Give

Wait! It’s January! Didn’t we just talk about pledging in October?

Yes! We did just make our monetary commitment to St. Mary’s last fall, culminating in submitting our annual pledges in November.

However, although money is critical, Stewardship is far more than giving money. It’s also more than identifying your talents and giving time to the church.

Stewardship of all of God’s creation has been passed to us through Jesus’ life on earth. We are called to wholly/holy care for each other, our staff, our clergy, our magnificent buildings and natural surroundings, our community, and the larger world – not only monetarily and physically but emotionally and spiritually. This sounds big and complex, and overwhelming, especially when we consider what we already contribute.

Our goal for this year is to walk through all aspects of the stewardship of God’s creation to understand what Stewardship of Creation will be from ‘our’ perspective – a St. Mary’s perspective, considering our past and looking toward our future.

Elements of this work will be incorporated into our activities throughout the year. And, each month in the Messenger, we will publish information, inspirations, ideas, actions, and messages from the Stewardship team as well as from others in the congregation with insight and understandings that will help us shape St. Mary’s Stewardship of Creation for who we are now and want to be in the future.

In this second of our Year-of-Stewardship series, we’ll look at stewardship at the end of life.

At St. Mary’s, what will immediately come to mind is our commitment to those buried in our cemetery. It is rich in Harford County history, with plots dating back to the 1800’s. Families from neighboring farms at the time fueled an endowment that, along with supplements from current burial fees and overseen by our Junior Steward (Junior Warden), provides the means to care for these loved one’s gravesites ‘in perpetuity’ – FOREVER.

But maintaining the physical cemetery is only one aspect of caring for each other at the end of life. How can we continue this legacy of caring for each other initiated by our ancestors? One of the most fundamental ways is through the care and support we offer to the dying and their grieving families.

Our priest takes communion monthly to parishioners who can no longer be with us in person. He talks with them about spiritual matters that need to be expressed, visiting them more often as end-of-life approaches. This is an important part of his commitment to Pastoral Care, a key part of his call to the priesthood.

Our parish administrator helps the funeral home and the families work through all the decisions needed to prepare the burial plot (whether in our cemetery or elsewhere) and the funeral service.

If the post-funeral reception it is to be held in our parish hall, the family is referred to the Women of St. Mary’s who provide a main contact to help the family plan how they can use our space. This provides the family with one point of contact for information and helps us be more coordinated in how we offer help to the family.

For the rest of us, the most important thing we can offer to each other is care and attention. We can do this through existing ministries as well as individual choices you can make. It’s not a task to go do, it is an opportunity to show the love we have for each other. (Contact the office for more information on any of these.)

• Take sanctified bread and wine to the home bound, allowing us to offer home communion to individuals more often than once a month.
• Help prepare the altar, serve at communion, or serve as ushers for funerals, on weekdays as well as weekends.
• Offer whatever time you have to assist with funeral receptions or offer to bring the family a meal or run an errand.
• Help fulfill our commitment to the loved ones buried in our cemetery by periodically walking the cemetery to collect trash and spent graveside decorations left after funerals or after holiday remembrances.

Ultimately, the simplest and most caring way to provide end-of-life support is to stay in touch with our elderly parishioners, express your condolences to the grieving family, and attend the funeral – we are all one family, and we show up for each other, including at the end.

February’s stewardship focused on care at the end of life. Now, with hints of Spring all around us, we look at caring for the gifts of creation. God created the heavens and the earth, and then he created us to be stewards and caregivers for the earth and all her creatures.

Over several generations, we have become aware of climate change – the things we have done in the past and do today that impact the environment and all living things. The size and complexity of the issue of climate change offers many opportunities for us, as stewards of creation, to have a positive impact as we move forward.

At St. Mary’s, we look at our campus, our portion of God’s creation, and look for ways to care and use it in ways that contribute to a healthier environment for ourselves, our neighbors, and for those who are downstream from us. We have a healthy recycling effort and monitor our use of heat and electricity. The restoration work we did last year on the church roof and gutters and improvements to drainage around the church and parish house, are the first steps in addressing run off to the Bay.

