Counting Our Blessings: Stewardship 2012

By Katherine Youngblood and Jim Carter, Stewardship 2012 Co-Chairs

We are pleased to co-chair Stewardship 2012 and excited to announce our theme, Counting Our Blessings. The Stewardship Committee, comprised both of stewardship veterans and first-timers, met in late June to organize and select a theme. We reviewed themes and related keywords (such as Grace, Growing, and Hope) used over the last twenty years. After much consideration we unanimously selected “Blessings” (interestingly not used before in a Stewardship season). The committee felt that the theme strongly conveys the well-understood and personal messages of how we all are blessed individually and as a congregation.

Life is messy; we all know that. We’ve all experienced seemingly insurmountable and devastating burdens. Yet, in spite of those burdens including health, job loss, financial hardships, family dynamics, and so forth, we think you’ll agree we’ve all been blessed throughout our lives. We count Westminster Church—with its caring staff, enriching programs, and supportive community—among the abundance of our blessings.

Please be sure to mark your calendars for Festival Sunday on November 13 and Pledge Sunday on November 20. We have lined up an extensive communications program of speakers for Moments for Stewardship during worship and writers for the Westminster News. We are also pleased and excited to launch the site you are on now, CountingOurBlessings.org. On this site, you can now easily and securely make your 2012 pledge to Westminster. You will also be able to read and comment on journal postings from members, staff and friends on how they – and we at Westminster – are all blessed. Read testimonials, scroll through photos and watch videos, all describing how we count our blessings at Westminster. We hope the postings inspire you to comment right here on the site, asking questions and adding your own thoughts to the conversation.

We worship, celebrate, and rejoice at Westminster. We give thanks to our God who has brought us to this place. And we look forward to sharing our blessings—not only during the short term of the 2012 Stewardship season—but each and every day of our lives. Thanks be to God.