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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
Rector's Charge To Vestry
29 January, 2006
Welcome to all of you here today on our Vestry Sunday. At this time, in place of a sermon I will be giving you my charge to Vestry which is part 1 of our Annual Vestry meeting which will continue following our worship today after a short luncheon to which you are all invited.
Today is a time to celebrate all of the ministry which happens at and through St. Andrew's Church. It is a time to look forward to this new year and to the opportunities and challenges which we shall meet. First of all, I want to say how grateful I am to minister along with so many parishioners who give of their time and talent and treasure to ensure that holy work is done here. St. Andrew's is a caring community which reaches out in service to others. It is a privilege to be your rector.
We have seen some changes this past year - most notably in our staff. We said goodbye to Rose and Dave Dickey who had been with us for over 30 years and who left because of health reasons. The good news is that Rose seems to be doing well and she and Dave are enjoying their well-deserved retirement.
The other staff member who we said goodbye to was our Curate, Cheryl Fricker who had been with us for her two-year curacy. She will be inducted at her new parish of St. Aidan's in Oakville this Thursday evening at 7 P.M. and any and all St. Andrew's parishioners who would like to attend the induction are very welcome. We wish her well in her new Parish and are sure that they will appreciate her as much as we did.
The decision by vestry last year to not continue with a curate after Cheryl's departure meant that we went from having two full-time clergy to just one and this reality has had an impact on me.
I am so grateful that I am able to share some of the load with Paul Whitehouse who has been constant in his service and in his commitment to this parish. There are innumerable ways in which Paul shows his consideration week by week and year by year. We certainly couldn't continue in the same way without him and I thank him now.
We have been fortunate to have Canon Elaine Hooker accept the position of Honorary Assistant here at St. Andrew's and she has already proved her usefulness in providing some children's ministry and also pastoral ministry to some of our people who are home-bound or in nursing homes. She is learning more about this warm community and has told me that she has been made to feel very welcome.
This year, God willing, Jean Ruttan-Yates will join us in ordained ministry as a Deacon in ministry. There will be a motion at this vestry affirming our support of her candidacy for ordination. The recovery of the ancient office of Deacon in the Anglican Church is a sign of our concern for the world, because the ministry of the deacon is primarily one of reaching out to the poor, the lonely and the suffering outside of the walls of the Church. Jean is already engaged in this type of ministry through her work as co-chair of the outreach committee, her work at the Grimsby Benevolent Fund and her work with youth in the community at F.O.R.T. as well as in many other ways.
This year many of you will have seen the Bishop's charge to synod which was produced on a DVD and which we showed on Synod Sunday during the service so that all parishioners would have the chance to hear the Bishop. I was extremely glad that the Bishop decided to make his charge available to so wide an audience especially as the vision is one which is essential to the spiritual health of our own parish.
Most Anglicans are familiar with the concept of the three-legged stool. Our Church is built upon the firm foundation of Scripture, Reason and Tradition. Our Bishop, Ralph Spence adopted the familiar model of the three-legged stool to outline his vision for the Diocese. The three legs of this stool are Leadership, Evangelism and Stewardship.
We all know that all three legs of a stool are necessary to provide a stable base. So also, are the three legs of this vision necessary for the future of our Parish.
Firstly, I want to talk about leadership. Empowering Leadership was one of the eight quality characteristics of the Natural Church Development program which we launched into over a year ago. I am happy to say that in the NCD survey, it was one of our strongest areas along with Gift-oriented Ministry. Our strength in both of these areas point out that St. Andrew's is a place which encourages and enables many people to be engaged in ministry. Some of the ways that parishioners do that is through the various committees which exist here including Finance, Parish Life, Stewardship, Property, Cemetery Board, Evangelism, Newsletter committee or other groups such as the Anglican Church Women, Altar Guild, server's guild, Sunday School, Choir, Sides persons and greeters, and worship ministries such as readers or intercessors. There are many other ways in which parishioners serve God in their daily lives which is supported by the week by week spiritual nourishment they receive through St. Andrew's Church. Part of this charge is the challenge to all parishioners to engage in ministry and to consider taking up a leadership position in ministry.
