Letter from the Rector: BE OUR HANDS AND FEET THIS ANNUAL GIVING SEASON

Dear siblings in Christ,

Hope is a greatly needed commodity these days. Whether the never-ending fear and contention of our public discourse, the relentless national disasters locally and across the globe, or the unexpected loss of beloved friends, I think we could all use more hope.

Since 1867, the Church of Our Saviour (COS) has served as a beacon of Christian hope set on Christ in the San Gabriel Valley. Through outreach to the community via the Our Saviour Center, Transitional Housing, and A Child’s Garden School; worshiping and studying Scripture together weekly, in eight different ways and in two different languages; singing, offering music and barbeque to the neighborhood; or by embracing and celebrating our youth and children, COS is always looking for more ways to be a place of history, heart, healing, and hope. COS is not the church we love because of any one person, be they parishioner, staff, lay, or ordained. The hope we share together is found in community, because we are greater than the sum of our parts. And, we need you.

Your Stewardship Committee and I have chosen Teresa of Avila’s prayer for the 2026 Annual Giving Campaign’s theme. In the prayer, St. Teresa writes:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Given the challenges we face, these words have never been more true. We are a place of hope because of you, as you are Christ’s hands and feet in this community. Furthermore, as has been observed since antiquity, hope is an expensive commodity and COS could not be this place of hope without your generosity. With rising building and maintenance costs, with staff members we love whom we need to compensate, and with a campus we want to share with one another and our community, we need the resources to sustain this place of hope.

For that reason, I prayerfully ask for your generosity in the 2026 Annual Giving Campaign. Because of you, we are a place of history, heart, healing, and hope. Thank you for calling COS home.

Faithfully,

Jeff+