Our church canvass, or Pledge drive as it is frequently called, typically runs from about the last Sunday in February to our Anniversary weekend closest Sunday to March 17th. This year, because of Covid, it’s a little different. Perhaps even better; as simple as 1, 2, 3 noteworthy events.
This year the canvas officially begins at the first, of what we expect to be an annual Luminescence Ceremony/Celebration. That takes place on Friday night February 25th from 6 to 8 pm. This will have passed by the time you read this, but our annual celebration on Saturday night Feb 12th at 7 pm has not. Our annual event, normally a dinner, but not this year, will be a musical performance led by Severin Behnen and a broadcast of professional musicians and puppeteers called “Cancion Del Inmigrante” or “Immigrant Song” is less than a couple of weeks away from the time you likely read this. Our stewardship canvass “month” this year closes officially at the Black and White concert which was moved from Valentine’s Day weekend to Friday night April 1st. Tickets for this event are a suggested $20, but we are including this in our stewardship events.
Those three events, described below in greater detail, really do capture what Pacific Unitarian is about. Music, tradition, and celebration with an underlying concern for justice. March being the centerpiece of our church year is not a fluke.
Before our historic National Landmark building and our bucolic property was even a glimmer in our founder’s eye. We existed.
It was on the convergence of an Easter Sunday and a St. Patrick’s Day in 1957, exactly 65 years ago this spring when the first meeting of what would quickly become Pacific Unitarian Church met in a park building in Walteria Torrance. I’m new to the Pacific Unitarian party, but history matters to me. I’m getting weepy just writing this. I love our history and feel a sense of pride that I am part of our legacy. From that fateful Sunday 65 years ago we have spread love, offered fellowship, and offered the most consistent progressive voice up on the hill.
As stated in the title, our theme for this pledge drive and the upcoming year is “Light it up” a theme designed to highlight our first annual luminescence event and celebrate what we can only hope will be a more permanent opening up from the threat of Covid.
And we are lighting it up.
Today, we are stretching out to widen that circle of concern. We have hired a new Multicultural Outreach Education Director, who is already diversifying our already open-minded programming. I think we began to feel that change on Martin Luther King Day. We have a full slate of Adult Education programming as we can manage, are involved in direct service acts like making sandwiches for Seniors connected to Communities Child, renting out our space for as many Events as we want our calendar to hold, managing a thriving Pre-School, Attendance is creeping back to pre-pandemic days and virtually we are spreading our message out virtually to a growing audience around the country and globe, and…well, just read the newsletter that follows this pitch.
All that is fine, but what Pacific Unitarian does for you at this time of year might be what matters most to how vibrant our future is.
So, in that spirit, as I do every year I ask you to apply this test to their life. Ready?
Where… seriously where…outside your own home or apartment do you get all you get from Pacific Unitarian, or if you would I rather Pacific Unitarian?
Where do you get to feel a part of a tribe; a place outside your residence you can freely roam around and call yours; a place where if not “everybody knows your name, a lot does, a place that doesn’t try to charge you for every little thing you do; a place where you can jump in to be involved at the pace you wish, where are you given a variety of opportunities not only to contribute but get your hands either busy or dirty and make at least a little bit of a difference. Where else actually cares enough about your soul and conscience that it risks challenging you as much as it comforts you?
Where? If you got a better place, a better tribe, a better representation of how and where your values find form, well…a very earnest lucky you. I don’t, and most don’t. Please think about that as you give.
In an economy where large corporations try to trap us into contracts that bind us and offer payment methods they hope we will forget to silently pull money out of our accounts, I love that a pledge to your church is a little old-fashioned, even antiquated in the loveliest of ways. It is an odd but remarkably throwback to be asked to contribute what you feel you can, what you feel is appropriate.
In the spirit of community, both new and old are all asked to make a responsible annual pledge to keep our church open and thriving. I likely need not tell you that pledges are more than essential. Pledges are not only our church’s overwhelmingly single most important source of church income, they are the only source of income that comes without additional expenses, or wear and tear on our building. What you should pledge is a personal decision based on your individual circumstances and income.
One gage is that a pledge should be large enough that you feel good about it but not so large that you feel deprived or resentful.
*We are one of many Congregations who begin their fiscal year on July 1st and end it on June 30th. Be mindful that the pledge drive this spring is for the upcoming July to June 2022-2023 church year. People arrange to pay their pledges in any number of ways.
As Luke says so poetically in his Gospel written nearly 2 thousand years ago, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34), and John Dillinger said less than 200 years more prosaically less than 200 years ago, “Hand it over and nobody gets hurt.”
Your pledge is like breath, essential.
Thanks, Steve
