The Stewardship Committee serves St. Paul’s Cathedral by leading the parish to care for and share the resources that God has entrusted to each of us, including our time, talents, and treasures. The committee carries out its work by sharing regular communications and sponsoring formation offerings on topics related to stewardship and by administering the Legacy Society, which recognizes members who have included the cathedral in their estate plans, and the annual pledge campaign, which gathers commitments of financial giving from the congregation to provide half or more of the cathedral’s operating budget for the upcoming year.
The Stewardship Committee strives to help each individual member of the church grow spiritually by learning to view all that we have as gifts from God, appreciating what we have with a spirit of gratitude, and sharing what we have with cheerful generosity. Our faith grows deeper when we practice trusting God with our resources and experience joy from seeing the good that our giving can accomplish.
The Stewardship Committee also leads the congregation to collectively provide the resources required for our church to carry out its mission. Expenses for our ministries include salary and benefits for clergy and staff (~65%), facilities expenses and upkeep (~20%), materials such as service bulletins and hospitality for events (~5%), and the cathedral’s share of support for the diocese and the national church (~10%). The cathedral receives no significant external funding, and almost all income originates from current or historic giving. Primary sources of annual income include annual pledges (~50%), other offerings (~15%), and facility use income (~5%). The annual budget is supplemented (~25%) by income from investments made possible by bequests and other gifts from parishioners past. Investments are managed with the goal of providing maximum annual support for ministry without depleting the principal. Every gift of every amount makes a difference. Every dollar given funds ministry, and, conversely, any gift not received means some element of ministry cannot happen.
The Stewardship Committee considers recent trends when developing giving campaigns. The graphs below illustrate some of these trends.
The number of pledges received has declined each year as some members die or leave the church and are not fully replaced by newcomers. Nevertheless, the total amount pledged has remained stable thanks to the faithfulness of members who pledge consistently and have tended to increase their pledge amounts each year, resulting in the amount of the average pledge trending upwards. Still, the costs of offering the same ministries each year increase with inflation, sometimes slowly and sometimes more rapidly, resulting in a gap between income and expenses. Investment principal is sometimes used to fill this gap, but doing so reduces returns that can fund ministry in future years.
A recent focus of the Stewardship Committee has been to encourage proportional giving. Proportional giving means determining one’s giving based on a proportion of one’s annual budget—maybe 2%, 5%, 10%, or 20%—rather than a fixed dollar amount. Proportional giving can be practiced with any level of financial resources because amount of one’s giving increases or decreases as one’s overall budget increases or decreases. Individuals who feel called to make financial giving a greater priority can increase the proportion of their gift. Proportional gifts help to maintain the ministries of the church as giving tends to better match inflationary increases in both expenses and incomes.
The Stewardship Committee is grateful for all of St. Paul’s members and givers, wherever they are on their giving journey. Thank you for generously sharing what God has given to you!
Jairus Kleinert
Stewardship Committee Chair
Click the image below to watch Sue Kelly’s Stewardship witness from Sunday, October 27, 2024.
Brilliant article, Jairus! Thanks for taking the time and care to break all this down. Seems the increase in giving from “Newcomers” is significantly attributable to the increase in total pledge income from 2023 to 2024. So the Cathedral’s efforts at becoming more invitational in welcoming new members is making a difference in our ability to carry out the Cathedral’s ministry. And so it goes just as Jesus taught us: “Give, and you shall receive.” The more we share, the more we have (to share).