By Sherri Dietrich, UTO Board President

Read the full 2022 UTO Annual Report.
See the 2000-2022 UTO Ingathering Reports.

The 2022 United Thank Offering Annual Report is in the final stages of preparation as I write this reflection. I want to share some thoughts about annual reports as part of our commitment to you all and about this year’s report specifically. Although Episcopal churches are required to submit annual reports, individual ministries and bodies such as UTO do not generally face that requirement. So why have we chosen to make annual reports since 2017? 

We noted in that first annual report that UTO was focused on transparency and increasing communication throughout the church, and our commitment to those things remains a guiding value in UTO’s work. Everyone who participates in UTO is a stakeholder who has the right to know what we’ve done, thanks to your participation. Without the offerings from UTO’s members we would have no funds to grant throughout the church to support God’s work in the United States and around the world. Supporting the innovative ministries that can re-create and build The Episcopal Church is one of UTO’s core ministries. The past few years of breakneck change have created much fear about the future of the church we all love, but UTO believes that the Spirit is still speaking to the church and will lead us into whatever the next phase of church life and mission is.

Our other core ministry is leading people into the joyful and life-changing practice of gratitude, without which there is no real thank offering. People who are coerced into giving through guilt or obligation support UTO’s granting program but are missing out on the gifts of experiencing and spreading gratitude, something UTO members are truly passionate about. UTO has spent a lot of time and effort on teaching and sharing gratitude since the COVID pandemic began, and a true online community of grateful people has developed and grown, in addition to UTO members teaching and practicing gratitude in parishes and dioceses. Although UTO Ingatherings have decreased over the past decades (along with church membership and giving), we see the formation of grateful Episcopalians as foundational both to rebuilding the Ingathering and to reshaping how Episcopalians live and give to their parishes and to UTO. If you haven’t attended any of our webinars or study groups I encourage you to do so in the coming year and begin to revive your own journey of gratitude and faith.

UTO’s Lenten book study has been discussing “Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is,” by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams, which focuses on being grateful in all things. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Williams has said that the proper stance of the Christian in the world is one of gratitude, no matter what, which UTO also claims—along with the Bible, of course. Last week’s chapters included the following striking quote from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: “Wait without hope/for hope would be hope for the wrong thing,” which seems depressing at first but so appropriate to this time of change we are experiencing in the world and the church. Although there is much fear over the future of the church, I don’t believe for a minute that the future is hopeless. UTO is waiting and working toward whatever that future is, and we thank you for working along with us with open-minded hope.