Stewardship Campaign 2024
4We are a proud to be a community of faith that is vibrant and alive, radically inclusive, preaching and living a progressive gospel as lived out by Jesus, the Christ.
Every Sunday we are invited to follow Jesus in radically living and annually we invite every one of us to make a pledge to the work and life of Milwaukee Metropolitan Community Church.
This year, your Board of Directors, in conjunction with Staff and Senior Pastor, have decided to build on the theme “Stewardship: Time • Talent • Treasure.”
Your continued gifts of time, talent and treasure have not only blessed our church, but the local community, and the wider world, for over the last 50 years. It has been through the generosity of those who have made and make pledges commitments each year, that we have been able to extraordinarily expand our effectiveness as a community. We have been able to reach out in new ways with the radically inclusive good news of Jesus’ love, literally in Milwaukee, and around the world.
Over this past your, as your pastor, along with the staff and board of directors, we have prayerfully and continually navigated through all the changes in the ongoing protocols that we’ve all had to face. Know in this discernment that there were times we worried, fearing we weren’t going to be able to maintain the operations of our congregation. But we continue to be and stay optimistic and excited about the impact that we have made, not only within our own congregation, but throughout our local community and the world, that we are even more excited about what more we could do if we all chose to radically live and radically give of our time, talent, and treasure, now, more than ever, as we continue to be in these challenging times.
We know that this impact made a difference, not just in the world, but to members of our own church community. We understand and realize that some individuals are working several jobs because of falling on hard times. Often these individuals are barely able to scrape together enough for rent and food for the month, knowing that sometimes paying the utilities bills and other important bills are just beyond their reach. It is through our love and caring that we have individuals within our congregation who often provide that radical giving to allow individuals like this to make it through the month and give them the much-needed breathing space. It’s also through you when you give through your radical love that we are able and continue making our financial obligations each month.
There are so many other stories that we could share with you, similar stories, of how our radical giving has impacted lives in the church, the community and in the world. Your pledges for 2024, will not only ensure that our shared work continues, but increases our shared community impact.
The Bible talks about “bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse.” The Biblical standard of our pledge is a tithe (10%) of our income should be donated to the church. We know that several in our community not only tithe but go beyond the tithe in their act of radical giving. However, whether your give 10% (tithe) as your pledge or some other amount, know that your pledge makes a difference.
A member of the church who made a commitment to tithe and pledge wrote this:
“I believe so very strongly in the inclusive, justice-driven, and healing ministries of the church. I see each of the many ministries as spokes of a wheel. As an individual doing my own ministry of writing and mentoring where I can, I am also one of the spokes. As an individual, however, I am physically not able to participate in all the many things the church does, as much as I would like to do. And yet I have the opportunity to support all those other spokes of the wheel – by tithing.”
We invite you to think just what might be possible if everyone of us made our financial pledge as an act of faith and how much more your gift if able to do when we come together, just like the early disciples who responded to those who were naked, hungry, and imprisoned without counting the cost.
Your pledge is one, that is of your time, talent, and treasure, and we invite you to make your 2024 pledge starting Sunday, November 6th through Sunday, December 3rd.
Please, either return your pledge card, that you received in this packet, by sending it back by mail, or, if you’d prefer doing it online/virtually, you can go to our website, under the online giving tab and complete the online form there. If you’d like to talk about your pledge for 2024, let us know and we will be pleased to speak with you directly.
We are better together and when we all do our part, we can radically live and radically give to create the world that God wants us to live in!