Rector's Report--Annual Parish Meeting 2012

Rector’s report—Annual Parish meeting
January 29, 2012
First, of all, I want to thank you for being here today. Today we do much of the business of the church, the nuts and bolts of our common life together, and your presence here and your participation in that is very important.
I’d like to thank everyone who has supported the work and ministry of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea this past year—those who have given money, energy, ideas, physical labor, those who have offered your prayers, those who have shown up, for worship, events, offerings. Together, we have accomplished so much this last year, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
I’d like to thank those who have completed their terms as Vestry members. [Sometimes I think being a Vestry member is truly a thankless job. They are certainly “the few and the proud”. (Did you know that out of almost 20 people we asked to run for warden or vestry this year, 4 accepted?)] One of my joys of working closely with the Vestry is to see how each person brings their own unique gifts and offers them to contribute to the good and the work of the whole. These folks are no exception to that.
Judy Joest has a wonderful sense of humor; she’s someone who can tell a story and have me laughing so hard I’m crying, and that is truly a gift. She would often bring some levity to our work, and she has steadily and consistently for the last three years, spearheaded our pastoral care efforts. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to the hospital to see a parishioner, and either Judy Joest has been there right before me or is coming in as I’m leaving.
Alan Jones has been a quiet presence on Vestry for the last three years, but this year, Alan has exhibited an amazing insight into the heart of matters and an ability to cut to the heart and articulate key truths that often get lost to the rest of us. It has been truly a gift to our work together.
Doug Singletary is so very rooted in the Episcopal tradition and in the life and history of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea. As someone who has been active in leadership in this church for many, many years, he helped keep us grounded in these key identities of what it means to be Episcopalians in this particular community.
And Bob Wolford, who has completed his second year as Junior Warden…Bob is someone who gets things done. I can’t tell you how many times I would come in on a Sunday or a Monday, and something new had been accomplished by Bob’s quietly working at the church on Saturday or a Sunday. A clock is hung in the parish hall; my ordination and ministry certificates (that have been under the ledge of my desk for almost 2 years) are hung on the wall of my office; the sexton’s supply closet is reorganized and shelving has been added. These are all things that probably didn’t make it into Bob’s report, but his tenure as Jr Warden has been full of these small, quiet projects that, once completed, improve the life and the workings of this parish. Thank you to each of you for your service, for your willingness to share your gifts in leadership in this church, and for your love and support of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea.
I would also like to thank those who are continuing to serve on the Vestry this year; I’d like to thank Margaret and Neely who continue on as Clerk and Treasurer, respectively, and who each bring a good, strong dose of pragmatism with them. And I’d like to thank Marie, for her incredible leadership and her steadiness as senior warden. Marie is so very sharp, and I think that she and I have both grown and changed in this last of year of working closely together. I deeply value her leadership, her friendship, and her support.
The Vestry of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea is an amazing group of people, who deeply love this church and try to make the most faithful decisions possible in the circumstances. I cannot tell you how much time they put into the work that they do, but it is a lot, and I know that they do it for love of you all, and for love of this church. Please, do what you can to support them this year. Do what you can to love them, to be kind to them, to follow them, and to trust that their actions are always done through prayer and in faithfulness, trying to lead St. Peter’s to continue to bear fruit worthy of the Kingdom of God.
Be mindful that every criticism and complaint beats them up at least a little bit and erodes the fabric of our common life. We are all flawed human beings, and we are all doing the best that we can and trying to be faithful to following our Lord Jesus Christ.
I’d also like to thank the Vestry and the committee chairs for their written reports that are in your packets. We slightly shifted our focus as a Vestry this year, with our new system of quarterly parish meetings, and to do this, we are asking that every group keeps track of whatever way is appropriate to count or measure growth in that area. The statistics and information provided in these reports in your packets is both enlightening and amazing, and I think it gives us a wonderful picture of all that we have accomplished this year. There are just a few things I’d like to highlight.
First, last year, one of my visions for 2011 was to start a hospitality time after the 10:30 service. The hospitality and new members committee, under the direction of Helen Graham and the energy of Kerry Hudson quickly acted to meet my vision and started offering a hospitality time, solely through the donations of people willing to do it, and it now serves at least 50-60 people in attendance each week (and many more on special occasions). In addition to providing food during this time, Edwin Graham has been creating a new, multi-media slide presentation each Sunday that is on at both hospitality times. These slide presentations provide information about upcoming events, feature a mystery person every week, and they help us all stay better connected.
Another goal for this year was to maintain excellence in music and to continue to build our music program. Under the leadership of JT Anglin, Donna Hutchings, Barbara Blanchard, Debbie Anglin, and Keith Ballard, all three of our choirs are flourishing. The chancel choir is now up to 20 members (the largest since I’ve been here). The bell choir has 10 ringers, and the children’s choir has 11 children enrolled (the largest number since each’s inception). And we continue to work together to provide worship that is a fit offering to God, that is accessible to the people in the pews, and that offers the full breadth and beauty of our Anglican heritage and our Episcopal identity.
Last year I also spoke about our need for more parking on sight. This is an item that the Vestry has talked about at great deal, and it is currently on our “wish list” for things we’d like to work on in the future when more funding for such a project becomes available.
