Updates On Recent Activities!
Homeless Ministry, Special Offerings And Other Important Information!
You received a note from Good Samaritan Service Center for the Homeless this week, addressed to your church, thanking you for your generous support of their mission work to homeless families in the St. Louis area. I also thank you for the Thanksgiving outpouring of food, gift certificates and housewares, the rest of which will be delivered soon.
Good Samaritan Center works with other agencies in St. Louis, identifying which families from the homeless shelters they might best serve. Their particular target group is small children, since the average homeless person in America is a nine year old girl. After a screening process and a signed commitment to participate fully in the program, a family, most often a single mother with children, but also married couples or single dads, are settled into one of 37 Good Samaritan owned properties.
Household items and furniture are provided, with the intention that when the family is stabilized with adequate employment and skills, they will take their household along with them. There is an ongoing need for furniture and beds, etc., but no storage, so they depend on sudden and quick availability of such items. Good Samaritan has no trucks or vans and relies on volunteers to deliver larger items when needed and available.
As adults receive help with job hunting, skills development and mentoring, child care is provided at the headquarters on Russell Ave. Your gifts have been very helpful, but I encourage you to remember Good Samaritan throughout the year with your prayers, your direct financial support, your contributions of goods (especially if you can deliver items, and also the gift of your time. They have requested volunteers in home maintenance, child care, research, development of resources for homeless families and administrative support.
You can contact Good Samaritan Service Center for the Homeless at 2108 Russell, 63104, 772-7720 or e-mail at goodsam4families@yahoo.com.
Good Samaritan
Fund
Thanks also for your gifts of over $2000 toward the Good Samaritan Fund. It has the same name, but is a different program. This fund is a checking account made available to the Pastor to help families in our church and neighborhood with small emergencies, sometimes a utility bill, an emergency travel expense, medication or the food budget in a month when resources get short. We're hoping to establish a committee that would take this responsibility out of my hands soon. The fund has been depleted in recent months, and your generous gifts will keep us going now for some time.
2004 Contributions
As you know, I'm not shy about encouraging every Christian to grow in the spiritual disciplines of weekly worship, service according to their gifts, Bible study, prayer and personal witnessing, so why should I be shy about encouraging the spiritual discipline of generosity in giving?
Wherever the saving love of Christ is proclaimed, God is at work changing the hearts of his people. Since we're all involved in word and sacrament ministry, we're all growing in our faith. The life of worship, prayer, service, study and witness grows as the years go by. So does the life of giving. I'm glad that so many in our congregation are becoming more and more mature, willing and able to do as God leads them in each of these areas.
Your recent commitments toward support of our church's mission for 2004 is a very encouraging sign of your maturity and growth in the faith, your willingness to sacrifice greatly for Christ's work in our community! We do not give to meet a pre-established budget. We plan ministry for the coming year based on what you tell us through your gifts in the current year.
I'm encouraging the Board of Finance to give a full report to you about the ministry plan set for the year 2004, based on your level of giving this year. Some changes have been made that you need to know about.
Please remember that when you give over and above what is expected, it's very easy to do more: helping mission agencies such as Good Samaritan with extra donations or taking care of expensive and unexpected maintenance items on our grounds and building. When your giving is less than expected, it's very hard to cut back. Keep our stewardship as God's managers in your prayers also.
Christmas Gifts!
Please change your Christmas plans. Call Grandma or Aunt Clara or whoever, and rearrange your Christmas Eve traditions to include the most important thing you can do this Christmas, bring a friend to hear the message of the Savior.
In past years, Mount Calvary's Christmas Eve schedule has been primarily focused on how we like to celebrate Christmas. The children's Sunday School service held center stage because we love our kids and want their Christmas to be special. We've held the tradition of late night, 11:00 candlelight with Holy Communion because it is a special time for us. That's pretty selfish, really, and goes against the spirit of Christmas.
This year we're thinking only of others. Worship times are 6:00 PM and 9:30 PM so families can attend either before or after their Christmas Eve activities. We've changed the times not to make it more convenient for you, but for your friends who have no place to worship. Don't come to worship only because it means so much to you. Bring a friend.
Six out of ten people who have no church home say they would attend if they had an invitation. People who think about attending Christian services all year (and some think about it for years without actually attending) are far more likely to enter a church on Christmas Eve than at any other time in the year.
Change your schedule. Have your eggnog and cookies earlier or later, but find a friend, a family, a co-worker, a neighbor, a relative or a stranger and invite them to join you this Christmas Eve. The service will be very simple, very traditional, very welcoming to guests and very, very focused on the heart of Christmas, God who came to us to save us, Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem.
Calls to Minnesota
On Wednesday another congregation asked if I would talk to them about serving as their Pastor and maybe receiving a call to their church. I told them what I've been through recently. Deliberating these calls has been a very intense time of reflection for me. I feel led to remain, and here's what I think our challenges are for the future.
In ten years, our congregation has changed. In 1993, the year before I came, the greatest proportion of our Sunday worshippers came from a small group of very regular attenders. "Everyone knew everyone else," a longtime member recently told me. That's changed.
Our attendance has risen very little, but the number of regular worshippers has increased greatly. That same person told me, "Every week I see so many different faces."
That's good and bad. The good news is that we are regularly and consistently bringing new people into our fellowship, especially young people, which is quite contrary to the trend in Lutheran churches. That's attend we need to continue.
The bad news is that so many of our new members are attending weekend worship infrequently and irregularly. I hope we'll find ways in the future to better serve these families so that they feel more connected and more greatly compelled to be with us every week.
Give me your ideas! I'd love to hear from you. We've got some work to do, and I'm committed to the task.
See you Sunday!