Hi All,
Today I once again want to speak to all of you about the Stewardship of Treasure.
The Our Lady of Refuge community has approximately 900 registered families listed as members of the parish. I am aware we have several families who come here regularly who are not officially registered in our parish. These numbers are the families that actually attend, if one wants to look at the size of the parish, we need to look at who attends. So, we have approximately 300 families/households that attend mass on a weekly basis. This is where our weekly offertory is generated. What we put down for our weekly offering, we need to pay our bills, and such is $12,200. Last year we did make that mark and slightly more, that would mean we brought in around $680,000.
The average income for our households is approximately $150,000/year. This is an average so some households are more and some households are less! Based on the amount of money we took in last year and the average income, each household, on average contributed $43.50/week. This works out to 2.2% of the total income. As you recall in my article last week, I spoke about the 4-3-2-1 model. Under that model, if on average everyone contributed 4% of their household tithe, we would be bringing into our collection, weekly, from each household $90/ week. If that were to happen, our weekly offertory would increase from $12,200 to $27,000/week. An increase in this would allow us as a parish to do so much more for all of you in helping you grow in your faith.
As we kick off our campaign to increase our offertory, next weekend you will be asked to fill out a commitment card of what you will contribute. I ask you to prayerfully this week, look into your hearts and see what you can truly do to increase your weekly offering for your second family of Our Lady of Refuge Parish and School.
I thank you all for the current generosity of your Stewardship of Treasure and hope you can prayerfully consider a most subtle increase.
Peace
Fr Ron Richards