Spotlight on Stewardship: Cynthia's Story
Cynthia and her husband, Dick, support King’s Chapel Stewardship. Cynthia enjoys Lay Reading for Sunday services, leads the Prayer Circle, provides lay-pastoral care, and serves on the steering committee for the Environmental Action Initiative. They live in Stow and have hosted several King’s Chapel retreats that include walking the Petite Chartres labyrinth in their meadow.
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When I first came to King’s Chapel I was searching for a place, a church, where I could worship, study the Bible, and learn about the Christian tradition I grew up in from the perspective of an adult who had been away from church for a long time. I hoped to find inspiration and spiritual guidance from ministers who preached a theology free of dogma and grounded in Christ’s teaching. I sought a place where I would meet and learn from people with similar desires to explore faith and spiritual growth.
When I walked through the doors of this historic church for the first time in 1988, I had a heart/gut feeling that this was the place. As I ventured back, week after week, the sermons awakened something in me every Sunday. The liturgy, prayers, and songs were familiar from my years growing up in the Episcopal church, and they were deeply comforting. The music by the choir and organist seemed to bathe over me from the loft above, cleansing, uplifting, and moving something at a soul level, often bringing me to tears. |
Cynthia
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So, King’s Chapel became the place for me.
Fast forward 34 years, and I’m still here! I’ve come to know and love King’s Chapel for many reasons: the friends and people with whom I’ve journeyed are like an extended family, so much so that Dick Perkins and I felt completely comfortable exchanging our wedding vows during Morning Prayer, surrounded by family, friends, members, and visitors from far places. To me our church is very much the people—the ministers, the leaders, the committee members, the staff, the choir, the visitors, the people I’ve met through our partnerships in the community—all are King’s Chapel for me. And together through the years we’ve adopted to change and challenges, always with the desire to meet the needs of our congregation. Throughout the pandemic, for example, our leadership team and ministers made enormous adaptations to keep us connected in fellowship via technologies that we’d never imagined possible. Continuing our two services, Morning Light and Morning Prayer, plus the holiday services, all with outstanding music of dedicated musicians, was not an easy task. We learned to hold meetings and classes on Zoom. We continued the work on the Memorial Project and further expanded outreach through the Environmental Action Initiative “Conversations”, work with our Community Action and other partners, lectures from the History Program, and so much more!
So, when the Stewardship Committee asked me to share what King’s Chapel means to me and why I give, I felt somewhat at a loss to capture a specific reason, but I can’t imagine not supporting the church that has been an incubator for spiritual growth and life, a cherished community of friends, a place to become steeped in our faith tradition, through scripture, music, poetry, and activities of service; a place to celebrate with others the many gifts we have been given, a place from which to participate in service to the community beyond our doors. I also feel that we are particularly fortunate to be part of a church that has a large Trust to help fund the needs of this historic church, and therefore feel responsible for contributing our member portion towards the expenses and growth of our church. For all this I am, we are, deeply grateful. So, we give what we’re able each year.
There’s a line from the Offertory Response that often sticks in my ear:
“We give thee but thine own, what-e’er the gift may be;
All that we have is thine alone, a trust O Lord from Thee.”
How can we not give back, in gratitude for the gifts we each share in the life of this church, and as responsible stewards of the many gifts we’ve been given, in our lives as well as in our faith community? I believe (and hope) that what we give will be magnified as we make King’s Chapel a welcoming place for ‘. . .believers or doubters, seekers or sceptics …’, and perhaps some of those may in years ahead be writing about what King’s Chapel means to them!
Fast forward 34 years, and I’m still here! I’ve come to know and love King’s Chapel for many reasons: the friends and people with whom I’ve journeyed are like an extended family, so much so that Dick Perkins and I felt completely comfortable exchanging our wedding vows during Morning Prayer, surrounded by family, friends, members, and visitors from far places. To me our church is very much the people—the ministers, the leaders, the committee members, the staff, the choir, the visitors, the people I’ve met through our partnerships in the community—all are King’s Chapel for me. And together through the years we’ve adopted to change and challenges, always with the desire to meet the needs of our congregation. Throughout the pandemic, for example, our leadership team and ministers made enormous adaptations to keep us connected in fellowship via technologies that we’d never imagined possible. Continuing our two services, Morning Light and Morning Prayer, plus the holiday services, all with outstanding music of dedicated musicians, was not an easy task. We learned to hold meetings and classes on Zoom. We continued the work on the Memorial Project and further expanded outreach through the Environmental Action Initiative “Conversations”, work with our Community Action and other partners, lectures from the History Program, and so much more!
So, when the Stewardship Committee asked me to share what King’s Chapel means to me and why I give, I felt somewhat at a loss to capture a specific reason, but I can’t imagine not supporting the church that has been an incubator for spiritual growth and life, a cherished community of friends, a place to become steeped in our faith tradition, through scripture, music, poetry, and activities of service; a place to celebrate with others the many gifts we have been given, a place from which to participate in service to the community beyond our doors. I also feel that we are particularly fortunate to be part of a church that has a large Trust to help fund the needs of this historic church, and therefore feel responsible for contributing our member portion towards the expenses and growth of our church. For all this I am, we are, deeply grateful. So, we give what we’re able each year.
There’s a line from the Offertory Response that often sticks in my ear:
“We give thee but thine own, what-e’er the gift may be;
All that we have is thine alone, a trust O Lord from Thee.”
How can we not give back, in gratitude for the gifts we each share in the life of this church, and as responsible stewards of the many gifts we’ve been given, in our lives as well as in our faith community? I believe (and hope) that what we give will be magnified as we make King’s Chapel a welcoming place for ‘. . .believers or doubters, seekers or sceptics …’, and perhaps some of those may in years ahead be writing about what King’s Chapel means to them!