Essential to the leadership at St. Andrew's is the parish council which brings the heads of all committees and groups together once a month to advise the corporation on matters pertaining to many aspects of the parish. The corporation is the executive body of St. Andrew's and takes on the responsibility to make decisions and act on behalf of the parish. Last year St. Andrew's created the two positions of deputy rector's warden and deputy people's warden to serve on the corporation along with the wardens and the rector, thus increasing the size of the corporation from three to five people. This has been a very positive experience for the corporation and it helps to ensure that there are successors for the very important wardens positions. This year, our Rector's Warden, Norman Preece is retiring and Olga Brooman will succeed him. Our new rector's warden is Lil Haworth. We welcome her on board.
Part of our commitment to Leadership will be to continue to enable the people of the parish to meaningfully serve God in ministries at and through this parish.
Evangelism is another leg of the stool. Fortunately we have had enough time to get used to the word again, and to make it our own. The connotation which the word once had with televangelists and with aggressive conversion is all but gone.
For Anglicans, evangelism means sharing, it mean invitation and it means welcome. It is about sharing the good news of your own faith and what it has meant to you. Several members of this congregation have attended evangelism workshops or will attend them this year including the Magnetic Church conference. We have already put into place some of the concepts which we have learned. The Newsletter Committee and our Drew's News is one of the results.
Making St. Andrew's accessible and attractive to more people is one way in which we can share the good news that God's love is for everyone and that this love is known through a relationship with Jesus Christ. We will be looking at new ways to enable the people of St. Andrew's to be engaged in evangelism in the future. It is important to remember that our purpose in this is not simply to get more people in the pews, but rather, to let more people experience a spiritual awakening through faith in Christ.
The third leg of the stool is Stewardship. I am so grateful to the few who have given so much energy and time and talent to our Stewardship Committee. Stewardship is the call to each one of us to use our resources wisely and in accordance with God's plan. Those resources include how we spend our money, how we use our god-given talents and how we spend our time. This parish has long been one in which people have given of their time and their talent as evidenced by the many volunteers which we have. Many have given generously of their money as well.
However, according to good figures, St. Andrew's Church, in the past, has fallen below the Diocesan average in givings per household. And the figure for our diocese has been below that of the national average. This, remarkably, in such a relatively affluent part of our country!
Stewardship has grown in this parish over the last several years to the point that this last year we exceeded our budget for givings in 2005 and were even able to repay some of what we had to redeem from capital. The good news is that we are definitely heading in the right direction. There has been a phenomenal turn-around here due to a great extent to the faithful few who have taken up the challenge to ask us all to be good stewards. I would like to personally thank especially Olga Brooman, Eileen Hewwitt and Terry Webster who have chaired the Stewardship Committee over the past several years. And I would like to thank the rest of the committee who have had the courage to get on the phone or talk to people face-to-face about stewardship.
It is important to realize that this committee is working on all of our behalf. It is even more important to realize that Stewardship isn't primarily about asking people for money, but it is inviting people to participate in the dream that God has for the world and for our place in it. Stewardship means that in this place ministry happens; the Church is reaching out to our community, to those in need; the Church is gathered together in worship and people's lives are changed in spiritual renewal because people are good stewards.
Before I close I would like to say thank you to the rest of our staff here at St. Andrew's. Dave Barlowe is our new custodian who has had a sharp learning curve in following Rose Dickey. Diane Tepper is, in many ways, the face of St. Andrew's to those who call during the week. I am grateful that it is a very friendly face. I thank her for the million ways in which she makes my life easier. Thanks, too, to our organist and music director, Tom Naylor whose amazing musical gifts and insight add tremendously to the spirituality of our worship.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Katherine who takes care of me and supports me. I could not do my ministry without her. And thanks to our daughter, Louisa, who gives us new insight through her fresh, almost ten-year-old eyes.
May God bless us in our efforts through Leadership, Evangelism and Stewardship at St. Andrew's Church.
