I’m still tingling from the wonderful evening many of us shared at the “Winter Lights” Service Auction, on January 25.  The room looked wonderful:  lights and table decorations.  The food was tasty, and bountiful.  The crowd was large and high-spirited, with many people moving back and forth between shifts as volunteers and party-goers.  The MC’s and auctioneers did a great job, as did all the other folks behind the scenes keeping track of a complicated system to count bids, and record winners, and create personal bills for every person across the whole evening and then collect money at the end.  It was cold outside with the baskets, and boutique, and wine pull, but warm inside for the silent and live auction, the dinner, and the fellowship.  We raised a good amount of money.  And we had fun.

            The love for and commitment to this church was so gratifyingly obvious.  It was beautiful.

            Now in February, as we turn toward our annual Stewardship Campaign, I hope we can carry forward that same sense of enthusiasm.  I don’t know the right metaphor.  Do we build on the success?  Or blast off from the energy?  Do we sail forward, or rocket up, or move ahead?  I hope that the Service Auction proves for you as it did for me that this congregation has resources, is generous, and knows that having fun and supporting the church are two worthy, completely compatible goals.

            The Stewardship Campaign is our once-a-year opportunity to affirm the worth of the church in our lives, the value of our connection to the people in the congregation, our support of the principles this church upholds, our hope placed in the vision of what we can be and the influence we can make in the lives of people in the church and the community beyond.

Understanding that all of the benefits of involvement in a spiritual community depend on how wholeheartedly we enter in to the community, the Stewardship Campaign asks each of us to ask ourselves, “How much do I want to invest myself in this church?”  Am I holding the church at arm’s length and separating myself from all that it could offer?  Am I just a little in?  Or am I all in:  mind, body, and spirit?

However involved you are in the church community, the theme of this year’s Stewardship Campaign asks, what if you could invest yourself just Ten Percent More…?  Just a little more.  A completely do-able goal.  A comfortable stretching.  A slight expansion.

I hope for all of you, as we move from “Winter Lights” to Spring, with longer days and warmer temperatures, that you feel your spirit expanding in these next weeks and months, a deep breath in, the shoulders relax, the chest rises, the top of your head lifts, hope blooms, love surges, Ten Percent More…