Feasting on Gratitude

2011 Stewardship Letter from Patrick and Sunni Bannon

Dear St. Thomas family:
Hanging on our refrigerator, tucked between John’s tee-ball photo and Clara’s preschool calendar is a bright green index card with the hand-written reminder, “Everything we have is a gift.”

Three years ago our financial lives changed dramatically when Sunni resigned from her paid full-time work to be a full-time at-home parent. Living on a tight budget with two young children we felt exhausted and overwhelmed. We supported St. Thomas with a modest annual pledge, but we fulfilled our commitment with no more thought than we gave to paying our utility bill. At the end of each month, we were relieved to find a few dollars left in the checking account. Or more often, we dipped into our savings account to make ends meet.

Last fall, we were thrilled to hear the plans for the new Life Center at St. Thomas – what a wonderful facility for our children, their friends and the generations to follow! At the campaign banquet we stared at the pledge card and listened as Lex asked us to move beyond what we could give with comfort to a level of sacrifice. We realized we didn’t know what the figure would be at either of those levels. With our faith as the lens, we re-focused and looked closely at our lives, our blessings and our money. It was obvious we had enough. Not enough for a new car with a third row seat or for a golf round every month. But enough to pay our bills, cover basic needs and provide for a small indulgence now and then. We found room in the budget to increase our annual St. Thomas pledge plus make an equal pledge for the Life Center.

“Everything we have is a gift.” The words blend into the kitchen scenery surrounded by magnets, photos and crayon art. They gently nudge us to slow down and practice gratitude. God is good. God will provide. It was only last year that we recognized and responded with faith to the intrinsic question – a query found in Psalm 116, “What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?” Making and keeping our pledge to St. Thomas has not made our lives stress free. Parenting is a rollercoaster, and we worry about many of the same things that concerned us before. But giving to St. Thomas no longer feels obligatory or optional. We are glad to return to the Lord from the richness we receive.

Just like all of you, our stewardship is a journey. This fall we’ll increase our annual pledge percentage as we move toward the goal of tithing. We’re inspired by the work, love and abundant hospitality at St. Thomas. We’re amazed and humbled by the examples of stewardship surrounding us. Please join us on November 20th for Ingathering Sunday. We, along with John and Clara and each of you, will bring our pledge cards to the altar as we come together to share the Eucharist and to celebrate the bounty and blessings of our church family. What a wonderful feast!
Joyfully yours,
Patrick & Sunni Bannon

Isabel's Stewardship Talk

Isabel shared this talk with the St. Thomas congregation
on November 6, 2011.

My name is Isabel Williams. I’ve been coming to St. Thomas with my parents and brother Connor since I was in the second grade. Now I’m in the sixth grade.

A few weeks ago I found a joke that I think is pretty relevant to what I’m here to talk about: A family goes to church one Sunday morning. When they come out, the father complains, “The sermon was horrible!” The mother cries, “The choir was terrible!” And the little girl says, “But you have to admit—it was a pretty good show for just a dollar.”

But seriously… When Father Lex asked me if I would talk about how our family practices stewardship at St. Thomas, my first thoughts were something along the lines of, “Um… what does ‘stewardship’ mean?” According to Dictionary.com, stewardship is “the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving.”  As soon as I heard that, I knew it was the perfect definition. Our family definitely thinks that St. Thomas – and all the gifts God gives us in this world – is something worth caring for and preserving.

After all this you must be wondering: How does my family practice stewardship at St. Thomas? What do we do? For starters, we put a check in the offering plate each week. Mom and Dad have been putting money in the offering plate for years, and Connor and I give a third of our allowance each week as well. There are other things you can do for stewardship besides just giving money – you can also give time to church. I help with church services as an acolyte, lector, and Chorister. Mom and Dad are active Sunday School teachers, and Mom is also a Eucharistic Minister and is on the Vestry. And there’s another way you can give time – you can give it to outreach.  Connor is in Kids Club and I am in Youth Group, and we participate in service projects with those groups. Our family as a whole also helps with Thanksgiving meals, the Giving Tree, and Congregations for the Homeless.

Now that you know what we do, it’s probably best if you know why we do it, so you might like to do it, too. First, it’s a way we “care for and preserve” the St. Thomas community that means so much to us. After we left our old church, for weeks we searched for a new one that would be special to us and would keep us coming back each Sunday. As soon as we came here, we knew that St. Thomas was the church we were looking for. St. Thomas is what we make it – so we all need to do our part to support it. Second, stewardship is a way to show our thanks and give back for all the wonderful gifts God gives to us. I don’t like to hear sad stories about all of the horrible things that happen in our world, but I’ve heard enough to know that we are so, so lucky. Mom and Dad both have jobs; our family is healthy; we have a nice house, warm clothes, and plenty of food; and we haven’t suffered any major natural disasters.  We want to show our thanks for that by giving back. And finally, it’s a way to follow the lessons that Jesus teaches about caring for our neighbors. What’s the point of coming to church every week and listening to the lessons from the Bible if we’re not going to learn something and follow those lessons? 

