I record here that Dr. Cabot and I have visited England, Wales, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Alsace, Switzerland and France this summer. In England we saw the Cathedrals of Chester, Lichfield, Oxford, London, Canterbury, Norwich, Ely, Lincoln, Southwell, Durham, York, Birmingham, Worcester, Hereford, Bristol, Gloucester, Bath, Wells and Winchester; we went to old Boston and Cambridge; we were guests at Cowley St. John, East Grinstead, and Kelham, three typical religious houses; we saw ideal examples of parishes in city slums, thriving towns, and heavenly country; and we made new friends in palaces, cottages and all sorts of houses between. On the continent, we groaned at the desolation of Dutch and Swiss Protestantism, were interested in occasional glimpses of Old Catholicism, saw the best side of the Roman Obedience in Holland, . . . and were happiest when we found the American Church and S. George’s in Paris. But, honestly, the blessed Advent is the best of all!

William Harman van Allen, Rector
Church of the Advent
October 4, 1908

Nearly 100 years ago the sixth Rector of the Advent, William Harman van Allen, returned from a summer in Europe effectively retracing the Advent’s Anglo-Catholic roots and summarized it at the end for his congregation by saying, “But, honestly, the blessed Advent is best of all.”

Father van Allen was just happy to be home. And aren’t all of us when we arrive each time at our church to see familiar things and faces and smell the fragrance of incense that has permeated even the stone? Aren’t all of us happy when the glory of our liturgy and music wash over us and cleanse away the soot and grime of a week spent working in the world?

The Advent is home. It has stood as home, and beacon, to generations of people that have sought spiritual direction and comfort and a closer connection to God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, since its founding in 1844. Over the course of our stewardship season, until the church’s Feast of Dedication on Advent Sunday, December 2, we hope to rejoice in the richness of this place - this blessed church - adding inspiration to your personal prayers and commitment for our 2008 stewardship canvass.

It is a great joy that the magnificent set of clerestory windows, a memorial to the late Atherton Brown, Esq., is today completed. So far as I know, it is unequaled in America and unsurpassed (among modern windows) in England. The theme is “Five national Types of Christianity”; and the motto might be: “The Nations of them that are saved.” . . I hope to give a series of lectures on these illustrious figures soon. The maker is Christopher W. Whall of London.

William Harman van Allen
Weekly Message, December 1909

The Church of the Advent has probably not looked as beautiful as it does now since shortly after construction was finished on the original building. One year ago as we launched our stewardship drive, light barely shone through our magnificent windows. The building was ringed by scaffolding and plastic hung over works of art. Today, thanks to the Campaign for the Advent, we celebrate a restored edifice, new gardens and knowledge that we have helped to preserve the place for future parishioners.

It is a great pleasure to see the faces of so many students in our congregation. We welcome them heartily, and urge them to make themselves known to us at once. . . As a free church, the Advent is a place where people not permanently established in Boston can come to worship without fear of ungracious treatment; and we are particularly anxious to know them personally.

Rector’s Weekly Message
October 4th, 1908

Future Advent parishioners appear weekly. Any “9:00 o-clocker” can tell you about the abundance of children and new-borns that occupy nearly the back one-third of the nave. Likewise, 11:15 attendees report many new students and young people in the pews. We welcome them as we were born to do through Christ, openly and joyfully.

It is wholly disconnected to our own experience to think of a time when pews in a church were rented. But those days and those experiences are very much part of the legacy of the Advent, whose founders proposed “to secure to a portion of the City of Boston the ministrations of the Holy Catholic Church, and more especially to secure the same to the poor and needy, in a manner free from unnecessary expense and all ungracious circumstances.” While rented pews did wonders for the balance sheet of churches, they did nothing for their charter as Christian communities, and the Advent stood against them.

Stewardship campaigns are the alternative to the indignity of renting space in church, where the rich then sit up front, and the poor sit in back, and others sit nowhere at all. Stewardship adds value, not just to the place, but to what the place stands for: giving, love and community.

Have you ever moved to a new community, knowing no one, feeling utterly lonely? Or have you ever been stranded in a strange community on a weekend? There is nothing very uplifting about the four walls of a hotel room or a table for one in the corner of the hotel dining room. . . People are having just such experiences constantly. They crave fellowship and they should be able to find it in the Christian Church. . . Whether they find friendly people or not at church, may be the basis upon which they judge the church. . . There is the story of a man who sat three pews from the rear in a certain church and kept his hat on. The ushers could not convince him to remove the hat. At the end of the service the ushers descended upon the man and demanded an explanation. He gave it to them in these words: “I’ve been coming to this church for three months and I swore I’d get someone to speak to me.”

The Advent Weekly Message
April 1, 1951

It is a rich mix of mission and history that informs our experience at the Advent, equal in every respect to our sacred liturgy and music.

In 1873 at the request of Father Charles Chapman Grafton, the fourth Rector of the Advent, a young nun named Sister Mary Louisa, of the Society of St. Margaret from East Grinstead, England (the place Father van Allen would visit with his colleague Dr. Cabot), arrived in Boston to take charge of the Children’s Hospital in Boston. A plaque of a Sister of Saint Margaret hangs near the entrance to Boston’s Children’s Hospital today.

In 1949, Dr. Albert Schweitzer on a trip to the United States asked to visit the Advent to play the church’s organ, one of the finest in the country.

Quiet arrangements were made for him to do so by E. Power Biggs, prominent Boston organist, and by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, designer and builder of our organ. . . Only the parish clergy and a small group of persons prominent in the musical world of Boston were present for this signally memorable occasion, upon which the great man thoroughly inspected the organ and then delighted his hearers by playing two pieces by Bach and one by Widor.

