Stewardship Campaign
’Abundant Life’
2024-2025

Dear St. Matthew’s Community,

We are entering the season when our friends and families will be asked to make a financial pledge to our church. This time of giving allows St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church to budget and sustain the vital programs we provide to our parishioners and the greater community throughout the year.   

Our 2024 giving campaign is centered on Abundant Life. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

As St. Matthew’s embraces a new relationship with Mother Leslie Hague, we reflect on the vibrance of our community and the blessings of our parish; Our Abundant Life as members of our special Pennington church.

Together, we experience abundance in the children of Kairos, as they learn from our dedicated teaching family and deepen their faith through activities like the upcoming TASK outreach project, which provided a record 712 meals to the food insecure last year. We witness abundance in community outreach and volunteer passion with our dazzling St. Matthew’s Christmas Bazaar in December. Our daily lives as Christians reveal abundance as we care and pray for the sick and infirm, connect with online worshipers through sophisticated technology, and discover meaningful ways to live out our mission to serve.

These are all part of what God’s Abundant Life looks like – genuine compassion, the kind of mutual care evoked by Jesus’ call to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” At St. Matthew’s, this kind of compassion is at the heart of everything we seek to do.

Now more than ever, the world needs more places like St. Matthew’s – communities dedicated to bringing more compassion into the world, more beauty and more faith. With your financial giving, as well as your time and talent, we will strengthen our foundation and welcome others to build and grow with us.

This year, we ask you to join us in prayerfully considering increasing our pledges by 7.5% to assist us in meeting our goals for the coming year. We will celebrate November’s abundance and our own with three invited speakers from our parish family sharing their deeply personal St. Matthew’s stories each Sunday. Please join us!

Enclosed, you will find two pledge cards inscribed with a prayer. One is for making your pledge of Treasure, given out of Abundant Life. The second is for you to make your pledge of Time and Talent. We ask that you take a moment to reflect prayerfully on your own connection with St. Matthew’s and your support of our mission.

Thank you for being a precious contributor in all ways to St. Matthew’s Abundant Life.

In the name of our Lord who gives us Abundant Life,

Your Stewardship Team
Leslie Hague, Jim Benton, Annie Gribbins, Andrew Sheldrick and Diana Drake

Tom’s Stewardship Talk
Nov 19th, 2023

Jim’s Stewardship Talk
Preacher Sally Barber
Nov 12th, 2023

Jim’s Stewardship Opening Talk
Preachers Natalie and Naomi
Nov 5th, 2023

If you’re interested in setting up automatic payments, it is very easy! You can set up recurring payments through your Bank or through Give + epayments.

https://www.stmatthewspennington.org/make-a-donation

Still have questions? Contact any of the Stewardship committee or the Parish Office, and we can help!

2 Corinthians 9:6

“The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one the sows abundantly will reap abundantly.” 

We will reap abundantly if we do the abundant work.  A steward is someone entrusted with property that belongs to another. Because everything we have is a gift from God, we are called to offer a portion of what we have received back to the fulfilling of God’s purposes.

Collectively, we understand that St Matthew’s has a mission grounded in Christ. It impacts us as individuals, it impacts our community, and it impacts the wider world. To maintain our worthy causes we ask you to make them your own. Become a steward by giving your time, expressing your talents, and pledging your treasure. By this you will be continuing God’s mission, a mission of joy and abundance!

As always, a HUGE thank you to all who support the work of St. Matthew’s financially throughout the year. We cannot do what we do without you!

If you’re interested in setting up automatic payments so you don’t have to worry about these kinds of things, your local bank should be able to help with that. Still have questions? Contact the Parish Office , and we’ll walk you through it.