That’s just a little bit about what St. Thomas and stewardship means to our family. I hope you will think about what it means to you and your family and make a pledge on the ingathering Sunday in a few weeks.

Life Center Update

Although dubbed the “quiet phase” of our campaign for the Center at St. Thomas while we engage with donors from the community, our Center efforts during this phase have been very productive. We will provide you with updates as we make progress toward our vision. Over the summer the Center project:

• Completed hazardous materials and property surveys necessary for any building;
• Decided that the cost of holding the “portables” was outweighed by returning them now, and bringing them back for future construction;
• Continued in dialogue with non-profits including the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club to identify partnerships to expand our community impact and service;
• Submitted our grant application to a foundation and executed on our Friends of St. Thomas strategy for community support of the Life Center; 
• Successfully obtained eligibility for matching gifts with Microsoft and Bank of America.

We continue to identify other matching gift opportunities.
Thank you for your support of the Center at Saint Thomas!

Update from Josh Hosler

September 23, 2011
Dear friends at St. Thomas, and other friends and family as well:


A few days ago I received in the mail a copy of the St. Thomas Skagit Valley pilgrims’ stockholder report. I’ve been bursting with pride ever since; I’ve carried the report around with me to show to all my seminary friends, especially those who have been youth group leaders in the past. Not only was the booklet beautiful, but the words the pilgrims wrote leave me feeling great about Brian’s ministry among y’all at St. Thomas. (I’m in the South now, so I’m allowed to say “y’all.” Actually, that term comes in very handy when I’m trying to conjugate verbs in Hebrew.)

It seems like ages since we embarked on our 11-day road trip from Seattle. Most of the story is chronicled on my blog, http://episcopop.blogspot.com/, and I hope most of you will continue to follow the Hoslers’ adventures there.

Even before we left Seattle, I had begun to meet some of my classmates through Facebook. And my overall impression of them is that I am humbled by their accomplishments. From the young, dedicated political campaign worker, the evangelical missionary to Mongolia, the D.C. medical examiner, the Iraq War vet and army hospice chaplain, the outspoken priest from Liberia, and many others, I continue to hear stories that remind me that my own accomplishments, while not meager, are part of a much larger tapestry of Christian witness and sacrifice.

We are getting settled. Sarah is in first grade now, and she enjoys spending time with the children of some of my classmates, especially 8-year-old Neeley, 7-year-old Brynn, and 5-year-old twins Robert and Jacob, whom she calls “the boys.” VTS works very hard to support families, and we families work hard to support each other. Those of us in the Braddock Lee Apartments make up the critical mass, along with a bunch of couples without children. We’re a mere 16-minute walk from campus, which makes for good morning and afternoon exercise.

In addition to my classes, I am working on campus ten hours per week on a Lilly-funded project for the seminary: an extensive study that follows clergy from a number of denominations in their first few years out of seminary, especially tracking whether they took part in a transition-into-ministry program of some sort and trying to assess how successful these programs are. So far most of my efforts have gone into forcing spreadsheets to submit to my will, something I enjoy doing very much. I may also become part of the process of coding some of the qualitative data we collect.

While Christy has enjoyed her several months of unemployment, she’s ready to get back to work too. Christy will begin a job at the Cokesbury book store on campus this Monday. She believes (and I concur) that it will help her become more enmeshed in the seminary community on her own terms, rather than as my appendage. Plus, we’ll get to eat lunch together sometimes!

I love the rhythm of my day and of my week. Now that school has started for Sarah, we get her up at 6:00 a.m. so she can eat and catch the bus on time. Most of her seminary friends wait at the same bus stop. After she gets on the bus, I walk to campus and spend twenty minutes in prayer in a small oratory in the academic building. Depending on my day, I may attend Morning Prayer after that, or I may work or study and attend Noon Eucharist instead. I am taking Hebrew, Church History, and Introduction to the Theology and Practice of Ministry, and I am also in the seminary choir. So far, this is enough; I fended off several people’s invitations to run for elected student office.

We have visited a different church nearly every week since June, but for two weeks in a row we attended Eucharist at Church of the Holy Cross in Dunn Loring, home parish of the Hoskins family, formerly of St. Thomas! Christy and Sarah may decide to settle there; they have a children’s choir and Godly Play, both great attractions. As for me, I am scouting out potential field education sites, so this Sunday I plan to take the Metro to some church or other. We sold our second car when we moved here, but I imagine we’ll have to get another one somehow when I do Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) next summer and begin field education in the fall.

For my Theology and Practice of Ministry class (TPM), I am doing some volunteer work with a hospice called Capital Caring. Visiting people in the final stages of life is a really is a new field for me. It requires a real “ministry of presence”: not worrying about what to say or what to do, but simply to be there. It’s teaching me that there is real value in listening more and speaking less. I’m also learning a lot about the fact that “being brought up short” is the way we learn just about everything in life.

We miss you all so much. How I wish we could have been in attendance at the Skagit pilgrimage dinner! But we are where we need to be right now, “being brought up short,” learning, and growing.

In Christ,

Josh Hosler