The Advent Weekly Message
September 4, 1949

Our annual stewardship drive is a witness to the enduring mission of our blessed church that was begun so long ago and has touched so many lives. Our stewardship pledge connects us with those who proposed many years ago to make pews in a church free. It connects us with those who wlcomed strangers and students; it connects us with each other. Together, our pledge connects us to a place we call home.

Sunday, December 2 will be our Feast of Title and Dedication, and the 163rd anniversary of our Parish. This is the day by which we hope to have your 2008 pledge so that we may count them in the upcoming budget. Bring them with you to church that Sunday, or mail them in advance using the envelope enclosed in the Canvass mailing.

The Committee on Ways and Means plans a new canvass of the congregation for renewed, increased and fresh pledges to Parish support and to missions. It will be a hard winter; but the best economy involves enlarging one’s offerings to God, not reducing them, if we want to profit by the temporal blessings God promises to those who devise liberal things.

Rector’s Weekly Message,
Advent Sunday, November 24, 1914
70th Anniversary of the founding of the Parish

Thank you in advance for your generosity and commitment to the past, present and future of our blessed, Church of the Advent.

Yours in Christ,
Jarvis Coffin
Dan Clevenger
Philip LeQuesne,
Vance Hosford
Stewardship Committee

The Vestry's Formal Statement on Tithing

The Stewardship of the bounty of creation and the gifts of creativity and life which God has bestowed on each of us is a responsibility and an obligation of every Christian. It is an undeniable prerequisite for the spiritual life and for spiritual growth:

"Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back." (Luke 6:38)

Stewardship should involve time, talent, and worldly possessions.

With regard to the goods of this world, Holy Scripture presents the tithe, one tenth of one's goods, as the standard, indeed the norm, of giving. This is made clear in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus:

"All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord's; it is holy to the Lord. . . . And all the tithe of lands and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman's staff shall be holy to the Lord." (Leviticus 27:30, 32)"

The tithe as a standard is so much a part of Hebrew faith and practice that in the New Testament it goes without saying. This is clear from Luke 18:12 and Matthew 23:23. While the main points of Jesus's teaching in these passages are humility and sincerity, in both He simply assumes the tithe to be the standard, norm, and practice of God's people.

Mindful of its responsibility for the welfare of The Parish of the Advent and eager to promote the spiritual life and growth of its individual members, the Vestry at its meeting on March 19, 2002 unanimously adopted the Biblical Tithe, one tenth, as the Standard of Giving to which its own members and members of the Parish are urged to aspire.

Frequently Asked Questions about Pledging

Why should I pledge?

Spiritually, because stewardship concerns our relationship with God; it allows us the chance to let go of some of our earthly possessions and experience the joy that comes from trusting God. Physically, because your pledge helps pay for the expenses of our church and any additional outreach we give as community.

How much should I pledge?

We all have competing demands for our money. The most worthwhile and important of those demands usually involve some sacrifice, such as education and our homes. Are those things equivalent to the biblical tithe of 10%? Indeed, they may be much more. As we pray to God for guidance on this subject, therefore, a good place to start may be to compare the church and our spiritual life to those other things for which we make financial sacrifice and find the measure of our pledge there. With God’s help, it will be clear.

How do I pledge?

Fill out a pledge card (mailed to all members of the Parish or available at the back of the church) and either mail it back to the church or drop it in the offering plate on Sunday. Or hand it to an usher, or slip it under the office door. It will all get to the same place. If, for any reason, there is no pledge card in your envelope there are plenty on the tables in the back of the church. The ushers can hand them to you.

You can also make a pledge online at www.theadvent.org/pledge/pledgefm.htm. (You will still have to pay your pledge "the old-fashioned way" or through wire transfer from your bank.)

Do I need to bother with envelopes each Sunday? Don’t they cost the church a lot of money?

The pledge card makes clear that you can budget to remit your pledge annually or quarterly or weekly. If weekly, we encourage you to use the offering envelopes. It really helps with the bookkeeping. They are not expensive, and we’ve got boxes of them for 2007, anyway.

I can never be sure what to pledge so I just put money in the offering plate each Sunday. Isn’t that good enough?

It’s good, but, it could be better. The church cannot be as flexible about its expenses. We need to budget and to plan. So, think about what you might normally put in the plate - or what you have normally put in the plate over the years - and write it down in the form of a pledge. It makes it easy, too, when it comes time to vote at Annual Meeting and we can easily show that you are a pledging member of the church.

Why is it important that I be a pledging member of the church at Annual Meeting?

You must be a member of The Church of the Advent to vote at the Annual Meeting and, according to our by-laws, membership requires that you pledge to attend and make a financial contribution. Filling-out and returning your pledge card records you as a member. You must also be a member of the church in order to participate as a lay person in any aspect of the church’s liturgy - as a reader, server, volunteer in the choir, usher, etc. - or on committee groups or as a teacher in the church school.

When is my pledge due?

We would like to have all our pledges, if possible, by the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, which is the church’s Feast of Title and Dedication. That gives us time to incorporate your pledges into the budgeting process.

I prefer to pledge anonymously.

The amount you pledge will always be kept strictly confidential, with that information available only to the Treasurer and Parish Administrator, who must keep accounts, and the Stewardship Chairperson, who must raise the money. The clergy prefer not to know who gives what. The fact that you have pledged, however, is part of the open record of the church, on display at each Annual Meeting, and is useful additionally for measuring the growth of our church community, representing to the Diocese the degree of involvement of parish members, etc. We want you and all of us to be counted as faithful parishioners of The Church of the Advent.

If you have other questions please don’t hesitate to contact the Parish Office or reach out to a member of the Stewardship committee.

Thank you!