Last night at vestry, we had some really good conversations around the changes in our parish, and in the religious landscape all around us. A couple of you have even forwarded me a recent article in the Wall Street Journal discussing the trends in church attendance, especially during and after the pandemic. While it is easy to focus on decline and perhaps despair, it is equally tempting to fall into a false sense of optimism that things are just going to go back to the way they were twenty years ago. Neither of these reflect the call we have as a church: to stand with one foot in this world, and one foot in God’s Kingdom. One eye on reality as it is today, and one eye on the hope that God is with us in whatever form the Church takes in the future. So what does this mean for St. Michael’s?

I would be lying if I knew how all of this change in our churches and culture was going to play out, or even the extent of the changes that will come to St. Michael’s. If you go back to last week’s Sword article , I talk a little about the bigger picture. And last night we talked a bit more about what St. Michael’s is experiencing and how we will begin to prepare for the next phase of our community’s life. While our Sunday attendance of inperson and virtual worshippers combined is about the same as our in-person attendance before the pandemic, there are still key differences in how many volunteers and how much a volunteer is willing to do these days, and the frequency of attendance for active members. The financial picture is still unknown as we are finishing our Stewardship program this year, so I ask you to complete your pledge if you have not and help us plan to the best of our ability next year. 

The vestry voted last night to reduce the number of vestry members to 3 people per year, plus a Jr and Senior Warden; that will totally eleven voting members, plus the nonvoting members like the Rector, Treasurer, and Secretary. (Our by-laws allow for this change with a 2/3 vote of Vestry, to not have a vestry smaller than nine people) We are preparing our vestry slate now, and in February after that new vestry has been elected, the vestry and I will begin creating vestry committees/teams that will focus on several key areas of our parish. My goal is not to identity which areas need work…. that would not be the best approach. My goal is to identify the areas of our parish that bring us joy and energy- and invest in them even more! Which programs feed and nourish us and give us joy in loving God and our neighbor, and which programs are we doing out of obligation or because “a church should have this.” I hope we can find the two or three things that we love to do, and do them more, and allow the other things to end gracefully.

One instance this year is the Thanksgiving meal. I have been asked by a few people why we are not having the meal this year. It was initially on our fall calendar, with hopes of bringing this ministry back after a year break. However, we are unsure if the navy recruits could attend under the pandemic’s restrictions, unsure if having 150-200 people in the community room at the same time eating was a smart idea at St. Michael’s, but mostly unsure whether we would have the volunteer power to implement such a huge undertaking. In the end, I determined that it would be near impossible with the level of volunteers willing to help to implement this ministry this year. Perhaps, after another year of rest and the field fallow, there will be energy and joy in creating something new for Thanksgiving at St. Michael’s; I welcome that conversation. For this year, I encourage each of you to spend Thanksgiving with your family and friends, give generously through the various outreach and charity programs around (including the reverse Advent calendar at St. Michael’s) so that the hungry can be fed, and let us each begin praying together as St. Michael’s reshapes itself going forward into the future.

The world in which we live is an anxious one, isn’t it? So many things are different now than two years ago, twenty years ago, and the sheer change over the past century is staggering. Remember: what does God ask of us? Only faithfulness. And we can breathe deeply knowing that God will indeed be faithful to us.

See you in church,

Jesse+