Dear Parishioners:
The first thing I want to do as we kick off our 2016 Stewardship of Treasure Campaign is to thank all of you for your generous support the past 124 years of our existence. Our parishioners have always been there for our parish community. Thank you.
Stewardship of Treasure is the second of our three Stewardship campaigns. We recently completed our Stewardship of Talent campaign and will initiate our Stewardship of Time (prayer and reflection) campaign during Lent of 2016.
In many ways, Stewardship of Treasure is third in priority among the three. The stewardship of our Talent and Time is far more directly connected to the quality of our spiritual lives, which is hopefully the number one priority in all of our lives. But maybe Stewardship of Treasure is unfairly perceived as the most unrelated to our spiritual well-being because we rarely look at what we do with our financial resources in terms of how it reflects our spiritual lives.
So this year, during our Treasure campaign, I would ask you to keep in mind the following question:
What does the way I spend – invest – donate my financial resources say about my spiritual life and my relationship to Jesus and neighbor, especially those less fortunate than I?
Let me close with a quick explanation of our new campaign “thermometer”. The right side lists the number of registered parish h
ouseholds (1100). The left side tracks our goal for total weekend collections for the year to meet our mission needs ($1 million). Historically, approximately 50% of our parish households (400-500) make a pledge, and the total dollar amount pledged is generally between $400-500,000. Of course many others contribute at weekend Masses without ever making a pledge, which is how we end up typically near $900,000 in annual contributions.
Our goal this year is to (1) thank all of you who so generously support St. Pat’s, and (2) to encourage those who have not pledged in the past to prayerfully consider doing so this year as a show of solidarity and our mutual responsibility to provide the resources needed for us to fulfill our mission to be a “full service” Parish.
St. Patrick – Pray for Us,
Kevin Lovejoy
Pastoral Coordinator
