God's Mission Our Gifts: Your January Mission and Service Stories and more!

Philanthropy News - December 21, 2023 View this email in your browser

As communities of faith move into the busy season of Advent and Christmas, it’s sometimes all too easy to postpone items on your to-do list, like sending in your Mission and Service givings. We’re asking you instead to make Mission and Service a priority and help us be as prepared as possible. Please send in all donations for Mission and Service right away. Don’t wait until the end of the year or early January, or you may run out of time. All Mission and Service givings must be postmarked before January 15, 2024 to be counted in 2023. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Mission and Service Team! In this time of waiting and preparation for the season of Christ’s light, we want to thank you for all you have done this year to turn compassion into action and build a better world through Mission and Service. We wish you all the blessings of the season.   Glenn Waterman, Annual Giving Lead Lindsay Vautour, Donor Engagement Stewardship Associate Jared Millican, Donor Database Integrity and Reporting Associate Kathie Murphy, Annual Giving Associate Amanda Tam, Direct Giving Administrator Amy Chan, Data Entry Clerk

Your January Mission and Service Stories For January, we asked four staff members to choose a Mission and Service story that is meaningful to them and tell us a bit about why. Click on the link in each description to get the full story to share with your community of faith.   JANUARY 7 Learning the Gospel at Camp   [Image credit: Lindsay Vatour]   United Church camps are one of the longest lived and most successful training grounds for leaders, and for sharing gospel living, that the church has. JANUARY 14 Making a Home for Refugees   [Video still credit: The United Church of Canada] The story Making a Home for Refugees: ChrisAnn Alvarez's Work is accompanied by a video in which ChrisAnn talks about how people don’t necessarily want to come to Canada—they are forced to leave their home and seek safety elsewhere.     JANUARY 21 Providing Tuition Assistance   [Image credit: © Rawpixelimages | Dreamstime.com]   Providing tuition assistance to young people in Lebanon is life-changing and will have lasting impacts on the whole community!   JANUARY 28 Your Generosity Revitalizes Languages   [Image credit: Haida Gwaii Skidegate] The efforts of Mission and Service partners to preserve languages unite people in a common passion while rediscovering history.   Congregational Stewardship/Generosity This is your resource to help you grow generous disciples and do God’s mission. Please modify and use these ideas in your context. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from the Community of Faith Stewardship Support Team. Get Ready for Your SPRING Giving Program    Setting Up Your Congregational Giving Program:    January 16 & 30, 2024—1:00-3:00 p.m. (ET) or January 17 and 31, 2024—7:00-9:00 p.m. (ET).  If you are planning to do a Giving Program in your community of faith in the spring, sign up now! Learn how best to utilize the Called to Be the Church Giving Program materials and develop a plan that will work for your church with two 2-hour online sessions and coaching.   This course is FREE.  All course and registration information can be found here.  Make 2024 a Year for Improved Stewardship with These Modules Getting Started in Stewardship    February 22, 2024 – either 4:00–5:30 p.m. OR 6:30–8:00 p.m. (ET) Join United Church people across the country to learn some stewardship first principles, then continue your learning in three practical projects. Communities of faith that complete this course first have better results as they continue to other courses on the journey.  This course is FREE.    Stewardship Best Practices  February 6 through April 18 (with a three-week Easter Break to apply your learning) Best done after Getting Started in Stewardship. Four two-week cycles of Learning Sessions and Cohort Discussion Groups interspersed with practical exercises to examine Stewardship Best Practices in order for you to set goals, create an annual stewardship plan, and get energized!  Course fee: Pay what you can. Recommended fee $100/team Bequests and Planned Giving for Your Community of Faith  April 24, and May 8, 2024 – 2:30-3:30 p.m. (ET) Explore how to set up and maintain a Planned Giving Program at your church, with two one-hour online sessions.  Course fee: $29.99/person Register and find all course information on CHURCHx.ca. Epiphany Worship Resources Here’s a sermon video for New Year’s Eve! And worship resources for Epiphany, including Discover Your Gifts - Share Your Gifts (full liturgy and sermons), sermon videos, and the Lectionary Worship Starters 2024 file, are available at https://united-church.ca/worship-theme/stewardship-worship. Check Out the Most Recent Stewardship Blog   Dave Jagger shares a Christmas lesson from Bluey in our December stewardship blog, “A Fitting Christmas Gift,” at Round the Table. Stewardship Seconds (revised for 2024) Short, pithy sayings that pack a punch, to help infiltrate stewardship thinking into your community of faith. Add them to newsletters, worship, announcements, webpages, wherever people gather!  Coming soon to the Stewardship in Worship webpage. Offering Introductions and Dedication Prayers (revised for 2024)  The offering time in worship is NOT about collecting money! It is about growing generous disciples and stewards. These Offering Introductions, and Dedication Prayers, for each Sunday of the year, will help. Coming soon to the Stewardship in Worship webpage. Get the Stewardship Support You Need The people and resources to help you succeed are here.  Your Gifts with Vision Help Build Support Networks for Women Each year, when they send us their Gifts with Vision reports, our Mission and Service partners include wonderful stories about how your generosity has made a difference. This is a story we received recently from Mary Saulnier-Taylor, Executive Director at Coverdale Centre for Women in Saint John, New Brunswick.   ***** Thank you for adding our Whatever They Need Most campaign funding request to the Gifts with Vision brochure.   An amazing example of the good these funds do is that we were able to help a woman change her life by paying for her birth certificate and helping with some travel expenses. This woman was quite isolated; she had no family nearby. She was struggling with her mental health, and it was hard for her to remember specific information that we needed to help her move forward. With help from a Western province’s Vital Statistics Department, Service NB, and Horizon Health, we were able to fill in the gaps, and she was reconnected with family who had been missing her for a long time. It took many days of phone calls, inter-agency cooperation, and perseverance to make it happen, but when she left New Brunswick for a new and improved life with her family, it was all worth it and really did come down to what she needed most—her ID.   We’re grateful for the funds that provide opportunities that seem far out of reach for women who live in poverty or are struggling in other ways. When they hear “We can help with that,” it relieves so much stress.   Sometimes all women need is a way to get back to their support network in another city or town. Funds for a bus ticket make all the difference.   You can make a big difference in people’s lives through Gifts with Vision. Give gifts from the comfort of home, with no packaging or wrapping needed. To order by phone or to get a paper catalogue, call us at 1-844-715-7969. GOD’S MISSION, OUR GIFTS is your newsletter. We want to provide news and information that you can use in your community of faith, whether you’re a minister, a board member, an administrator, a treasurer, or anyone else who wants to make a difference.   What else would you like to see? What can we do to help your community of faith get where it needs to go? Send us your thoughts! Donate Facebook Twitter Website Email Instagram YouTube LinkedIn   Your generosity enables the United Church to love, serve, and minister in the world. Make an online donation or learn more about your options to support the work of the church.