Stewardship Season 2023

We write to you in the spirit of gratitude for your presence, gifts of time and talent, and for blessing us at St. John’s simply by participating in church services on-line or in person. Whether you have attended St. John’s for 40+ years, are a recent congregant, or find yourself somewhere in between, you are loved with equal fervor by Christ.

Since reopening our Cathedral doors after the critical covid period, our pews have begun to fill in larger numbers and the palpable joy of being together again has spread throughout our church family. Dormant commissions are being revived, new ones added, and we have embarked on the challenging and rewarding process of celebrating our past and reimagining our future together. We are an evolving community, and this process will enable us to collectively generate an inspired vision and mission for St. John’s; A vision and mission that will capture the hopes, dreams, values, and practices that we as a diverse church community consider important for the present and future generations of St. John’s Cathedral members.

We thank you in advance for your contributions to this process and would like to request your contribution in another form. Stewardship season is upon us, and we are appealing to your generosity to help sustain St. John’s and propel it into the future with a solid financial foundation. Contrary to popular belief, St. John’s is not wealthy. The beauty of this magnificent Cathedral creates the false impression that this sanctuary of Christ is rich (well, of course it is in spirit), but it could benefit tremendously from your financial support.

The ministry of Stewardship is about receiving God’s blessings from those to whom we minister. And, to paraphrase from Reverend James Lee Walker’s sermon on rediscovering lay ministry, we must recognize that we are the hands, hearts, eyes, ears, mouth, and presence of Christ in our daily life inside and outside the church. We are all missionaries and we do not need to go abroad to help others. We can begin here at St. John’s by letting the Holy Spirit guide our generosity. So, today we appeal to you for your stewardship gift as a blessing for the work we are doing and the work that still needs to be done to sustain and grow our St. John’s community.

We leave you with this quote from 2 Corinthians 9:7 “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

The Very Rev. Anne Sawyer, Interim Dean and Priest-in-Charge

Ms. Rosalind Vernon, Vestry 2026