Stewardship Minutes

Anna Marie Smith-Butts

Stewardship – Your Time, Your Talent, Your Treasure

Time: In the early 1970’s, we moved to Virginia Beach from Connecticut. St. Nicholas was our very first church here. My parents decided to take the family to a parish closer to home, but when it was time for me to be confirmed, I wanted to be confirmed here–because this was the “family” I was comfortable with. I went through CCD and stood at the altar of this church (which was over where Peg and the Choir are) and received my Confirmation, with my father at my side as my sponsor. 2 years later he was gone -- lung cancer, and our family was going to Holy Family. For the next several years, as time passed, our family continued to go to church at HF, but whenever I needed to feel a sense of support and love, I would borrow Mom’s car and come to St. Nick’s.

Talent: I went to college, stopped going to church for a few years, and in 1982 or 1983, came back to St. Nicholas as a regular parishioner, again because of the sense of family, but also now because of the music. You see, Peg Bartolotta had arrived! Not only had her stewardship begun for this parish, but the stewardship of a cantor by the name of Courtney Tierney absolutely reached out and lifted our hearts every Sunday. I had always said “I can do that,” but I was waiting to be asked . . . Well, Courtney chased me out into the parking lot one Sunday, and ASKED, and that was the beginning of my education about what it meant to be a real part of a ministry and to steward one’s talents.

Soon after that, my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Without this community full of stewardship, I would have lost my way in a very real valley of despair. When Mom died, Father John Grace was the pastor here, and his special message of love and the embracing arms of the St. Nicholas congregation carried my siblings and me in many quiet and unobtrusive ways through the months of grief.

A few years after that, I left Va Beach for New York City – you know the old adage you don’t know what you have until you lose it? Well, I found out pretty quickly what I had with St. Nicholas. It took me 6 years to find a parish in New York that in any way shaped up to the standard St. Nicholas (and Peg!) had set. Of course, for me, the deciding factor on staying with any church was the music! Every time I open my mouth to sing, I am praying!

Treasure: The crowning grace to this stewardship story was that when my husband and I decided to move from New York back to Va Beach, Peg was still here – I knew EXACTLY where I would be coming to church. Not only was the music what I had missed for so many years, but there was such a strong spirit and a closeness to this community. In the summer of 2002, my husband finally experienced what I had known since I was a teenager – that a church community is so much more than a building where a bunch of families come together on Sunday to worship. I want to share with you a section of the memorial that my husband and I wrote for the memorial service for our baby:

We discovered again and again what it means to be part of a community of caring; how meaningful it is to have true friends who are unconditionally supportive and present, for family who have traveled distances and taken time out of their lives to share an experience that would have been easier to avoid. We learned through our son, William Eckart, whose passage here was brief, lasting lessons of what it means to love and be loved. Those who have been with us physically, by your thoughts, cards and kind words, you are our heroes. For your moral courage, for living the ideals of love without reservation, friendship, and true community, we award you the medal of our hearts.

Time, Talent, Treasure. Three words with as many different personal meanings as there are members of this church, not just Saint Nicholas, not just the American Catholic Church, but the universal family of God. And I know that many of you, like Wolf and I, have experienced the fact that when you give a little of ANY of the three – time talent or treasure – it will come back to you ten and one hundred fold. Only you can determine what gift you have to give, but rest assured whether it is a 10-minute visit to someone who is homebound, or the weekly gift of music, or participation in the Parable Project by making cookies and selling them door to door, you DO have something to share. So just like Courtney Tierney asked me 20 years ago, I am asking YOU. You can be 10, you can be 30, you can be 90, but the gifts of spirit only you can give will last forever.