few years have been tough on many a family, ours included, with the lack of socialization and uncertainty introduced into daily life. Through it all, we were more than able to count on the certainty of the Children’s Ministry at St. Thomas’s. Whether by virtual Zoom learning, in a tent outside in the garden or back in the church building in the children’s rooms, we have maintained their learning and fellowship in this difficult time. The opportunities for fellowship also got creative with outdoor play events, movie nights in the grove and many a chance to trunk or treat and play in the parking lot. Memories I know our kids will cherish.

The competing priorities of a life with children amidst their own schedules (which are rather demanding for persons not yet able to drive or sign contracts) makes coming every week sometimes challenging with our own busy work schedules. We make being with the adults and their peers in the Sunday school program a family priority. Our boys really enjoy learning about God through playing, creating art and many experiential activities. They value the contribution and the attention of the adults who demonstrate love-in-action weekly as they pour into our children. From the care taken in the art projects about Bible stories with Ms. Belinda, or the narratives that Ms. Madeline gets them to recite and act out or the support provided by Ms. Brandy and many others who help, all of our children can see and feel the impact of Christ through these adult influences.

The way I know the learning through play sinks in is when out of the blue, one of them either quotes something they heard in Children’s Ministry, references something an adult said to them in church or simply correcting each other with a “God wouldn’t like that, would He.” It’s been said that children learn more informally through watching adults than we can ever teach them. I am grateful for the support of the parish and the church community of our Children’s Ministry program, for its leaders and most notably for its impact on our children. Thank you for your contribution to this ministry.

Shonette & Terrance Carew

It’s appropriate that yesterday’s Epistle lesson was thanking God for the growing faith and increasing love among the members of a church. I see and feel this here too. (See YouTube Version)

Thank you all for the gifts you’ve pledged throughout this Annual Giving season. Thank you for your love and thank you for your faith in how we can serve God here.

There is still so much we can do. We’ve seen over and over again, particularly when we thought the migrant refugees were being sent to Delaware, that people still look to Episcopal churches. They know that we walk and act in love.

This is a moment of such energy and possibilities. People here want to do new things as we emerge from the past two years, but need resources to do so — your time, your talent, your treasure.

For those of you who haven’t turned in pledges yet, think about what this church means to you. Reflect prayerfully on the work we’ve done and the work we have yet to do. Consider what you can return to God to see that we can continue doing His work here.

And thank you all for everything you’ve given.

During October, we are collecting our thoughts, thanksgivings, and prayers for Annual Giving for our reflection. Annual Giving will take financial commitments from each of us. An opportunity before us is examining how much we give and whether we can do more. Please prayerfully determine how to give back that which has been given to you. Won’t you please pledge your gifts using our pledge card and return it as soon as you can? Pledges may be left in the box in the church lobby or mailed using the self-addressed, stamped envelope included in the packet you received.

Thank you,
Kristin Sausville

PLEDGE CARD IN-GATHERING PRAYER

Gracious and loving God, giver of all that is good and true and beautiful and life-giving: These cards represent our labor, our lives, and our hopes and dreams. The pledges which we make on them are tokens of the awesome gifts that have been given to us and they are pledged in thanksgiving for all that we have received, for all we have been inspired to be, for all we are challenged to become, in this place. May they be the first fruits of all we have and not what we have left over.  May they be signs of your hand in our lives. May we see them as our offering to you, sacred and holy, and filled with possibilities. And may we hold this day and what we do here in our hearts and our minds so that week by week we may see our whole lives as an offering to you. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.