Below you can find the Vestry News and Review, a monthly message from the Vestry. These are sent out periodically via our newsletter and posted here.
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Vestry News and Review, message from the Vestry Sept. 29, 2024:
It has been an eventful few months for your Vestry. After Colette Chabbott resigned in April to travel, Anthony Amato left in early August to go to seminary in Virginia, after having taught a class for several months and given a lovely sermon. Both had served as Clerk: Gabe Avila stepped in to take over those duties.
The big news has been the plan to restore the stained-glass window in the ceiling. The need for this has hung over the Vestry (pun intended!) for the last several years, prompting much discussion and budget worries as well as the formation of a temporary task force on the window. We are fortunate that we can borrow from reserves to get the work done while beginning to discuss capital needs in the years to come. You can read more about the window here.
The need to restore the window and other capital needs have led to the beginning of a discernment process around capital needs. A Vestry workgroup has looked at the efforts of several other parishes, including two with quite different experiences and results, but each exploring the role of the church in its community and their vision for the parish over the decades to come. This is the beginning of a discussion that will involve the entire parish as we attempt to envision St. Martin’s not only at 75 but at 100. More to come on this.
The budget is a constant of Vestry discussions. Coming out of the pandemic, St. Martin’s faced difficult budgets for several years, running operating deficits. One-time solutions got us through it. For this year, as the Treasurer has reported elsewhere, the generosity of the parish, postponing some expenses and careful stewardship by many has brought us closer to being “in the black”, albeit relying again on one-time solutions. The Treasurer and the Budget and Finance Committee have been crucial to getting things in order. And now the work of planning for next year’s budget begins.
As Junior Warden, I serve to connect the work of Building and Grounds to the Vestry. That means I get to listen to the discussions of the volunteers who make up the Building and Grounds committee. When you walk around the beautiful, park-like campus of St. Martin’s or see well-kept buildings instead of things that need fixing, be grateful to those volunteers who are called to contribute to making it so. As any homeowner can tell you, that sense of tidy calm does not just happen, it takes effort and attention.
Sometimes people think the church is the rector and the bishop. But what strikes me time and again, as an usher greets us and then I see the choir and flowers at the altar and the linens waiting for the priest and the tables laid out for fellowship, is how many parishioners give of their time and talents to make our parish a welcoming place. We would not have an Episcopal church without a Rector and a Bishop, but we would not have St. Martin’s without the efforts of us all.