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MAKE YOUR 2021 PLEDGE HERE

 

Dear Trinity Church and friends,

 

Stewardship greetings once more!

 

 

Make your pledge and share your spire!

We invite you to make your pledge as soon as you are ready.  During our Stewardship season at Trinity, we invite the people of our congregation to make a financial commitment for the upcoming year.  We call that commitment a “pledge,” and our pledge is a promise that we will make a priority of our relationship with God.  Our pledge partners us in the reconciling, saving work into which God commissioned the Church.  Our pledge grafts us into a movement greater than ourselves, an undertaking greater than what any one of us could accomplish alone.  Our faithful pledge confirms our share in every ministry of this remarkable congregation.

 

For 2021, we have thus far received approximately 40% the number of pledges we received last year, and about 55% of last year’s pledged dollars.  We invite you to make your pledge here on the secure page of our website at any time, or to mail your hardcopy pledge in the church-addressed envelope you received in your Home For Faith Kit.

 

As a sign that you have made your pledge, we hope you will assemble the paper spire included in your Kit and share your creation – and your love – with your whole parish family.  Responding to the simple prompt, “Trinity Church Is My Home For …” we hope you will decorate your spire with words, drawings, or collaged images expressing how Trinity Church is a home for you.

 

As your spire signals your love and commitment, please take a photo or two and send them to our Communications team by clicking here. We will continue to share our parish spires via the website, by email, and on social media.

 

 

Thanks be to God for Communion From Home!

In the words of LL, don’t call it a comeback, for last Sunday’s All Souls' service and Communion From Home were breathtakingly beautiful and – blessedly – technically smooth.  With one more thanks for your grace as we problem-solved our All Saints' experience, we hope you found the requiem rich and rewarding.

 

To dispose of any bread or wine you may have remaining from these Communions, we invite you to fill with water the wine bottle and the plastic cup that contained the bread, and then return those residuals “to the earth” – ideally, in an outdoor green space, though we trust God’s understanding for any whose mobility or location requires a potted plant, instead.  Especially in these fraught times, please rest assured that you are “doing it right” – constrained as we are and have been, we believe God joins us in gladness, and not in judgement.

 

 

Vigil & Noonday Prayers for Our National Life

During last week’s “electiontide,” we kept 90 hours of prayer for our national life, concluded with a service of Noonday Prayer last Thursday, November 5.  Grievously, clear resolution still eludes our nation.  As we continue our patient waiting and praying, we again commend to you these prayer resources we shared during our Vigil.

 

From last Thursday, we also commend Morgan’s sermon, “We Wait.”.  Morgan preached: “Jesus leans into that space between him and Pilate, and, no matter his treatment nor his fate, he fills that space with openness and generosity, with mercy and hope, with the promise of Beloved Community – with the very fulfillment that Pilate, in his heart of hearts, longs to experience.  Yet, Pilate endorses his fears rather than dares a faith, and he cannot receive what Jesus offers … Hard as it is, if we will wait with Jesus, rather than with Pilate – reaching through this silence not for an outcome, but for God – then we will always find our purchase, our footing in a Kingdom not of this world, in a hope that will never fail.”

 

 

Last Sunday’s Sermon

For Week 4 of our Stewardship season, Morgan preached “Prince of Darkness,” the final in his series of four sermons connecting our Sunday lessons and occasions to pop songs.  As part of our All Souls' commemoration, Morgan charged us: “Whether pandemic, or politics, or pathos, we feel those tugs of darkness pulling us down.  So, too, we experience outreaches of light, lifting us up.  Caught between as we are, we must choose to which we will give the power of our life.  Empowering our anger and our fears, our disappointments and our indignations, can feel deceivingly righteous, but be sure that feeding those roils and binding ourselves to one another by commiseration will make us nothing more than ‘pawns of the Prince of Darkness … and gluttons for our doom.’  As an antidote, our All Souls' remembrances hold us in the light, and we pray that ‘by grace, our sight would grow stronger,’ and that we would give ourselves to the Good: to God’s hope and love, to Providence’s smile and peace, to the Lord’s justice and mercy.”

 

 

Looking Ahead

With a recent rise in Massachusetts’ coronavirus cases, Governor Baker has limited outdoor gatherings to 25 or fewer.  Therefore – with sadness – we are suspending our in-person services at this time, including Prayer on the Square.  When the state advisory changes, we will pick up with the remaining cohorts, in the order we had planned, last names beginning K-O; then P-S; and then T-Z.

 

 

Did you receive a “Home For Faith Kit”?

With great thanks to our cavalry of Paul and Pauline Reveres, we hand-delivered nearly 900 Home For Faith Kits to parish households, and we sent via the USPS a great many more to those living further from Copley Square than our horses could ride or who requested receipt by mail.  As the programming associated with the Kits now nears conclusion, we share this final invitation: if you have not received a Home For Faith Kit and would like one, please email lkoester@trinitychurchboston.org and we will happily coordinate delivery with you.

 

With thanks for sharing this Home For Faith with you,

 

Your 2021 Stewardship Team