Dear Siblings in Christ,
In Biblical Greek (the language in which the New Testament was written), there is a significant distinction in word choice that is completely lost in English translations. There are two entirely different words that are translated into English as time. Chronos refers to time as duration or sequence: it is flat, referencing linear time and space. Kairos refers to a seasonal, cyclical kind of time: it is three-dimensional, and includes linear time but also space and meaning; time as story. Chronos tells you what year, day, and hour it is. Kairos tells you it’s the right time to plant tomatoes, to start dinner or to begin a life change.
Each year, Church of Our Saviour feeds, houses, teaches, loves, and supports thousands of people through our ministries, worship services, pastoral care, and fellowship. We are a multicultural, multigenerational community of faith, centered in several varieties of worship that is actively growing in its witness to Christ in several different ways. This effort takes tremendous work and we need you.
As we continue to expand, your leadership is making tremendous success holding our budget to account with transparency, collaboration, and vision. While we have made great strides in our physical plant this year, our maintenance budget is lacking. Our excellent staff is at its lowest size in years but need cost of living adjustments. Your leadership have identified several exciting goals that can carry Church of Our Saviour benevolently into the future. Goals that together we can meet and exceed with the grace of God.
We are at a point in time and place where God is at work doing a multitude of wonderful things around us here and now, that will be experienced for generations. I write this day to prayerfully ask you to participate in the 2024 Annual Giving Fund. Your wardens, vestry, staff, and I strongly feel that we are at a Kairos moment in the history of this great parish, the oldest Protestant Church in the San Gabriel Valley.
Your 2024 annual giving fund pledge card is in the mail. Your vestry and I ask you to prayerfully give as generously as you are able. I invite you to return the pledge card before Sunday, November 5th. Your Treasurer, David Waller, will be offering a finance update forum on Sunday, September 24th at 9 am. I invite you to come and inform your pledge discernment and learn more about the future of our ministries. Signup sheets will also be available to take part in various October gatherings you do not want to miss.
I ask for your prayers, your pledge, and your presence at Church of Our Saviour as we prepare for 2024. Not only are we better because you choose to spend your time among us, we truly could not be who we are without you.
Faithfully,
Jeff+