Vestry News and Review

By Chris Reynolds

We who have made a commitment to being a part of St. Martin’s, have done so for all kinds of reasons, most of them – I am pretty sure – spiritual. For me, music has always been a driving force. The opportunity to sing favorite hymns and to learn new ones, and to feel a community with others who have found their way into the choir, is special. Service on the Vestry is service that grows out of love for the community, because – aside from the opening and closing prayers – there is relatively little that is spiritual about these meetings. The analogy to sausage-making has come up more than once. Among the regular activities is the approval of the Draft Agenda (setting the course of the next two+ hours), and a vote to approve the Minutes of the last meeting, often with minor corrections.

Since I came on to the Vestry more than a year ago, we have also had, as one of our first items, a discussion of a chapter of Stephanie Speller’s thought-provoking book about racism in our church, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. The discussions have on the whole been positive if not always easy. How could they be? In this past meeting we dealt with Chapter 6, which addresses kenosis, or “self-emptying,” and practices that help us to recognize the cycle of attachments to the status quo and to find steps towards breaking those attachments. No, not easy.

In this meeting we again were visited by Diana Glick and Jerry Hulbert, from the Committee on Social Justice and Outreach. I find them both so impressive in their commitment to serve the mission of their Committee and all of us. They are leading in a moment of transition, and transitions, as we realize at the start of each meeting in our discussions of The Church Cracked Open, are hard. The issue as I see it (and I come late to this discussion), is how do we “do” outreach as a parish? What direction should the Matthew 25 process follow? How should available funding be allocated? While these issues may be seen as simple matters of dividing up available funds, such decisions go to the core of who we are as a parish. And so, they are not at all simple. Short-term decisions and long-term goals should align.

To me one of the surprising moments of this past meeting was the news that Interim Assistant Rector Casey Kloehn Dunsworth would be departing for the San Diego area in June. Her last Sunday at St. Martin’s will be June 12. How can that be?? (Casey, you just arrived!) In another personnel matter, the rector’s request to approve Debbie Hawkins as a priest associate was approved unanimously. We are so blessed to have such clergy in our midst.

In the days since the Vestry met, we have had another – yet another – school shooting. On my Facebook feed today, I was grateful to see a message from St. Martin’s. I will close with it:

We offer our prayers once again, with the reminder that one does not pray in lieu of summoning political courage, but in preparation for doing so – and to ask God’s help for us to become the change we want to see.

 –  Chris Reynolds