In the opportunities column, we have a 30-40-year-old rainwater retention pond that needs to be adjusted to current standards. We have acres of grass that are expensive to mow and could be pollinator habitats and support other wildlife. We can increase the environmental value of our tree canopy by replacing a number of older trees we have lost. We have a large piece of property and a community of creative people who have a long list of ideas on improvement of our environmental impact.

We are taking steps to create a master plan for our property that can incorporate many climate goals and ways to use our property to care for others in the community. With a master plan, we can then confidently tackle individual projects as current needs, funds, interest, and time will allow, since we will know how each piece contributes to the larger vision. Over the next three months, we will share short term tasks that need to be done this year along with the steps toward creating the long-term vision for how we will care for our slice of creation.

Last month we introduced the idea of a Creation Care Master Plan where we would look at our portion of God’s creation, our campus, and identify ways to care for and use it that contribute to a healthier environment for ourselves, our neighbors, and for those who are downstream from us. Having a plan will provide a cohesive and coordinated implementation strategy that will allow us to tackle individual projects over time and confidently know how each contributes to the larger vision. It also ensure we are making efficient use of our monetary and human resources.

This month we’ll look at the environmental goals we want to include in the plan. Next month, we’ll look at those things we want to include that will support and enrich the lives of our congregation and neighbors.

At St. Mary’s, we want to:

• Reduce the amount of mown grass we maintain. This will not only save us money but provide an opportunity to deploy more native plants and solutions that will help attract more pollinators and wildlife.

• Create cohesive entrances to our property that are inviting and show that the areas are connected. In addition, the design should not require excessive maintenance.

• Reduce the number of mulched areas. They are expensive, time consuming and labor intensive to put down and keep weed-free.

• Evaluate the property’s drainage patterns to see if we have effectively resolved drainage issues around our buildings. We also need to evaluate our decades-old water retention pond to see if it meets today’s rainwater retention standards. This ensures we protect our buildings and contribute more effectively to the quality of water that ends up in the Bay, only 5 miles from St. Mary’s.

• Create a plan for our cemetery landscaping that keeps maintenance simple but provides beautiful areas for quiet and contemplation.

• After the recent loss of a number of large trees, we need to evaluate our tree canopy to determine where we need to replace trees and what type are needed.

• Evaluate our property margins to ensure these forested areas contribute to the overall health of the neighborhood’s environment. In the meantime, while this work for a master plan progresses, watch the weekly newsletter for several garden work sessions where we will need your help to complete current projects and the usual spring and summer landscape maintenance – all part of our commitment to the Stewardship of Creation!

Stewardship of Creation is not one thing we do. It’s IN everything we do. As we saw last month, it’s in how we decide to mow (or not mow) our grass or in what we decide to plant in our gardens and open space. It’s also in our how we power our buildings and in the things we do to care for the other part of God’s creation – our neighbors and ourselves.

As part of the creation care master plan, we have included these community-focused creation care goals:

• Offer our neighbors fresh greens from our property at our annual Holiday Market.

• Partner with an organization that wants to offer a community garden but lacks sufficient space for those gardens.

• Provide space for a practical solar farm for either St. Mary’s electrical needs or for a partner program for those in the community unable to house their own solar solutions.

• Offer ‘respite by the road’ – a quiet, restful space for the people that stop under our trees throughout the day – school busses staging for afternoon pickup, people taking a work phone call, a local worker who wants a lunch break, someone who just wants to sit in a peaceful place for a few minutes.

• Provide space for a beekeeper to house their bee hives to support pollination and other wildlife. • Offer access to a labyrinth for peaceful meditation and contemplation.

• Provide an outdoor area for outdoor worship and events the invite community involvement. All these goals for our creation care master plan come from interests expressed by our St. Mary’s congregation.

This desire to be good stewards of God’s creation by including environmental justice and climate advocacy goals can be exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Creating this master plan allows us to tackle individual projects that fit our current monetary and human resources but ensures each contributes to the larger vision. It provides focus and purpose so St. Mary’s can continue to offer effective support to our community for the next 175 years.

