Our Fall General Assembly is scheduled for Sunday, Dec 3, following Divine Services. A proposed Agenda, Minutes from our Spring Meeting, and reports are provided below. Please check back throughout the week as other reports are submitted.
Fall General Assembly
Agenda (proposed)
Sunday, December 3, 2023
The following is the proposed agenda for the next General Assembly meeting. Join us on Sunday, December 3, immediately following Divine Services. All active stewards* of the Church of Saint Anna are encouraged to participate.
1. Prayer & Call to Order
2. Selection of General Assembly Chair
3. Approval of Minutes of previous GA
4. Clergy Report
5. President’s Report
6. Treasurer’s Report
Community Updates (reports will be posted on the parish website).
Philoptochos
Religious Education
Archangel Gabriel Bookstore
Byzantine Chanting
Youth & Young Adult Ministries
Stewardship
2023 Greek Food Festival
Sanctuary Construction
St. Vincent de Paul
Men’s Fellowship
8. Old Business
a. Sanctuary Beautification and Capital Campaign
9. New Business
a. 2024 Operating Budget
10. For the Good of the Parish
11. Closing Prayer
12. Adjournment
*To be considered a member in good standing, the member must regularly participate in the life of the parish and have fulfilled the previous year’s stewardship commitment and contributed toward the current year’s commitment. New members may exercise their vote at Parish Assemblies if they have been in good standing at the parish for at least three months.
Stewardship Report/Marci Pelka
Stewardship is based on scripture (1 Peter 4:10, 2 Corinthians 9:6-7, Proverbs 16:3, 1 Corinthians 4:2) and many more. I must quote 2 Corinthians 9: 6-7: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Our faithful Stewards certainly live up to this. We give from our hearts. It is a blessing to be able to support the ministries of St. Anna’s through Christ’s Church. As Orthodox Christians, we recognize that everything, truly everything we have, is a gift from God. We are to be grateful to Him for His blessings and generous with our gifts to others. Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Good stewardship brings joy into the lives of others. Our philanthropy includes but is not limited to IOCC, Kenya Mission, Skete of St. Anna, and Life-Giving Monastery, to name a few.
In 2023, our budget is $460,000. As of October 31, 2023, our year-to-date (collected) is $372,345. Our year-to-date budget is $383,333. We are (-) $10,988.
We have 208 Stewards. Some are pledged, others give on a regular basis, and others give randomly. We do not have annual stewardship drives. If you need to change your pledge, don't hesitate to get in touch with Morfoula (Church Administrator 916-772-9372) or (Marci 916-258-3769).
We welcome all new Stewards. If you want to be a Steward, don't hesitate to get in touch with Morfoula or Marci at the above numbers. We need your name, address, phone number and email. A member of our stewardship team will then send you a stewardship packet.
Stewardship also includes our time and talent. Some of the areas supported by St. Anna’s include our prayer shawl ministry, serving in the altar as an acolyte, volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul, assisting in the bookstore, straightening the chairs and hymnals after service (good ones for the kids), clean the candle box, volunteer for candle duty, become a member of Philoptochos, or when needed sign up for a meal train and many more. No activity is too small.
Once again, I am grateful to all of our faithful stewards who continue through easy and tough times for their support of our beacon on the hill, our new church, and to the glory of God.
If you use a phone or tablet, an easy way to give, not only for stewardship but for many of our ministries, you may consider downloading the APP Church Center, following the prompts, and inputting your info. This will also be used for our Church directory.
Acts 20:35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus Himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Byzantine Chant Program
Our chanting program, led by Tim Burkhard, has a Divine Liturgy team and a weekly chant practice program.
Nick Pasco has led the Divine Liturgy team through the worthwhile effort of implementing the green liturgy hymnal. I am immensely appreciative of his sticking with it to accomplish this challenging task. Moving forward, we want to continue refining toward proficiency with the new hymnal, introduce the Digital Chant Stand music for variable hymns (e.g. resurrectional apolytikia) so that those among the congregation who wish to look up the music on their handheld devices may follow along, and train up a couple more people to lead the liturgy with proficiency.
We meet for chant practice on Wednesday evenings, following the Akathist service. We are studying basic Byzantine music theory using western notation (not Byzantine neumes). The near-term goal is to train up a couple people who can chant services outside of Divine Liturgy. In the longer term, we want a decent-sized group of people able to perform unison singing as a small choir. We'll need a few more recruits to accomplish this, so please feel free to join us if you are interested!
In the meantime, we are also refining the new sound system to strike a balance between making homilies and scripture readings comprehensible, while not bombarding the congregation with electric noise.
2023 Greek Food Festival
submitted by Mike Dindio
The September 2 day festival based around our feast day celebration was a big success. Our faith and hospitality were on full display and brought in many community folks who were curious and needed our spiritual offerings. Not only did patrons love our festival, but the gross income of $251K was a surprisingly great outcome. After all expenses were paid, our profits came in at around 85K. Father has decided future festivals will remain a two-day event and be held in September.
Thank you to all who participated in making this an overwhelmingly positive experience. It could never have happened without all who volunteered and worked so hard prior to, during, and after the festival. We are looking for a few folks to step up and lead the festival moving forward. We look forward to 2024.
