Sewickley United Methodist Church (SUMC) is about you, and nothing exemplifies this truth more than the progress we made in 2024.
Financials looked bleak in the last quarter of the year, but congregational giving and some other contributions empowered SUMC into 2025 with excess revenue. December giving usually outpaces the other eleven months of the year, but this past December exceeded our expectations enabling SUMC to start the new year in a positive cash position (about $16,000). Having excess is a great situation that affords opportunity to make more impactful decisions on how and where to spend those funds in 2025.
Our Leadership Board is grateful to you for demonstrating consistently throughout 2024 that you are a charitable congregation. Every time we asked for financial contributions, material donations, sharing your knowledge, providing love and comfort, and volunteering, you were there without fail. Thank you sincerely. You set the bar high for 2025!
At our January 15th meeting, the Leadership Board turned the page on 2024 by shifting focus from the pains of implementing and administering a different organization structure to the joys of identifying better ways to work together. Thus, the Board starts 2025 with an underlying modus operandi — proactive collaboration, an approach that ensures that all SUMC’s teams and processes work in harmony to achieve our church’s overall mission and God-sized goals.
Proactive collaboration for the Leadership Board means communicating regularly with SUMC’s 17 ministry teams and actively seeking ways to help them achieve their program goals. For example, the “Guardian” team, which keeps our congregation safe during services and events, needs four additional volunteers. Leadership Board members can fill these vacant positions and/or find volunteers to fill those needs. (Incidentally, if you would like to be part of the Guardian Team, please see or ask for Sandra Lane, and she will sign you up.)
As leaders of the church, it is our responsibility as well to anticipate needs, foresee issues, and take initiatives before minor things become major ones. That means being more mindful of metrics. Our monthly agenda previously included examining goals, financials, and attendance, but this year we are homing in on data collection, trends, and performance. Our ongoing objective in 2025 is to collect, track, and measure data each month and to report and refine (if needed) every quarter.
Many churches throughout the country are experiencing shrinking attendance and membership. But not so at SUMC. Here, we are in growth mode. To ensure that trend continues, Leadership Board members are asking our families, friends, and neighbors to check out SUMC and inviting them to our Sunday services and events. We hope you will do the same by endorsing all the good that SUMC has done and has yet to do, and helping others find the good that is theirs to do.
SUMC has a brand-new Ministry Team that kicked off in January! It is one of the 17 teams mentioned previously and is comprised of Pastor Hannah, Jere Cowden, Chad Wolfe, Mark Benjamin, and Lynn Colosi. Our focus is twofold: to facilitate the reasons why you, our congregation, want to contribute your time, resources, and money to SUMC and our programs; and to encourage you to contribute financially or volunteer for particular initiatives. The Stewardship Team already planted the first seeds to grow generosity. You may have noticed Pastor Hannah focusing on a theme of generosity during her children’s messages. Coming soon is a video series, which our team will be discussing in the weeks ahead and asking for your participation. The series will promote charity and service, identify reasons to give, and illustrate how SUMC’s generosity impacts our congregation and community. We are excited about the possibilities that come from working together to multiply love, kindness, abundance, and refuge for our neighbors.