Annual Stewardship Campaign: Pledge Cards Due by this Sunday, March 26

March 9, 2023

Dear Friends,

This letter is supposed to be the annual pledge letter, asking us each to communicate clearly about our intentions for sharing money with the congregation in the upcoming fiscal year (July 2023-June 2024). And it is that, as it must be: Our responses to the Stewardship Team allow the Finance Team to craft, and members to approve, a responsible budget for the new year.

But in deeper, wider, wilder ways, this letter is an invitation…

So much has happened in the last year / 3 years / 6 years / 10 years — for our congregation, for our neighborhoods, our cities and towns, our country, for humanity, for the earth and all its beings. We are no longer in a place we recognize as familiar. Although we treasure the physical, intellectual, and spiritual treasures bequeathed to us by our founders and ancestors, we find ourselves in a new situation that calls us into new ways of being and acting together. There are many possibilities in front of us, but remaining just the same is not one of them.

So this is an invitation to pause, to breathe and remember who we have been as a community, to feel how we are connected to one another and how grateful we are for that connection, to stretch our imaginations and capacities into who we might become, for ourselves and for others.

Pledge season is a time to reconsider the ways in which we each contribute to our communal life, to dream about lovely and exciting things we might do and create together, and to recognize that our individual generosity is the lifeblood of our congregation and crucial to the embodiment of our collective commitment to the transforming power of love.

This letter is an invitation to love yourself, each other, and the communities in which our congregation is embedded, to be a part of choosing who and how we hope to be together in the future, and to make plans about how you will share your time, attention, and money with GNUUC next year.

Make your commitment to our future together at Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation by visiting https://www.nashvilleuu.org/pledge (or mailing in a hard copy pledge card) and pledging as generously as you are able.

Now is the time. This is your invitation.

Yours in gratitude and generosity,

Rev. Denise Gyauch, Lead Minister

Jesse Spencer-Smith, Pledge Chair