Greetings in the Name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent is rapidly approaching. As such, I wanted to write to you concerning the upcoming REC100 Lenten Offering.
At the 55 th General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church in June 2017, Bishop Sutton presented the wonderful vision of recapturing the Gospel DNA in each of our parishes. To that end, he called us to become mission-al communities by planting 100 new Reformed Episcopal parishes & missions during the next 10 years. This is known, simply, as REC100. If you were not able to attend General Council, we encourage you to visit the REC100 page on the National website and to view the three presentations made by Bishop Sutton ( http://rechurch.org/rec100.html)
Bishop Sutton also introduced the REC100 Lenten Offering as the means of providing the financial support necessary for such parish planting and development in the REC. As our Bishop said, this offering is based on a model that Bishop Grote discovered when he participated in a missions’ conference. He heard the keynote speaker and Ordinary of the Anglican Diocese of Singapore share how an offering is collected each year in his diocese during Advent or Lent, and every adult member is asked to contribute at least $100 per year toward church planting. This approach raises a substantial amount of money that forms the basis for their church planting budget. Bishop Grote believed a similar approach could be taken in the Reformed Episcopal Church. This model could provide over $200,000 towards church planting efforts every year! Imagine what can be accomplished with such resources being devoted to church planting and development. The General Committee and the General Council support this model and commend it to each of our parishes to be implemented starting with the 2018 Lenten season. Each adult member is being asked to contribute at least $100 during Lent.
We are currently mailing out a packet to each Reformed Episcopal parish. This should arrive the week prior to Ash Wednesday. Each packet will have some REC100 pamphlets for each family and a special REC100 offering envelope that can be used for this special offering. If you're a pastor, you can also download a half-page bulletin insert from our website to begin promoting.
One parish already asked about having their youth do a special event or use their mite boxes in support of REC100. That is an awesome idea. Although the offering is directed towards adults contributing, it would be wonderful to have all our children included!
If you have specific questions, concerns, or need some more information, please reach out to me. I am here to help!
God Bless,
Fr. Jason Grote
National Canon Commissioner
J2Grote@rechurch.org
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