By TED WRIGHT, Stewardship Chair

hen my daughters were younger, Nina and I read to them a children’s story about twiddlebugs. The twiddlebugs lived, as I recall, in a flower planter and hibernated through the winter. Each Spring they would awake with the warm weather and realize that they had not seen each other all winter, so they had a parade. Half of the twiddlebugs would march and the other half would watch. In this way, each twiddlebug was able to see half of their friends. After the parade, there was a large picnic that gave the twiddlebugs who had not yet seen each other a chance to do so.

"Okay," I hear you saying, "nice story but what does it have to do with Saint Andrews and stewardship." The answer is simple. This is the 25th year of a diocesan experiment: a mission church in Irvine. In recognition of this milestone and as part of our collective effort to mature as a congregation and grow from mission to parish, the Stewardship Committee felt that, like the twiddlebugs, we need a chance to visit with one another. Instead of a parade (and because the annual picnic is already planned), we decided, with the strong support of the Bishop’s Committee, to bring this about by organizing an every member canvass (EMC) for this fall.

As in the twiddlebugs’ parade, in an EMC there are two groups: a quarter to a half of the congregation who are callers and the rest of us who get to be called upon. Although not quite a parade, we will try to arrange for all the calls to take place during a single, EMC weekend. Through this process, we all will have a chance to become better friends with those folks with whom we share the peace each Sunday across the aisle or meet someone who attends the other service. The EMC also provides a chance for each of us to share what works well about this experiment, our congregation, and a chance to voice any frustrations and suggestions about how this church could be better.

What these visits will not include is a hard sell about pledges. Frankly, I would not be happy on either side of such a conversation, and I expect that most of you share that feeling. The callers will distribute pledge cards, but they will not ask for them to be filled out as part of the visit or collect them. The in-gathering of pledge cards will be through the collection the next Sunday or by mail.

Within the next several days, you will receive a letter asking you to come to one of two training sessions in the fall at which you will learn how to be an EMC caller. The training sessions will provide you with material that will be useful when you make calls and a chance to practice a call.

Please respond quickly; unfortunately, because of the way an EMC works, only half of us can be callers. More seriously, to make this project manageable, at least one-quarter of us need to be callers (thus any caller would only need to call on at most three families) and more would be better. We already have made a good start on this recruitment: all of the members of both the Stewardship and Bishop’s committees have agreed to come to the caller training.

Volunteering for the training will not obligate you to be a caller. If, after the training session, you decide that being a caller is not a role that you wish to fill, then you will have the opportunity to opt out, privately. So, please go ahead and volunteer for the training even if you find being a canvasser a little daunting. Also, if there are people who feel that they would be more comfortable making their EMC calls with a partner, that can also be accommodated.

Although we see a lot of work ahead getting the EMC organized, all of us on the Stewardship Committee are excited by the prospect. Certainly, when I was last involved in an EMC at my previous church in New Jersey, I found it one of the most rewarding experiences of my involvement there.