We continue to offer solid offerings for Christian formation of all ages. The children’s Sunday school program is thriving under the direction of Debbie Anglin and a number of dedicated teachers. The recent surveys about the Adult Forum indicate an overwhelming response to continue those offerings. The lectionary class, the Young Adult Sunday school, the Wednesday night seasonal offerings, and the short term studies have all been of outstanding quality. Truly we offer something for everyone who desires to be formed and shaped in the image and likeness of Christ through study and discussion together.
We’ve also had a lot of fun together this last year. We’ve broken bread together in small groups around each others’ tables in our Common Ground Groups, which we’ll hear a little more about later. We’ve learned to dance together; we’ve barbequed together; we’ve celebrated special events, major milestones, and ordinary days together, and through all this, we have strengthened the bonds of our common affection.
And we’ve helped a whole lot of people. We’ve served more than 4,050 meals at Feed My Sheep. We’ve made and delivered 650 sack lunches to hungry people on 2nd Sundays. We provided 70 thanksgiving meals to needy individuals and families in our community. We gave 42 outfits for girls coming through the Harrison County Children’s Emergency Shelter. We provided dinners for the residents of IHN for 24 evenings. We bought Christmas gifts for 30 children of the Women’s shelter this past Christmas. We sent three of our Arts Academy students to Camp Bratton Green on full scholarships and provided partial scholarship assistance for parishioners. We worked with other churches of this diocese and helped build a Habitat House in Smithville, through the loan of our equipment and the labor of members. We gave $2,688 out of our budget to local agencies, and then we raised an additional $7548 to go to other charitable organizations. By my rough calculations, we have improved the lives of around 5,000 people who have been in need this past year. That is amazing, and I am so proud of you all!
Just a few more numbers about this past year, and then I’ll move on to plans for the coming year. This summer, I started keeping up with the number of pastoral encounters that I make in a given week. Now this number is just during the week, because I’ve found no possible way to keep up with this on a given Sunday (other than having a vestry member follow me around with one of those clicker things that they have at events for counting…). And some weeks, I’m so busy, I forget to write it down and count it (so this is hardly scientific). But on average, I have 29 pastoral encounters during the week. This can include calls, visits, notes, emails, Facebook messages, texts—any encounter that I consider to be primarily of a pastoral nature, and the numbers vary greatly in an given week. Usually on shorter weeks, when I’m not in the office, it can be as low as 16. On crazy weeks, it can be as high as 72. But 30-40 is usually a normal week.
Also, our average Sunday attendance has grown this year from 131 to 148. On normal Sundays, we have about 40 people at the 8:00 service and about 100 people at the 10:30 service.
So, briefly, my goals for 2012: to do all that we have done this year and more. We are moving in the right direction; we’ve got structures to support our continued movement and growth in this direction, and we need to keep it going.
This year, we’ll have a rebuilding year for pastoral care. With Judy Joest rotating off the Vestry, we are going to look at new structures to support the continued life and development of pastoral care in the church.
Margaret McCrary has agreed to help me by leading the project to preserve and display the fullness of the history and life of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea by collecting, framing, and displaying pictures to hang on the walls of the hall way from the church back to the parish hall (which has been named in Memory of Buddy Hopkins). Soon, we will be calling upon some members of the church to help with this, and we ask that if you have any pictures which express the fullness of the life and history of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea such as baptisms, weddings, special events (Easter egg hunts, pageants, etc), historic events (building consecrations), or history of the church, that you share them with us. We may not be able to use all of them, but Margaret and her committee would like as many options as they can get as they decide how to tell the story of the life and history of St. Peter’s by-the-Sea on that wall in there.
We will be taking on the bishop’s challenge to read the four gospels with him during Lent, and we will be providing some structure to help make that meaningful for you to be provided on Wednesday nights as our Lenten formation offering.
I will be working with a small group of volunteers who want to help realize our dream of hosting a reception to honor our senior citizens of this parish, and it is my hope to make that a reality this spring.
In closing, I’d like to share what I learned about you, about us, this past summer. When Sue Cassady and I were completing our 2nd year of the Congregational Development training, one of the exercises that we had to do was to look around at the people who were visiting and joining St. Peter’s by-the-Sea. In that exercise, we were supposed to learn about what kind of people we are attracting and what that says about our community and our identity. As Sue and I did this work together, we realized that we were attracting an incredible diversity of people to St. Peter’s. We could not identify one single demographic or other characteristic to help us further understand our identity and what people are finding when they come to St. Peter’s and decide to stay.
But then, as we delved more deeply into what we know about this wide diversity of people who are newly attracted to St. Peter’s by-the-Sea, we realized what it was that attracts them. We are a resurrection community. In this world where so much is marked by death and destruction and corruption, we are both a place and community that places our hope in the resurrection, that says we shall not be overcome by hardship or adversity, by death or destruction. We are a church and a people who put our trust in the resurrection of our Lord that shows, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than anything that this old world can throw at us. We are a church and people who are an outward and visible sign of the hope that the Kingdom of God is already with us, even now, and we are going to work to continue to bring it to fruition. We are a church and a people that welcome you, regardless of where you have come from, and we will try to help you bind up your broken heart as so many people have helped us do for ours.
We are a resurrection people. May God give us the grace to continue to grow into this truth in the coming year and the hope to be truly worthy of that name.