2024 - 2025 Annual Pledge Campaign - Hard Hats and Life Preservers
A Letter from Rev. Kaaren Anderson
My friends,
Many years ago, I came across this quote by Annie Dillard. It’s kept in a file I have marked: Having a No Good Very Bad Day! I dig the quote out when I am feeling a little lost about what the point of this thing we call church is.
When people come to church they should not be handed an order of service with a smile, but should be given hard hats and life preservers, because church should be a dangerous place, a zone of risk, a place of new birth and new life, where we confront ourselves with who we truly are and who the church is calling us to become. – Annie Dillard
It’s a kick in the pants kinda quote. While it’s true that First Parish Brewster offers us companionship, comfort and enrichment, it also offers us challenges. The religious life is about depth, but it’s also about courage and boldness. Participation at First Parish Brewster not only enriches us, but helps us all be bolder in our living and our loving.
It is with this in mind we kick off our Stewardship Drive this year. Transition years offer this odd liminal space. We get to figure out who we are and who we want to become. We get to dream, expand and explore. Conversely, we get to shore up our financial health, so our dreaming, can have legs, or better yet. . . wings.
As you know, each year we ask members and friends to make a financial pledge in support of First Parish Brewster. Our goal is to contact as many members as possible within the next couple of weeks to arrange an opportunity to connect, chat and deliver your pledge card.
Before you pledge this year, my hope is you can take a deep breath, and settle yourself a little. Perhaps do a little meditation, and think through all the reasons you love First Parish Brewster. With each memory, antidote, encounter, or emotion, imagine your heart, swelling, growing, stretching in gratitude. For each time the church has offered you a life preserver, or given you a hard hat for work that feeds the soul and grows the spirit, let your heart expand. And from there, with a full heart, you pledge.
A colleague of mine was asked at the end of his ministry what he thought the purpose of church was, and he said, “The religious person is the grateful person, the grateful person is the generous person.”
May that piece of advice be your guide this year, friends.
In faith and most assuredly love,
Rev. Kaaren Anderson
My friends,
Many years ago, I came across this quote by Annie Dillard. It’s kept in a file I have marked: Having a No Good Very Bad Day! I dig the quote out when I am feeling a little lost about what the point of this thing we call church is.
When people come to church they should not be handed an order of service with a smile, but should be given hard hats and life preservers, because church should be a dangerous place, a zone of risk, a place of new birth and new life, where we confront ourselves with who we truly are and who the church is calling us to become. – Annie Dillard
It’s a kick in the pants kinda quote. While it’s true that First Parish Brewster offers us companionship, comfort and enrichment, it also offers us challenges. The religious life is about depth, but it’s also about courage and boldness. Participation at First Parish Brewster not only enriches us, but helps us all be bolder in our living and our loving.
It is with this in mind we kick off our Stewardship Drive this year. Transition years offer this odd liminal space. We get to figure out who we are and who we want to become. We get to dream, expand and explore. Conversely, we get to shore up our financial health, so our dreaming, can have legs, or better yet. . . wings.
As you know, each year we ask members and friends to make a financial pledge in support of First Parish Brewster. Our goal is to contact as many members as possible within the next couple of weeks to arrange an opportunity to connect, chat and deliver your pledge card.
Before you pledge this year, my hope is you can take a deep breath, and settle yourself a little. Perhaps do a little meditation, and think through all the reasons you love First Parish Brewster. With each memory, antidote, encounter, or emotion, imagine your heart, swelling, growing, stretching in gratitude. For each time the church has offered you a life preserver, or given you a hard hat for work that feeds the soul and grows the spirit, let your heart expand. And from there, with a full heart, you pledge.
A colleague of mine was asked at the end of his ministry what he thought the purpose of church was, and he said, “The religious person is the grateful person, the grateful person is the generous person.”
May that piece of advice be your guide this year, friends.
In faith and most assuredly love,
Rev. Kaaren Anderson