Congregation 'Lives the Gospel'
Diocesan Press Service. April 11, 1975 [75135]
CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. -- Members of the congregation of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, Corpus Christi, have put their "talents " to work to help feed the hungry of the world.
Responding to a Christmas appeal by the Rt. Rev. John M. Allin, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the congregation undertook a project based on the Parable of the Talents, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 19.
In that Biblical story, a wealthy man entrusted a sum of money (a talent) to each of his 10 servants to take care of in his absence. When the master returned, he rewarded the servant who had increased his one talent 10 times by giving him the one talent another servant had done nothing with.
The rector of St. Bartholomew's, the Rev. Sam Gottlich, and his associate, the Rev. Robert Parker, gave each of some 250 parishioners a silver dollar on Sunday, Jan. 19, telling them to do whatever they wanted to with it.
One woman sold dolls which she made from corn shucks; a couple washed cars on the weekend; a man made and sold peanut brittle.
One woman painted flower pots which she sold, increasing her silver dollar investment to an earned $45. Five couples pooled their money, rented a chain saw, and cut and then sold firewood, earning $155 from their $10. The senior youth group pooled their dollars and earned $250 for the project from a soup supper.
Mr. Gottlich recently sent to the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief a check in the amount of $2,100.56 which had been earned from the parish's "Working Dollar Program."
"What has proved exciting," he wrote Bishop Allin, "is not just the money that we are able to forward to you for your work in feeding the hungry, but the new life that the program has engendered in some 250 people who willingly participated." He added that there will probably be more money to send for the hunger fund "as communicants return the proceeds of their working dollars."