By Heather Melton, UTO Staff Officer
Did you know that historically All Saints’ Day was one of the two days designated for the UTO Ingathering (the other being Ascension Day)? While it has fallen out of fashion for the Ingathering, it is still a great day for practicing gratitude. For many congregations, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are combined to celebrate the lives of all the faithful people who have gone to heaven before us and to give thanks for the lives of the saints. Here are some ways to add gratitude into your All Saints’ (or All Souls’) Day celebrations.
- Add gratitude to your All Saints’ Day altar or table. Many congregations set up a location where people can bring photos of loved ones to display on All Saints’ Day. Consider having a stack of notecards or Post-it Notes available and inviting people to write down why they are grateful for the person in the photo. It can be as simple as one word of gratitude for the person pictured. This activity also lets others in the congregation connect with the images of loved ones lost and understand more deeply why they were gifts to the world around them.
- Get everyone involved by creating a “Give Thanks for the Saints” display. There are a lot of very cool saints in The Episcopal Church, so during October, ask each family to adopt a saint. (If you know your kiddos well, you can match them up with someone they might find inspiring. Or, if your church loves the hymn, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God, you can assign all the saints listed!) Ask each family to make an 8.5×11 piece of art about their saint to display. You can connect all the art with a ribbon to make an altar frontal, and then invite the families to share about their saints at coffee hour or adult education.
- Invite people to make a donation to the Memorial Trust Fund. People can donate to the UTO Memorial Trust Fund to have their loved ones remembered in our online book of remembrances. Each gift will also be acknowledged with a special card. Memorial Trust Fund donations can be made online at https://unitedthankoffering.com/give/.
However you choose to celebrate All Saints’ Day this year, we hope you’ll take time to give thanks for the lives of the saints with UTO.
Seasonal Materials for Fall
We still have fall materials available. Find all our fall resources at https://unitedthankoffering.com/fall/ or order your kit at https://unitedthankoffering.com/shop/. Materials will remain available in the shop until sold out.
Order your Diocesan Convention Kit now!
If you are planning to have a booth at diocesan convention, please order your materials as soon as possible. Each kit will include materials specifically designed for your diocese, and since that takes time to create, please give Heather as much lead time as possible to create your diocesan kit. The theme for our kits this year is UTO grants. We’re inviting people in your diocese to take a “leaf” from the tree that has information about a past UTO grant to your diocese and to pray for that grant site. There’s also a QR code on the back of the leaf to update the story of the grant site as we prepare for the 150th anniversary of the first UTO collection and grants. You can order your kit here: https://unitedthankoffering.com/shop/.
