Jan McCallum – Co-Chair    

Sally Keener – Vice Chair

Staff: Barbara Fletcher, Chris Tuttle

Deacon Representative: Carl Boxberger

Sam Bryan

Anthony Dilweg

John Gunter

Sally Keener
Monica Nichols

David Pottenger

Stewardship Committee 

The Stewardship Committee is charged with using creative approaches to communicate with and inspire the congregation to share their Time, Talents, and Treasure in service to others (in-reach/outreach) and in support of God’s work in the Church at home and at large and in response to God’s grace.

 Campaign Theme for the 2010 campaign was “We Are the Church – Always and All Ways.”

A parallel theme was “gratitude” as explained below.

 We did a bit of a U-turn in the middle of our planning sessions and asked Chris to lead us in a bit of Bible study relating to the text we had chosen for our campaign.  This, combined with Dave Pottenger’s story about his personal gratitude journal, changed the whole dynamic of the committee.  While this may not have been evident to the congregation as a whole, it made a huge difference to our committee and the way we approached and ran the rest of the campaign – a campaign based on gratitude.

Some components of the campaign

 We began our meetings earlier than usual, in June, and that paid great dividends. In 2010 we will start in February.   Personal testimonials have always been an effective component of our campaigns. We gave them a more intentional emphasis this year. We sought a cross-section of members (age, gender, area of interest) and invited about a dozen members to an orientation meeting where we shared our thoughts on this year’s campaign theme of gratitude and discussed where it might be expressed using the areas of ministry from our mission statement: worship, nurture, outreach, stewardship, and education.  We ran newsletter articles to keep the church informed, Chris gave Stewardship sermons, We sent letters to the congregation about the campaign - from the Stewardship Committee and from Chris, and  A stewardship packet with: cover letter, Time and Talent Card, Opportunities Booklet,  Budget and Giving Data, Stewardship Committee biographical sketches and photos. 

The Congregation participated directly. During the Sunday worship services on October 11, members of the congregation were invited to take a moment to write a sentence or two about something they were especially grateful for at Westminster or where they saw God’s abundant grace in their lives. These responses were posted on the outside bulletin board. and on the church website.  We held  a “telethon” session with elders hitting the phones to check in with families we had not heard from, and made a special effort to get members to fill out the Time and Talent sheet.  We also had a stewardship luncheon. 

 Results of the campaign and Westminster’s generosity

 Budgeting for 2010 was the easiest it has been in the last ten years.  The Finance committee asked staff and committee heads to submit realistic budget requests rather than wish budgets.  When all the requests were totaled the budget came up to $1,013,939 and no cuts were necessary.  At the time of the publication of this document, there is a shortfall in pledges of only 24,000. We are hopeful that this shortfall will be eliminated in the next few months. Westminster continues to generously support special initiatives such as the Haiti Relief Fund for which over $17,000 has been raised. 

Time and Talent The Time and Talent data is a vital component of the campaign and is at the heart of stewardship. The initiative to gather and distribute and promote the use of this data has been largely the effort of Sally Keener, who has made it more and more an integral part of the fabric of Westminster. During this time of financial belt tightening, this has become even more important.

Serving on this committee has always been a most gratifying and blessed experience for all of us.