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Why Is It Important to Return a Pledge Card?
Report on the Annual Meeting
Dear Friends,
Over fifty people came out in the snow and cold to attend
the 164th Annual Meeting of the Parish. There was spirited debate
and serious discussion about the money we owe the diocese for
our assessment. Thank you for your input and affirmation of the
mission and ministry of the Parish.
I am especially grateful that
so many of you volunteered to help with our fund raising
efforts. The planning for the rummage sales and Saturday
food sales beginning this spring and summer will begin soon.
You will hear more from us very soon about the planning.
You elected Ann Bushey, Jeff Fannon and Stephen Walke
to three year terms on the Vestry.
Stephanie Keitel, Laurie Labarthe and Beth Maier were
elected as Delegates to Diocesan Convention.
Cynthia Steed was elected Alternate Delegate to Convention.
Beth Maier and Lou Henne were elated as Deanery Representatives
Current Vestry members:
Laurie Labarthe, Senior Warden
Richard Herrmann, Junior Warden
Ann Bushy,
Jeff Fannon,
Stephen Walke,
Bill Koucky,
Grace Greene,
Melissa Riegle-Garrett,
Stephen Reynes,
Pat Morse.
John Jaworski, Treasurer
Kelly Gable, Clerk
Beth Maier, Recording Treasure
David+
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The Sweater Project
Since September, 1999, when Christ Church
parishioners and their friends
began contributing to Guidepost Knit for Kids, they have
sent 617 hand-knit sweaters in support of this
relief program.
The sweaters are sent to
a collection site in Carmel, NY, where they are then re-packed
and shipped to children’s
relief agencies—wherever the need is greatest.
Sweaters have gone to Mongolia, Haiti, Africa, Romania,
Turkey, Kosovo and Uzbekistan; to Native American reservations;
to babies with AIDS; and to homeless children, who lack
even the clothes necessary to attend school.
In the past calendar year,
the program has continued to flourish here, with ten knitters
supporting Christ Church’s efforts by handcrafting
166 sweaters for kids.
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Why is it important to return a Pledge Card?
Over the past five years, we have spoken about stewardship
as a way of living our lives. Stewardship goes beyond
simple fund raising. We respond to the call that
God has given each of us by being faithful stewards of
the gifts we have been given. We are truly blessed.
Many of us have returned
our 2005 pledge cards, in which we indicated our
promise of financial support to the ongoing work of Christ
Church. Pledges
are the foundation of our budget and are used by the
Finance Committee to
prepare our 2005 spending plan. Pledging is the key device
for Christ Church to predict the expected income for
the coming year. In this sense, our individual pledges
are the starting point for our parish budget.
If you have
pledged for 2005, thank you for your support. If you
haven’t, it is not too late. Christ Church
needs your financial commitment so we can fulfill our mission
and ministry in the parish, diocese and community. Pledge
cards are available in the Narthex of the Church and in
the Parish Office. Or, you can download one from our home
page at www.christchurchvt.org and
mail it in.
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We need your help!
Winston Churchill was right when, commending the campaign
to rebuild the bombed-out Houses of Parliament, said, “We
shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape
us.”
Anyone with eyes to see knows
that we have deferred maintenance on magnificent structure.
We continue to need your help with our monthly cleaning
and maintenance projects. Usually these are small projects
that our Sexton just doesn’t
have time to complete and sometimes projects that need doing
but we can’t afford.
Please join us Saturday, February
26 at 9am and help dust the Church and clean some of the stained
glass windows. (The ones we can reach.)
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Love
The first stage is to believe that there is only one kind of
love. the middle stage is to believe that there are many kinds
of love, and that the Greeks had a different word for each
of them. The last stage is to believe that there is only one
kind of love.
The unabashed eros of lovers,
the sympathetic philia of friends, agape giving itself away freely
no less for the murderer than for his victim (the King James
version translates it as charity)—these
are all varied manifestations of a single reality. To lose yourself
in another’s arms, or in another’s company, or in
suffering for all men who suffer, including the ones who inflict
suffering upon you—to lose yourself in such ways is to
find yourself. Is what it’s all about. Is what love is.
Of all powers love is the most
powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because
it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold
which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it
can do nothing except by consent.
To say that love is God is romantic
idealism. To say that God is love is either the last straw or
the ultimate truth.
In the Christian sense, love is
not primarily an emotion, but an act of the will. when Jesus
tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love
them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional
feeling. … he
is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing
to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our
own well-being to that end, even if it means sometimes just leaving
them alone. …
From Wishful Thinking by Fredrick Buechner
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Social Concerns and Local Services
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