Dear Church Family:
We hope everyone had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. This past Sunday a letter from our parish council president, Peter Nikiteas, was distributed in the Narthex. The letter discusses some important topics in regard to the ministries of our Church Family and addresses some of the challenges we face in the coming year. Many of these topics will also be discussed at our December 2nd General Assembly Meeting at which we hope to see all of our members in good standing. Please read the attached letter. Thanks you and may God Bless you.
===
November, 2012
Dear Beloved Fellow Parishioners:
I take this opportunity, as we approach our December 2nd General Assembly Meeting and the New Year, to apprise everyone on important news and events in our community. I also want to advise you on what your Parish Council has been doing and on the vision ahead.
First, it is important to prayerfully remember all of those for whom Hurricane Sandy has created great loss and great despair. Thousands of people in our area are struggling to meet their basic needs. I am so proud of your overwhelming response to donate clothing, food and money to help those in dire need. I feel privileged to be a part of this church. To date, we have raised over $14,000, distributed thousands of articles of clothing, over six hundred hot meals, 2,000 diapers along with many other basic needs. And our efforts continue. Special thanks to Presbytera Anastasia and her team who worked tirelessly to get the donations to respective areas of concern.
Our Pick-A-Feather program was a great success this year, offering material support to thirty-five families living near or below the poverty line, and our GOYA has prepared the Giving Tree for the Christmas season, with which we are all given the opportunity to further that support with basic and educational needs for children in need and their families. Thank you for your support of these two programs.
Our building program is well underway and moving forward beautifully. The Johnides Family Cultural Center is near completion, and we should be announcing the date for the ribbon cutting ceremony in the very near future. When we have completed construction, we will have one of the most beautiful sanctuaries imaginable, state-of-the-art classrooms and a church complex to accommodate all of our ministries. With our new spiritual home, we will be able to take our ministries to the next level.
On December 2nd, we will hold our General Assembly Meeting, which may be one of the most important in the history of our Church. Your Parish Council continues to do an outstanding job in overseeing your stewardship dollars. The Council has always been blessed to have many people who excel in their chosen professions and who bring their skills to managing, together with Fr. Alex and Fr. Constantine, the many affairs of our church.
Despite watching every penny, meeting our impending operating budget will be a challenge, and it is a challenge we are all called to meet together. The cost of operating the festival, utilities, salaries, general maintenance and ministries is constantly growing. Although the festival is a major help (paying for nearly half of our budget), the majority of the money we need to operate should come from stewardship. Stewardship is our gift of support to God’s church, in response to the many blessings that He has given us. From all that He has given us, we are asked to give meaningfully to His Church. It is your stewardship that will allow the church to continue in the years to come.
In order for our church family to continue to function and grow, we will need to set and meet new stewardship goals. As this New Year approaches and you anticipate receiving the 2013 stewardship appeal, I ask you to prayerfully and thoughtfully consider your stewardship commitment to the church. Each Parish Council member has already committed to increase his or her stewardship gift for 2013. Some have pledged a 25% increase to their commitment, others up to 100%. We are asking each family who offered stewardship in 2012 to increase their stewardship by at least 20% in 2013, and we are asking those who did not offer stewardship in 2012 to do so in this coming year. Please fill out your 2013 Stewardship Card and return it to the Church office as soon as possible. It is becoming more difficult to manage the affairs of the church if we don’t know exactly how much we will receive in stewardship commitments early in the year.
Finally, I want to introduce the “Lincoln Initiative”. Most of us have been placing a one-dollar bill in the tray when we light our candle and another when the tray is passed during liturgy. The “Lincoln Initiative” suggests that we all put in a five-dollar bill instead of a one-dollar bill. The tradition of placing a one-dollar bill in the tray began over fifty years ago. Think of how far a dollar went in 1960, and yet we gave a dollar then and we give a dollar now. We actually tip at a restaurant more generously than we make our tray offering on a Sunday. Inflation alone has made the five-dollar tray offering necessary. There is little difference for us individually between one dollar and five, but for the church it is significant. Let us retrain ourselves and our children that the new tradition is at the least a five-dollar bill. It has been discussed in the parish council, and I am recommending that each and every member of our church adopt the Lincoln initiative.
I thank each and every one of you for your consideration of these matters and I thank God for your presence and service in our Church Family. I look forward to our bright future, and I look forward to seeing everyone at the General Assembly Meeting.
Wishing you and yours and Merry Christmas, I remain faithfully yours
Peter Nikiteas
Parish Council President
English 
Español