My dear friends,

As we approach the end of the calendar year, we are processing our offertory collection envelopes for 2023. Here’s the thing: we send out, through a service, over 3,400 envelopes to all our parishioners every year, BUT, on average, less than 300 envelopes are used on Sundays during the offertory. Some also drop them off in the office, or mail them in, for which we are extremely grateful. Printing these envelopes comes at a great expense to the parish, though. Last year we spent over $18,000 in the printing and mailing of these envelopes to all of you. This is not sustainable. The decline of envelope use is mainly due to the growth of online giving during the pandemic which has helped increase our weekly collection from pre-pandemic levels. But it would not be good stewardship on my part as your pastor to continue paying for envelopes that are never being used.

Last week, our dedicated staff went through all our records as to who is faithfully using the offertory envelopes during this last year. We winnowed that number down from almost 3,500 to closer to 750. So what this means is that only those people who use the envelopes faithfully will receive them in the first mailing for 2023. Now, it stands to reason that in this process someone may have been left out. If you don’t get your envelopes come January and still want to receive them, simply call the office and we can reactive the envelopes for you. Similarly, some of you may receive envelopes but decide you want to opt-out and that can also be done easily. Not getting envelopes does not affect your status as an active parishioner at Little Flower. This small change will actually help your parish redirect funds for the myriad of repairs our building has to undergo in the coming year. Thank you for your cooperation and for your continued financial support of your parish.

God bless,