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Happy birthday to us!
For Canadian Lutherans 2017 is a very big year. We’re all aware that this is the 150th anniversary of Confederation and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. But did you know that it is also the 20th anniversary of Lutheran Planned Giving?
The idea of starting a planned giving ministry belonged to Bishop William Huras and his then-assistant, Rev. Michael Pryse. There were many meetings in those early days as we tried to figure out how to get the thing off the ground. Eventually, on January 1, 1997 I began working in the Eastern Synod as Director of Lutheran Planned Giving (LPG).
There was one unshakeable principle that has been in place from the first day until now: the charitable wishes of donors take precedence over everything else. We believed that if we let individuals express their passion for ministry through their gifts, all expressions of the church would benefit.
And that’s pretty much how things have turned out. In the past two decades we’ve recorded the names of 550 donors and 720 gifts in our privacy-protected database. During that time planned gifts have contributed almost $9.5 million to the church. Dozens of congregations, the Eastern Synod, the ELCIC, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary and Canadian Lutheran World Relief have all received substantial amounts from the generous gifts of church members.
There’s more good news. Well over half of the gifts we know about are still pending. The donors of those gifts are very much alive but have told us they have made provision for some sort of gift to the church in the future – often in their wills.
The question we began asking in 1997 is the same one we ask today: Have you remembered the church in your will? If you haven’t already made your own gift but would like to explore the idea, we can help. Drop me a line at jpym@elfec.ca or call us at 1-888-308-9461. And if you have already made your own gift arrangements, but haven’t bothered to tell anyone, would you let us know? We would love to add you to the growing list of donors.
In the meantime you have our permission to raise a glass in celebration of all the anniversaries that make 2017 a very special year indeed.
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