Stewardship Minutes

Stewardship Talk
Bob Larned

Good Morning, my name is Bob Larned and most of you know me as the “Golf Guy” as I am usually up here appealing to you to play in our annual St Nick’s Golf tournament. Today, I am here to tell you a little bit about my story and how I got involved with Stewardship here at St Nicks.

I have been a member of the parish since 1984 when I arrived here after serving in the Navy in Jacksonville Fl. I have two daughters who were very young at the time and my wife and I were looking for a Catholic Community to live near. They are now young ladies, college grads and out there in the real world.

Our arrival here will be 21 years ago next month. It was not until around the late 80’s early 90’s that I played in the first St Nick’s golf tournament at Cypress Point and I met Kevin Rack. I told him I would be happy to assist him in planning the tournament next year. I guess I had been feeling guilty about not really doing anything at the Church but hey, if Golf can count for Church STUFF, I could do that! Not too long after that, Kevin called me to assist him on the finance committee so I took that opportunity to dive in. This gave me great insight to parish and all the different ministries that we support each week with our financial contributions. It made me keenly aware of our parish debt and what we needed to fix things around here. I had been through the first parish renovation in 1986 as a contributor but by the mid 90’s we still had $800,000 in debt from that renovation and we set the goal to pay off that debt. You may remember that we brought in the Moran Company to assist us with Karen Kittel, now Karen LeRette. (She met her husband here) This was an enormous project which required a lot of follow up work after people made their initial pledges. I was drafted to be the chairman of the follow up committee that called people to remind them that we needed their money to pay off the debt. It was a “Good News” “Bad News” situation. The good news was that we had the money to pay off the debt. The bad news was that I had to get it out of the YOUR (parishioners) pockets. As most of you know, this was our previous pastors big wish, to pay off the mortgage…..which we did and everything worked out. Now here we are years later with some maintenance situations that need our attention and if we put our noses to the grind stone I know we can raise the money to get it done through the Parable Project and other innovative ways and means.

Along the way I discovered a strange thing…. that working on these parish committees and ministries was actually fun. There is a true sense of accomplishment. Because of my business background in the professional placement world, I became involved with the employment ministry to assist unemployed people. We provided emotional support as well as real job leads to folks that had been laid off in the ‘90s. . This was very rewarding work. I continued to get involved with different ministries such being a Lecturer. I have also worked briefly with the homeless and with the stage productions we use to do in the ‘90s but strictly as a worker bee to put the props and stages together, not as a performer! One of the most rewarding things I have done at St Nicks has been working with the conformation team and the youth of the parish. I started with my daughters and have continued through this year. Another rewarding ministry I discovered was through Catholic Charities working with immigrants from other countries and teaching them English. This opened my eyes to the fact that there are many people out there that need computers and there are many businesses and people like you and me who have old computers who want to give them away so I got a couple of great high school kids to assist and we recycled quite a few computers to needy families just a few years ago as a summer project.

The bottom line is that you may be like I was back in the ‘80s….I was a member of the parish but not really an active one. I stumbled into something I liked, which was golf, and it helped me meet some great people that were doing other things. My friends Kevin Rack and Ev grass asked me to help them with their projects and just do what I could….I am just a regular guy like all of you out there so do not be afraid to get involved. If you let God lead you, HE will show you the way. The key is letting HIM do that. It does not matter what your age is. In fact I challenge all of you young people out there seek out and find something you like here. If you can’t find it in a present ministry or committee, you can start it yourself.

Many people have come and gone here in my 20 plus years but same wonderful, rewarding feeling is still here when you give of yourself and help others.

I will be in the commons afterwards if you have any questions. Thanks for listening.