For the last three months we’ve focused on our stewardship of nature and the environment and how to use those resources to care for our neighbors.

For the summer months we are going to look more closely at stewardship of ourselves and those around us.

In our hectic, overloaded world, self-care comes up a lot. It is important to include time in your life to be quiet and contemplative or to be free and joyous. This ‘self-care’ time can also be a time of discernment, to listen for what God is calling you to be.

As part of your self-care, notice the things that energize you, that help you feel confident and useful. These are your gifts. When you use them, they can help you be calm as well as fill you with joy and excitement. Happily, everyone’s gifts are different. One person feels relaxed and productive after working alone in the garden. Another person, believe it or not, can be energized by simplifying or organizing things.

If you understand the things that give you joy and energy, you can have that experience more often when you share those with others. Even if working in solitude is your thing, you can look for things at church or in your social community that could use some focused, diligent attention. It’s a gift that you can offer.

Also look at your impact on those around you. You may not see yourself as they see you. You can be less anxious if you can let go of judging others and feeling judged. Focus on just ‘being’ not ‘doing’ – be open to listening to others in order to understand them. Where are they in their life and what might they need? You can then understand how to share your gifts in ways that nurture them and also supports your self-care.

Last month when we looked at self-care, we discussed focusing on ‘being’ not ‘doing’ to help reduce stress in our own lives. That also works when we consider caring for others. Just being open to listening to others in order to understand them better also reduces their stress.

We are all so busy! How do we find time to learn about each other and offer kindness and understanding when it’s needed?

Stewardship of caring for each other can include participating in things like Formation or Bible Study where we have an opportunity to talk about things important to us. It can also include participating in and/or offering to host opportunities to just be together for no other purpose than to be together – like our picnic after church, going to a ball game together, or just hanging out after service to have an extra cup of coffee with whoever is around. Going to visit our homebound parishioners also offers an opportunity to get to know each other.

At St. Mary’s, we also make a commitment to support our neighbors. We ‘do’ a lot of things to fulfill that commitment – Little Free Pantry and Reading Camp among them.

We are also ‘doing’ a lot of work right now to create an environment on our campus that invites people in for reflection or solace and to connect them with the natural beauty of God’s creation, even if they never come to church.

Believe it or not, it’s not having pretty flowers that draws people. They tell us it’s because they drove by and saw people working in the garden – they saw people engaged in their church – that attracted them.

But once we’ve attracted them, why do they stay – especially those that are ‘church shy’ (have had a bad experience)? We can make sure information is readily available in many different ways about the many things we offer. We can invite them to come to Formation or to Bible Study or to participate in the many things we do for our neighbors. But what will keep them coming back is not what we ‘do’ but who we ‘are’ while we do it. It’s the messages they hear from us about value and self-worth – beginning with Fr. Paul’s sermons and formal studies like our Lenten series, down to all of us always treating each other with respect and kindness and being the living embodiment of love and acceptance, even if they never become a member of St. Mary’s.

This year, Pledge Sunday will be held in Oct to celebrate the anniversary of St. Mary’s founding. Your pledge will provide key information that will help us create a budget for 2025. Before we fill out our pledge cards for the coming year, let’s look back at what we have learned about stewardship over the past few months.

Linda, our head of stewardship, has tried to reframe our congregational vision of stewardship from a pledge season to a lens that we see our whole life through. Stewardship as our relationship to God and each other, our care of the natural beauty that surrounds us, the commitment others in our church community make so that we can experience worship, fellowship, care for each other, and how we’ve been able to share those gifts.

Our scripture readings, through the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul, have revealed that we don’t exist for just for ourselves. But that we are better in community where we are interconnected – when we are made one body in Christ through the Spirit.

In our Baptismal Covenant, we commit to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves, “with God’s help”. This is a clear call to the stewardship of others outside of our congregation because these vows ask us to continuously look outside ourselves.

“If we have two apples and see someone who is hungry, we share one with them. If we have one apple and see someone who is hungry, we give them the apple.”

