At Grace, we strive to be responsible stewards of our church, parish, and community. While stewardship includes efforts to raise money for the operation of our church, here, at Grace, it means much more. True stewardship reaches out beyond the walls of our historic building into the lives of our parishioners and into the life of our community. We work to foster a sense of connectedness among parishioners and “ownership” of our parish by providing education through Christian Foundation, involvement through our many outreach projects, and fellowship through social activities.
Parishioners are given opportunities to share time and talent through outreach events such as our monthly food closet, our twice yearly rummage sales, our annual Farm Tour, and our traditional Thanksgiving morning Blessing of the Hounds service. Within our church we share music, provide Christian education, and participate in planning and conducting our regular and special services. We see these commitments not as obligations, but as opportunities to demonstrate gratitude for our many blessings. We work to assess, on a regular basis, the needs of our church and the larger community and to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts to meet those needs.
The Vestry of Grace Church has adopted the following statement on stewardship:
We, the Vestry of Grace Episcopal Church, believe that God is the source of all gifts, spiritual and material, and our faithful response is to be givers and creators ourselves. We appreciate our many blessings, and as good stewards of those gifts, we commit ourselves to giving a significant portion of our time, talent, and treasure each year to God’s work. We invite the parish to make this statement its own, and in so doing, to strengthen our church family and to further the work of Grace Church.