I have the pleasure of announcing The Holy Innocents Annual Meeting:

***Sunday, February 26th, after our joint 9:30 Service***

We will meet to discus 2011, hear updates on various ministries in the church, elect new members of the Bishop’s Committee for 2012, elect our Deanery and Convention delegates and take a gander at the 2012 budget. Long-term members, short-term members, visitors, church neighbors, perplexed strangers, Lupe, Sammy and Luna are all heartily encouraged to attend, though only (non-canine) members of the church may vote. Unlike some meetings of the business variety, Annual Meetings can actually be really interesting and even fun!

Please let me know if there are any questions I can answer in advance of the meeting.

Peace,
Fr. Bertie

Our Family Potluck is coming up this Wednesday, February 1. We will make Valentines, for our loved ones, but also for seniors at the Doris Krauss center, for soldiers in Afghanistan. Junie will send them to her friend there, so that he can distribute them to other soldiers.   Father Tim will be doing a
presentation on St. Valentine, while we craft away. Don’t miss it!

Children’s Sermon on February 5, 2012 – Special Project

Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain will be leading a special project with our children during Children’s sermon time on Feb. 5. The group will be making lunches to be served at a new outdoor church program that has just started in Oakland. It is called “Sacred Space Oakland” and the service convenes every Sunday at 2 pm. The children will help to make sandwiches and put them in bags together with fruit, water and a granola bar. We won’t complete the whole project during sermon time, and so we’ll be looking for the help of the rest of the congregation during coffee hour. And – if anyone would like to help during sermon time that would be great also!

Dear Holy Innocents friends,

Yes, this is our annual Stewardship letter, asking for your pledge for 2012.

But before talking about our goals for 2012 and inviting you to support Holy Innocents with your pledge, we want first to express our profound gratitude to each of you for the support you have given to Holy Innocents over the last year.  We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of our community in 2011, in your offerings of both your time and your pledges.

2011 has been a good year for Holy Innocents. Attendance has been strong and growing at both the 9:00 and 11:00 Sunday services, and our Wednesday evening potluck and Christian education classes are thriving.  There seems to be renewed and growing energy in our community.  More than 40 children under the age of 14 attend services regularly and participate in our various youth programs, including Godly Play and our Rite-13 Group for middle schoolers.  Many of our members are actively engaged in outreach, at Julian Pantry, at the San Francisco Night Ministry, at SF General, and elsewhere.  Bill Keck and our singers continue to inspire with their music.  Our Rite-13 kids staged a Haunted House at Halloween that was attended by several hundred trick-or-treaters — a great way to show off our church to the neighborhood and surrounding community.  Tom Logan recently organized the Holy Innocents community to supply and fill 100 hygiene bags and 200 pounds of rice and beans for the Street Level Health Project in Oakland, serving the immigrant community, while Junie Davis started a care-package ministry to a sergeant and his comrades in Afghanistan.

And Holy Innocents’ remains a safe, welcoming place for all, wherever they may be on their spiritual journey.

For all that Holy Innocents accomplishes, we do so with a lean budget, and lots and lots of volunteer effort.  It is truly inspiring how many of our members devote so much of their time and talents to Holy Innocents’.

Our Stewardship campaign this year coincides with the community discernment process which Davey Gerhard has been facilitating, in which we have been meeting in small groups and together in congregational meetings to discuss where we have come from, where we are now and where we aspire to move Holy Innocents in the future.  Last Summer, we had a community wide meeting in which many of you shared your visions for the types of ministries you would like to see Holy Innocents become involved with.  It was a terrific meeting, filled with energy and creative ideas, and we came away thinking about what amazing things the Holy Innocents community can do if we have the will to follow through on our aspirations.

Part of our responsibility as members of the Stewardship Committee is to help gather the resources to enable us to fulfill our aspirations as a community.  We do not yet have the means to carry out all of the ideas that were suggested at last Summer’s discernment meeting, but we can start moving in that direction, starting right now.

So, as we invite you to think about your pledge to Holy Innocents for 2012, we invite you to consider what Holy Innocents means in your life today.  And we invite you to dream about where Holy Innocents can go in the future.

