From the Dean-Elect's Desk

My dear Saint Markans,

Stewardship season is upon us! This means that we will continue to talk about everyone’s favorite topic: money. I have tried to be intentional over the last several months in addressing both the spiritual and the financial opportunities and challenges before us. Some of you may wonder why I’m talking so much about money. The reason is simple. In this community, money is one of the primary centers around which our anxiety crystalizes. Our attitudes towards and practices around money have been at the heart of the leadership conflicts we’ve experienced over the last thirty years. Our hopes and fears for the future as well as our shame about the past continue to root themselves in our finances. As such, our financial life will be at the heart of our healing and the deepening of our trust in God’s providence.

Beginning with this email and continuing throughout October, I will be addressing our financial life as a spiritual issue and, hopefully, encouraging all of us to a deeper and more faithful relationship with our financial resources.

In any process of healing and wholeness, the first step involves telling the truth. That’s where transparency and gentleness come in. At Saint Mark’s we have not always been good at telling the truth directly and lovingly. I believe that we are both ready and able to do so now.

The truth about our financial life is complicated. We have a history of extreme generosity among our members. We have also made financial decisions that were not responsible or sustainable. I don’t think it’s helpful to continue to belabor the latter, but it is important to remember our past. As a sign of our desire to release the mistakes of the past, last week the Vestry voted to use $210,000 of our cash reserves to pay off our two major debts in full ($103,000 to the Foundation and $107,000 to ECMN). We made this decision with joy and gratitude, grounded in the conviction that accountability and honesty require us to get current with those to whom we owe money. We also made this decision in the hope that, without this debt, our whole community will experience greater freedom in making healthy and faithful choices about our resources.

Our freedom from debt is a sign of God’s jubilee among us. We are now quite literally free of the last tendrils of the financial challenges that beset us over the last several years. I hope that we can enter this stewardship season grounded in that freedom. We do not need to repeat the patterns that have held us captive. Through the generosity of our members, the wise stewardship of our leaders, and the fortitude of our community, God has set us free to imagine a new financial and mission-oriented future.

Over the next few weeks I’ll outline some of the possibilities before us, including the financial realities that would make these possibilities real. These include the hiring of a second full-time priest to support outreach, youth, familes, and pastoral care; compensation adjustments to bring us closer to a just and equitable staff structure; and investing more fully in outreach to the community beyond our doors. And all grounded in our desire to help love and heal God’s world.

Your brother in Christ,