By Nick Buxton

Being on Vestry was never really on my radar. It sounded like too much internal bureaucracy and too hierarchical, which didn’t sit well with my slightly anarchic activist tendencies. I was happy to be a mainly Sunday worshipper and if I had any spare time preferred to dedicate it to Care for God’s Creation, Godly Play and the occasional evening study group. The last thing I wanted to do was to dive into the internal workings of the church, let alone confront my lifelong aversion to budgets and spread sheets.

For a while I had a good excuse to say no– my young children making any extra commitments either stressful or fruitless – but those excuses ran out as the kids got older and a persuasive call one day by Janet Lane somehow led me to say yes. Even so, on the first Vestry retreat I felt out of place. Not Christian enough, not Churchy enough, not Californian enough.

Three years on, as I term out, I have come to appreciate in a way I didn’t before the immense hard work, heart, commitment, soul that goes into sustaining our church – by the clergy and an amazing pool of lay leaders. Week after week, month after month, St Martin’s members are meeting, discussing, preparing and working to build our beloved community within and outside the confines of our actual church. Enlivening our worship, developing new ways to make our church more inclusive and welcoming, ensuring our finances are healthy, investing time and love into our outreach and social justice work, caring for our ‘sacred’ grounds. Some of the work is visible but so much is not.

I feel proud of some of the Vestry’s achievements in the last 3 years: the way we stepped out in faith to welcome two refugee families to Davis, investing in becoming a first Zero-Carbon Church, expanding our ministry to kids and young people with the appointment of Alex Leach, among many others.

But perhaps more than the achievements, I have been touched most by the quiet care, thoughtfulness and love that I have seen shown by other members of the Vestry as they discuss the agenda every month. It is refreshing to be in a space where I can feel that everyone’s priority is not themselves, but beyond themselves – trying to discern what is best for a community, the body of Christ. There have of course been some mistakes too, tensions and conflicts that I wish we had dealt with differently. There are issues I wish got more attention. We remain flawed human beings despite our best intentions.

But I have always felt an overriding commitment to our church to see it live out its call to build God’s kingdom. At a time when our nation is so divided, when injustice is so deep, when our climate is destabilised, when fear and hate are on the rise, that a small community here in Davis is so committed to walking a different path is deeply encouraging. It even makes reviewing budgets worthwhile.