Our immediate goal for our Stewardship campaign this year is an ambitious one:  we would like to raise enough in pledges to be able to pay for a full time priest.  For the last several years, our financial resources have only been sufficient to enable us to pay for a priest to serve half time.  Our priest in charge, Father Bertie Pearson, divides his time between Holy Innocents’ and another congregation, St. John the Evangelist.  While this situation is working out okay, especially thanks to the good efforts of our supporting clergy Tim, Jessica, Cameron, Genie and Tom and our many volunteers to fill in when Bertie cannot be with us, we have heard a number of our members express a desire to secure a full-time vicar for our congregation.  Having a full-time priest may be a starting point for further growth that would enable us to realize some of the ministries we discussed last Summer.

We could afford to pay for a full-time priest in 2012 if we are able to increase our pledges by about $35,000, which would be in increase of about 30% over our pledging for 2011.  We can accomplish this through a combination of increased giving by those who have given in the past and new pledges by those who have recently joined Holy Innocents.

Here are a few facts about Holy Innocents’ finances and budget and which you may find useful in thinking about your own giving this year:

●          Holy Innocents’ does not receive any financial support from the national Episcopal Church or the Diocese of California.  In fact, we pay an annual assessment to the Diocese to support its mission and ministries.

●          Holy Innocents’ does not have an endowment, and members’ pledges account for virtually all of our revenues.

●          We do not have the resources to pay for a full time priest, and, thus, Bertie Pearson was only able to work only half-time for Holy Innocents’ in 2011.

●          In 2011, Holy Innocents’ had about 60 Pledging Units, with an average pledge of around $2100.  The average annual pledge of Episcopalians nationwide is about $2300.

The Stewardship Committee tries hard not to be heavy-handed in discussing our financial needs at Holy Innocents.  We know our members give generously of their time, talents and treasure, and we are grateful for your commitment to Holy Innocents.  We also understand that economic times are difficult for many of our members, and that many cannot give as generously as they may wish.  To be absolutely clear, we value your participation in the life of Holy Innocents’ regardless of the amount of your pledge.

Nevertheless, we want everyone at Holy Innocents’ to appreciate that with only a modest increase in our pledging, we can afford to hire a full-time priest and expand our youth programs and increase our outreach efforts.  It is within our reach, with the grace of God and your support.

We are enclosing a 2012 pledge form.  Please fill out this form and bring it to Holy Innocents’ next Sunday or the Sunday following, or return the form to Bertie Pearson, our Treasurer Sarah Klapec or our Stewardship Chair John Quarterman.  We have designated Sunday, November 20 as “Stewardship Sunday”, so we would like to receive your pledges by that date, in order to complete our budget before the end of the year..

Thank you again for your support for Holy Innocents’.

On behalf of the Holy Innocents’ Stewardship Committee, your friend in Christ,

John Quarterman

We have a single service at 9:30 a.m. on the last Sunday of every month. 

Hospitality is provided by all.  After hospitality, the older kids will turn our hall into a haunted house.  If you are young at heart, feel free to join them, and help Rhea channel their enthusiasm!  We are of course collecting candy to distribute on Halloween.  Please bring what you can.

Laura Lopez, the director of Street Level Health Project, plans to visit for the 9:30 service on November and stay afterwards for informal discussion, questions/answers about Street Level Health Project.  It’s really great that she’s going to be joining us!  We are still in need of some items for the bags we’ll be assembling after the Wednesday Potluck on November 3.   If you have travel size lotions, mouthwash or conditioner, bring them by!

Thanks!

Holy Innocents is responding to a request for help from Street Level Health Project, an Episcopal Charities-sponsored non-profit organization in Oakland that provides health care access and community services to low-income immigrant families and individuals in the Bay Area. Starting this Sunday 9/25 and continuing through October, we’re looking for your help in donating items that can be included in hygiene packets that will be given to SLHP’s community members over the holidays. These includes simple items such as razors, mini shampoos, mini conditioners, soap, mini lotions, mini toothpaste, toothbrushes, mini hand sanitizers, combs, mini tissue packages, and dental floss. Whether you donate items that you may have collected during hotel stays, or whether you purchase items to donate at a dollar store or neighborhood drug store, your help would be greatly appreciated! We plan on assembling simple hygiene packets from these donated items at the family night Wednesday night potluck in early November.

In addition, if you happen to have any warm jackets or coats that you’re looking to donate, those would be great donation items as well! Starting this Sunday, we’ll have a collection container available at services through October.

 If you have any questions, please contact Tom Logan through office(at)holyinsf.org.  To learn more about the wonderful people and programs at Street Level Health Project, check them out at www.streetlevelhealth.org.

Tom Logan