Father Nicholas Open Letter
November 15, 2009
To My Spiritual Family,
On November 1st, 2009 with our Bishop Antoun presiding, we turned over the first shovels of dirt to begin building our new temple and education wing. Things will now move rapidly toward completion of the project scheduled for November 2010 or earlier. While others will be digging and hammering, measuring and leveling, our work as a parish will be even more important: we must all with one mind and one heart support this project with our prayers and with our financial resources. As I said to you last year,
We believe as Orthodox Christians that God in His love has given us all that we now have and that we are stewards of His resources. We further believe that we are to worship God with all our life (heart, mind, and soul). We believe that our reasonable worship of God includes offering Him our time, our skills, our intelligence, our jobs, our whole life, and obviously our financial resources. It is an Orthodox teaching that Joyful and thankful giving is joyful and thankful worship. Likewise, stingy and resentful giving is stingy and resentful worship. What we offer to God and what we refuse to offer to God reflects on our spiritual health and how thankful we really are to God for His many blessings. As Orthodox Christians we need not only to talk a good talk but also to put our faith into practice. Literally if we are to worship God in spirit and in truth, we must, as someone has said, “put our money where our mouth is.”
After you have reviewed all the numbers and statistics, we ask you to consider making a financial commitment to our/your building project. Many of you previously made a commitment to both the building project and the general operating funds of All Saints. On behalf of all the members of All Saints, I thank you and pray that our Father in heaven will bless you for your generosity. It is because of these former commitments that we were able to secure a loan and begin the new building. We are now asking that all of our members (both new and old) revise and renew their estimated giving forms (EGF) for the next 3 years.
We are all excited and have great expectations for the new temple and education wing. However, we dare not forget that our normal operating costs as a parish have not stopped. In fact, the operating costs will increase when the new building is completed. Both funds, new building expenses and general operating expenses, need to be supported. We need to constantly remind ourselves that building and maintaining this holy place of worship called All Saints is a work that will affect not only our own lives but also the lives of our children and our grandchildren for generations to come.
Again as I wrote last year:
The question that we must all answer is not a financial question—it is a spiritual question. We are not being asked to buy something or to pay a bill; we are being asked to take seriously our worship of God. We are not being asked to simply increase our financial offering to the Church, we are being asked to consider just how great and loving a Savior we have and then expressing the measure of our thankfulness to Him by the measure of our financial offering. Please pray with me that God will open our hearts to accept the truth of these words.
Please read carefully the materials that are enclosed with this letter and then make your commitment with faith and love, with one heart and one mind, to the glory of God.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Fr. Nicholas