We know it takes a lot to provide for the needs of the community around us, and we know we can’t meet all the needs. But we also know that God has blessed us as the people of St. Mary’s and God is calling us to share that blessing with anyone we can.

So, before October, find a peaceful time to intentionally look at the gifts God has provided –Write down your insights and, when it is time to complete you pledge card, look at your list and allow your heart to listen to what God is calling you to give.

Your 2025 Pledge

Throughout this year, we have looked at all the non-monetary ways we practice stewardship – commitment to our ministries such as altar guild, creation care, friendship and support for each other and our neighbors. St. Mary’s ministries thrive because you are deeply connected to God and each other through your roots of faith and service.

Did you know?

The average 2024 pledge to St. Mary’s Church is $2730 a year. Many of you also contribute additional funds as part of your personal ministries. The 2024 pledges were a generous 18% increase over the 2023 pledges. This increase is a result of everyone’s efforts during the transitions of the last 10 years and our perseverance through the pandemic. During that time St. Mary’s crafted a vision for who we wanted to be in the future, and we are now living that vision.

In 2024, it costs $1,300 per day to operate St. Mary’s Church. Currently, pledge income provides $420 per day. If we add non-pledge giving, gifts and building use fees, we cover $610 per day towards those costs, leaving a budget gap of $700 per day.

This year, we had Linda look deeply at our numbers; there are two realities we need to be honest about. 1) We run a deficit budget. Based on Linda’s numbers, if everyone doubled their pledges, we would still have a deficit. 2) We should be building our budget around our pledges.

This year, we will set the budget based on what we have done in the past and what we hope to do in the coming year. That will include pulling money from our investment to make up for the deficit.

That feels liked bad news when we have really amazing news that will reshape how we see our congregation. Based on Linda’s calculations, the average pledge to St. Mary’s in 2024 was $2730. The national average for a pledge in the Episcopal church for 2024 was $1947. That means we are averaging nearly $800 more per pledge than the national average, and we are not a large or wealthy church.

When the vestry looks at the numbers, we see a congregation that answered our call last stewardship season; we see a congregation that is putting their money behind the vision. We see a congregation throwing their support behind our Rector and the Vestry. We see people that have dug deep and are already giving everything they have to spare to this mission.

As you fill out your pledge card for 2025, if you have fallen on harder times, it is okay to pull back on your pledge. If you know you can do what you did last year, keep the same pledge. If you have seen a fair increase in the market and are looking pretty good, maybe you increase your pledge this year by $10 or 1-2%. Every dollar that we avoid pulling from our investments allows it to grow and increase our overall financial security.

 Whatever your financial situation is, we know you are prayerful about these decisions. One thing is clear when we look at these numbers, you care and are committed to our church.

This year our hope is to collect pledge cards on the birthday of our church, Sunday, October 6. Our 2025 pledge cards are our birthday present to our church and we are planning a festive formation time to celebrate our shared commitment to St. Mary’s.

We had our official pledge ingathering for 2025 on the anniversary of St. Mary’s birthday on October 6^th. A big thank you to all who came to the birthday celebration at Formation time and to all of you that have made your pledge in support of St. Mary’s and it’s missions.

I haven’t pledged yet…how can I still make my commitment to St. Mary’s?

• The link to the on-line pledge card on the St Mary’s website under the Give option.
• The link in the weekly newsletter to the on-line pledge card.
• Pick up a pledge card on the tract table at the back of the church or on the welcome table in the parish house café or contact the office and we can mail you a pledge card. You can return your card by putting it in the offertory plate, giving it to an usher, or mail it/turn it in to the office.

A final pledge total and budget for 2025 will be presented at St. Mary’s annual meeting in February. Watch for more detailed information to come in the new year.

