A Report from the Wardens
Your Vestry at Work
April 5, 2022
Over the past two years, it was necessary for us, as a church community, to curtail virtually all of our in-person activities, or at least move them to a virtual space. This involved pain and sacrifice, yet it served to keep us healthy during the worst of the pandemic. During that time, your elected vestry focused mostly on the issues that we had to confront in order to keep us together as one body, despite all the hardships. Having now come through that difficult time, the vestry has been praying, discerning, and discussing what lies ahead for Memorial Church, as it appears that we can begin to do many things more “normally” again.
We have been asking ourselves what God is calling us to do as leaders, and, by extension, what God is calling Memorial Church to do. Over two sessions in February and March, we engaged in a retreat to consider our individual roles as vestry members, our working relationship with the rector, and to establish mutual ministry goals, or priority areas to work on, for the year ahead. We also reached out to a quite a few members of the congregation with questions about what has been and remains important to you about this community of faith.
We came away from this process with strong perceptions about our shared experience of Memorial Church:
o Our membership cares deeply about Memorial, and feels a firm sense of shared values. We have found our center, and we treasure our sense of mission.
o The strength of our commitment to our mission of justice and inclusion keeps us coming back to Memorial as a place where we feel we belong.
o The “stickiness” of our commitment to our mission has drawn many of us back to Memorial at times when, for various reasons, we have been temporarily drawn away.
o Our collective commitment to the mission of Memorial may be, at least at times, stronger than our commitment to worshipping together. (We realize this may be a triggering statement for some folks. Please know that this was our observation, and that it is shared with you devoid of judgment.)
o We may not be able to be everybody’s church always. (Again, no judgment.)
o It is important to invite people to have a role in carrying out the mission. Memorial is what it is because that tradition took root here.
With the understanding that it is the job of a church to 1) gather people together, 2) transform them, and 3) send them out into the world to do God’s work, we established three attainable mutual ministry goals that as a vestry, together with the rector and congregation, we will endeavor to achieve during the remainder of this year. They are:
o Improve the organization, information, and format of the church’s web site, to make it more reflective of the scope of Memorial’s ministries, more useful for internal and external communication, and a more effective tool for inviting people to come in;
o Enhance our youth programs, aiming to include children across the age spectrum;
o Revive regular adult formation programming, with regular get-togethers for families of all descriptions to work, learn, and play together.
Finally, the members vestry, after prayerful discernment, agreed to take leadership in one or more specific areas vital to our forward momentum, as follows:
o Welcoming newcomers and returners
o Alice Peake, Sarah Rice, Bill Roberts
o Christian formation – children and adults
o Sara Rice, Ryan Sturm, Kaite Vaught
o Stewardship Campaign, 2022-23
o John McIntyre, Alice Peake, Stacy Wells
o Transformation of our worship space (continuing the pandemic-interrupted work that began with removing the plaques and changing the altar art work)
o John McIntyre, Alice Peake
o Liaison to the Guy T. Hollyday Justice and Reparations Initiative, and to Linden Park Apartments
o Keenan Dworak-Fisher, Steve Howard
o Liaison to the Buildings and Grounds Committee
o Beth Torres, Stacy Wells
o Liaison to the The Samaritan Community
o Wendy Yap
It is our hope, as your wardens, that we have laid the groundwork for moving ahead in the remainder of 2022 with the “gladness and singleness of heart” for which we pray at the conclusion of each Holy Eucharist. We pledge to keep in touch. We ask you to prayerfully consider what part you will play as we nurture this holy ground that God has given us, that we might spread God’s love in the world.
Bill Roberts
Senior Warden
Stacy Wells
Junior Warden