Let Our Blessings Flow
For the last few weeks, we have been sharing videos of parishioners talking about what they love about St. John’s. We encourage you prayerfully to reflect on the blessings you find at St. John’s as you make your financial commitment to our community for 2025.
Our goal is to increase our giving this year by 10% over the amount pledged in 2023. If you have given in the past and are able to increase your gift, thank you.
If you are new to St. John’s or have never pledged before, we invite you to make a financial commitment for next year.
It’s not too late to make a pledge for 2025. You can get a pledge card in the office, or you can make your pledge now by clicking HERE to go to the Google Form virtual pledge card.
Let Our Blessings Flow!
This church is full of blessing! Thank you all for your generosity and love. It makes this church the gift that it is. I am grateful to God for calling me here and grateful to you all for being such a gift to the world.
Thank you for all the gifts you bring and for your financial support of St. John’s. If you have already made your 2024 pledge, thank you! If you have pledged in the past and we have not yet received your 2024 pledge by Sunday November 3, someone from your vestry will be calling to check in.
Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow!
-Rev Jeanne
"I consider myself one of the luckiest people that I know that I get to preach here. I want to thank everyone for their incredible generosity in all the ways. There is so much to be grateful for, so many blessings, so much that I love.”
Week 1: Blessing of Community
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am among them.” Matthew 18:20
I spoke with a lot of folks at St. John’s the past few weeks in making these short videos, and I consistently heard that one of the things people love about our church is the community they find here.
Ben and Christy, in their reflections, both speak about the relationships that are built at St. John’s, with one another and with God, that are the bedrock of our church. The community that many of us find at St. John’s transcends Sunday and changes lives, both our own and the lives of those we encounter.
Community requires tending and support. Your financial support of St. John’s helps our community to thrive. It allows us to keep the building safe and clean all year round, warm and dry in the winter and cool and bright in the summer, for worship, prayer, ministry use, and community meetings; it allows us to pay our staff who help to lead the community and relationship building that make our many ministries possible.
Thank you for being part of St. John’s, for your faithfulness and commitment, and for financially supporting our community.
-Rev Jeanne
"I love being part of a group of people that are living out the gospel of Jesus- not just talking about it, but truly living it out."
"I really love the community... everybody at our church hangs out with each other a lot."
"We love...each other...our reverend...the music...the diversity...the outreach...There are so many good things about this church. It's really home."
"The people are kind, and loving, and forgiving, and embrace everything that Christ has called us to do."
Week 2: Blessing of Love
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Paul’s Letter to the Romans
God loves you.
God loves you completely and absolutely, without reservation or condition.
This I know, not only because the Bible tells me so (see above 😀), but because I witness and experience God’s love for you all the time at St. John’s.
I feel God’s love for you and this church when two or three of us are gathered for worship, for fellowship, for learning, for making music, for serving a meal. In a world where it seems, increasingly, that people come together because they hate the same things or people, the transformative power of a community grounded in love is radical and profound. In the videos above, Deb, Emily, and Myra share their experiences of God’s life-changing love at St. John’s.
God’s love for us invites us to respond. I see our congregation respond to God’s love through worship, through prayer, through caring for the most vulnerable and caring for creation. Our congregation does all this, and more, graciously and joyously.
In and through the love of God in Christ, we are invited to a greater freedom to share of ourselves and our gifts generously and joyously. This year, as you consider your financial contribution to the life and health of St. John’s, I encourage you to give not out of obligation or guilt, but out of the love that you have for God, for our church, and for each other.
As we prayed last week for the Feast of St. Francis, there is a beautiful paradox offered to us in God’s love: For it is in giving we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
-Rev Jeanne
Week 3: Blessing of Belonging
For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. -Paul’s Letter to the Church in Rome
If you are receiving this email, you belong to St. John’s.
We have no definition of what that means, no metric to define that, no shared set of beliefs you have to sign off on or contract we ask you to file. It simply means that we consider you part of our community, as a beloved human being made in the image of God.
You belong to our community and you belong to God. Belonging means that you matter, you are welcome, and you are loved.
Belonging is about being a valued member of a community, about being seen and known and invited into the life of that community to share of yourself and your gifts, and then becoming essential to that place. Both Michael and Mir, Mer, Bobbie, and Willow share their experiences of finding belonging at St. John’s, about showing up exactly as they are and experiencing the love and welcome of God and the community and finding themselves fed, both literally and figuratively!
I am grateful you belong to St. John’s and thank you for all that you offer to our community. We thank you for the time you give, the songs you sing, the flowers you bring, the cookies you bake. We thank you for being you and giving so fully of yourself to our community.
We thank you for the financial gifts you make that allow our church to grow and thrive, to be a place of belonging and love in a world desperate for both. Making a financial pledge to St. John’s is a way of offering thanks to God and to our community for being a place where you find belonging.
-Rev’d Jeanne
"I was away from the church for quite a while and I didn't realize how hungry I was for the community. As soon as I stepped through the door, I saw Jesus on every single person's face. God reminded me that He was there even though I wasn't. I found Him here."
"[Mer] It has been such a welcoming space that really speaks to the way I want to embody spirituality in my life. [Mir] I love how inclusive it is... I feel very welcome in this congregation. [Bobbie] I like St. John because it welcomed me into the choir even though I'm only nine. [Willow] It has food! Ha!"
Week 4: Blessing of Being Known
Listen to me, O coastlands;
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The Lord called me before I was born;
while I was in my mother’s womb God named me…..
Can a woman forget her nursing child
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these might forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands
Isaiah 49: 1, 15-16
The psychotherapist and writer Ester Perel recently commented that we are living in a time beyond human scale, she said “You can have thousands of virtual friends but no one to feed your cat.”
We have created a community, together, where we gather in the flesh to sing and pray and laugh and cry, where we are seen and named and known by God and one another. In a time of fraying social ties and a lack of cat sitters, that is a gift.
Your financial gift allows us to continue to build our community, to worship and sing together, to build relationships with each other and with God. Thank you for your generosity.
-Rev’d Jeanne
"I stood up in church and got baptized and they all called me Sam and welcomed me into the community. Even though I can't legally change my name right now, I can change my name in Christ."
"[Lucy] I know I belong here... it's a really loving group of people. [Meredith] We've been welcomed in and feel supported. We just dropped into the perfect spot for our family."