My Sisters and Brothers,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. It was good to see so many of you present with us this past Sunday and after the service to hear the summary of the Congregational Assessment Tool survey you took. While that was the first I saw the results, in many ways I was not surprised by some of the findings. The reason is because as much as we want to think our congregation is unique, we have far more in common than we would like to think. The survey raises three priorities for the congregation. The first was to “develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to reach new people and incorporate them into the life of the church.” I cannot think of a congregation that does not, while perhaps not calling it a priority, says this is not one of their main concerns. Over my nearly forty years of ordained ministry, this has been true in every place I have served. We all want the church to grow, but far too often the understanding is that this must be done by the clergy. As I have pointed out to congregations before, if the priest goes out and invites one person a week who comes to experience the church, there is a chance of adding fifty-two people in a year. If however the congregation consists of twenty-five people and they invite one person a week, One thousand-three hundred people will experience our community. Clergy are important, or at least we would like to think we are, but many faith communities have been showing growth either without or with little clergy presence. The second priority was to “make necessary changes to attract families with children and youth
to our church.” Again, there are very few churches that do not desire this. I have however just this week heard of a few who do not. The reason being, they have looked at the demographics where they are located and found that there are very few young families with children living in the neighborhoods where they are and most of the congregants are in the sixties and above. As a result, they do not see the value of putting their limited resources into attracting people who are unlikely to become members. On the other hand, look at what happened here at Calvary when you decided children and youth are important. The inclusion of what our youth are doing to the Facebook page and other news is a great start, not to mention the wonderful work of Alyse and Debbie.
The last of the three priorities were to “Strengthen the pastoral response of the church in serving people in times of need” Again, this has been common to nearly every congregation I have heard of. In my ministry, I and other clergy have often heard comments like “You didn’t visit my wife who was in the hospital.” When asked “did you notify the church?” we hear, “well no, but I am sure someone did.” One of the gifts of the spirit to clergy is not clairvoyance. You were blessed with many years of ministry by Mother T.J. who had time to get to know you and know about you. It will take time for your next rector to do the same. In the meantime, and after, if you are in need or hear of someone who is, let the church office know. It is very important that we all
communicate. Far too often, when things drop through the cracks, as it is said, misinformation gets spread around creating more unrest.
One other finding of the survey “indicates that many people feel as if a small group of people makes the majority of the decisions and that leaders of the church are not representative of the membership.” Again, this is a common complaint heard in churches and society. When the Vestry met two months ago, and I began speaking of the need to nominate people, I was told that for a number of years, it was very difficult to find people willing to serve. How often do we hear people complain about how our state and federal governments run, but they do not vote and are even less likely to run for office or notify their elected officials how they feel about issues? We have two upcoming vacancies on the Vestry and four openings for convention deputies and four alternates. Often in the past, the outgoing Vestry has struggled to find replacements for each
vacancy and when they can only nominate the minimum number needed, it looks like only a small group is running everything. We found this true at our last Diocesan Convention where the nominating committee had to plead with people to have enough to fill open positions. We only had one or two where there were more candidates than vacancies to hold an actual election. Please consider running for office and volunteering to work with the ministries of your church. Just let me or your Senior Warden, Liz Alexander, know of your willingness to serve.
Peace,
Bryant+