I’ve pledged…Now what? Pledge contributions for 2025 begin with any contribution received on or after January 1, 2025. Choose any of these methods to contribute:

• Put a check or cash in a St. Mary’s envelope or a personal envelope and deposit it in the collection plate on Sundays. If you contribute cash in a personal envelope, be sure to include your name on the envelope.
• Put a personal check in the collection plate. We will be able to attribute it to you from the name on the check.
• Mail a check to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 1 St. Mary’s Church Rd, Abingdon, MD 21009.
• Use your bank bill-pay option. Follow the instructions on your bank’s website using St. Mary’s Episcopal Church as the payee at the above address. Most banks offer a recurring payment option which will automatically pay your pledge at any interval you set up. If you set up recurring payments, you don’t need to remember to make your payment but, using your bank’s bill pay, you can stop recurring payments at any time.
• Use the Tithely link in the weekly newsletter or on the Give page on the website if that works best for you.
• Retired and making contributions from your Required Minimum Distribution? Talk to your financial planner about using the Qualified Charitable Contributions process. The funds you give to St. Mary’s count towards your required minimum distribution, but the funds do not count as income to you, allowing you to support St. Mary’s using non-taxable dollars.

I pledged and I gave through the year…can I get a tax letter at the end of the year?

• All pledge givers receive Quarterly and Annual statements from St. Mary’s. This way, you can keep track of your giving and call the office with any discrepancies and have a record to submit for your charitable giving when tax season rolls around.

Thanks to everyone who made their annual pledge to St. Mary’s.  This is your gift from your discretionary income for the ministries and missions of St. Mary’s supported through our operating expenses/annual budget.

In addition to an annual pledge, you can also make a lasting gift to St. Mary’s through planned giving – a gift made in lifetime or at death as part of your overall financial/estate planning.

Why do Planned Giving? Planned giving doesn’t reduce the need for annual stewardship but enhances St. Mary’s ability to make new ministries possible, spark creative outreach projects, ease the burden of long-term capital expenses, and secure St. Mary’s future. It ensure we can be innovative and responsive to the needs of the time, whether that is next year or 10 years from now.

Charitable giving of this type can take many forms and offers an opportunity to maximize the value of your gift and minimize the impact on your financial assets or estate. This type of giving offers the opportunity to continue the faithful stewardship that has always been a part of your life.

What types of planned giving are there? There are many options. You can choose one or several depending on your assets and giving goals. We recommend discussing your desires and goals with your family and your financial advisor/attorney to determine which of these options best fit your financial situation.

 Cash Gifts – a lump sum gift given at any time.

• Bequests by Will – include a specified gift to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in your will or through a Living Trust which can reduce the assets that are subject to probate. Gifts may be designated as a percentage (%) of your estate or a specific amount.
• Designated Beneficiary on Bank Account – you can designate St. Mary’s Episcopal Church as the beneficiary on existing bank or financial accounts.
• Life Insurance Policy – name St. Mary’s Episcopal Church as the beneficiary of a percentage (%) of an insurance policy or purchase a new policy showing St. Mary’s Episcopal Church as the owner and beneficiary of the policy.
• Retirement Fund Gifts – if you have a company pension plan, a 401(k), an IRA or 403(b), you can contact the custodian for your account and designate St. Mary’s Episcopal Church as your beneficiary and name a specific dollar ($) amount or a percentage (%) to be given.
• Gifts of Appreciated Securities – making a gift of appreciated stock or other securities can offer tax advantages such as no capital gains tax on the gift and the ability to claim a charitable deduction of the full market value of the security.
• Charitable Remainder Trust, Pooled Income Fund, or Charitable Gift Annuity – more complex options in which you create a lifetime income plan by irrevocably transferring assets to a trust, pooled income fund, or contract that pays you and other designated persons monthly incomes for your lifetimes. Then, the principal or reminder of the trust, pool, or contract transferers to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church at death.
• Unique Gifts – if you have other thoughts for planned giving in addition to what is listed here, discuss it with your financial planner and contact Fr. Paul or a Vestry member to discuss your plan.

It’s not too late to make your 2025 Pledge! If you’ve not yet had time to make your pledge, use this link or the link in the weekly newsletter to access the on-line pledge card on the St Mary’s website under the Give option. You can also still pick up a pledge card on the tract table at the back of the church or on the welcome table in the parish house café or contact the office to ask that one to be sent to you. Return them to the offering plate or the office.