“The Vision Thing”
I think the 2006-07 program year here at St. John’s will be somewhat a year of introspection—a year of “putting our own masks on first,” again, not as an end in itself for a parish inappropriately focused on inreach and not on outreach, but only to make us healthier and therefore more fit to assist in doing our portion of the work of the larger Church in the Saginaw County community. With that as a perspective, I’d like to talk for a few moments about what we around here are coming to call “The Vision Thing.”
I’m not telling tales out of school when I note that between Easter 2003, when Rich Winters moved on to Indianapolis, and Autumn ‘04, when Darren Elin accepted our Call to be Rector, St. John’s Parish experienced a period of what can only be called stagnation. Without going into detail, I can mention that much of the receptiveness and openness to new ideas that is supposed to be developed and fostered during an interimship, did not really begin to occur in our own case until Darren’s arrival. So the Rector and your elected Vestrymen and –women have spent many of the past months bringing St. John’s up to the starting line, so to speak, and only now are we ready to move ahead—but ahead toward what end, and toward what goals? Well, that’s where we all come in.
As you are aware, the Parish has engaged the services of Christine Reinhard, who is a liturgical architectural consultant. She is helping us look at the possibilities for this building, to make it more welcoming and accessible, both to present members and potential future members. Her next meeting with us is next Sunday, October 15th, at 1:00, here in the nave. These are not work sessions; these are exploratory idea sessions based on slide presentations Christine makes, showing us what other congregations have done both in new worship spaces and in historic worship spaces like this one, to make them fit parish life in the 21st Century. Her job is to expose us to the broad range of the possible.
During these meetings, I’ve learned that this building was designed for a time when the Episcopal Church was a Morning Prayer church, not a Holy Communion church. Only rarely did the congregation leave the nave and come up into the chancel and the sanctuary. But now that we have become a Eucharistic church, the space does not function as well for us, especially at large Services like Easter and Christmas, when the altar party are practically tripping over each other for lack of room. And I have come to recognize the severe barriers this building puts up to those who are mobility-impaired. For instance, our handicap elevator in the north vestibule is not strong enough to lift an adult male in an Amigo-type wheelchair. And due to our typical 19th Century layout, the choir are singing facing each other, and not projecting their beautiful music out over the congregation. And as you have heard before, our stained glass windows are in need of major, expensive renovation or they will simply one by one collapse under their own weight some day. What to do?
But in any event, the church building is only a tool: it’s a worship aid, not a thing to be worshipped in and of itself. This building isn’t St. John’s Parish; we—you and me—we are St. John’s Parish.
Now before we can profitably discuss our worship space as a tool, we need to ask ourselves how we intend to use this tool, and what we need it to enable us to do. Before we can come to any conclusions about St. John’s the building, we need to come to some conclusions about St. John’s the congregation, as one of the hundred or so worshipping communities in Saginaw, County, Michigan.
These questions and issues are being put to you now because the parish leadership feels we all need to hear, from a layman such as myself, the fact that we will need to re-think pretty much everything about ourselves and our parish life if we are to have a second 150 years of success.
Now the job of your Rector and your elected vestry members is to lead—but only in the direction and only toward the ends that the congregation itself—after weighing the pro’s and con’s and after evaluating all the avenues open to us—chooses to go. That’s why this visioning process is so important. The leadership needs to hear from all the elements of the Parish about what you like, what you don’t like, what concessions you’ll make to encourage numerical and spiritual growth, and (not incidentally) what you will support financially and what you won’t.
We are now dipping into our parish saving account at a rate of about $100,000 or so each year without even doing much-needed building repairs, and that can’t go on for too many more years if we are to survive.
Please involve yourself in this visioning process: come to a meeting or two and hear the discussions, or at least routinely seek out somebody on the committee who can keep you posted. Read the Messenger articles. Give us your feedback, but do it now, before any recommendations or decisions get made. If a consensus begins to develop to do this, that or the other, let us know right away if you’re on board, or if you’re not. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re not willing to share your thoughts and ideas with us as we try to discern our collective vision, it seems to me you forfeit your right to object at the end. The thing we absolutely can’t have, is people who are dissatisfied with the status quo but who still won’t entertain the possibility of change. In our Gospel reading, the Lord compliments the unjust steward—not because he was in the right, but because at least he acted: he did something besides bemoan his fate.
So at bottom, what are the vestry and the rector and the consultant and the vision committee trying to do? We are trying to discern a consensus among the congregation about what’s best for St. John’s Parish in the long haul. Notice I said we want to discern a consensus, not to build a consensus toward any particular outcome: Nobody around here has any hidden agenda, and by making public anything and everything that’s going on, we hope any level of anxiety will be lowered, not heightened. Remember: the parish leadership work for you, not the other way around.
What we really do want, is to learn what you all—guided, we hope, in no small measure by the Holy Spirit—believe we must collectively accomplish so that we can get our own masks on straight, to give us the opportunity to then turn and help those around us in this community like we have been doing for the last 150 years. Do problems lie ahead? Maybe. But just maybe those problems are opportunities we haven’t quite figured out how to get the best of yet; and maybe our glass is still at least half full.
It is written in the Book of Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” During this upcoming program year we hope we can develop our 21st Century vision so that some day we can hand a vibrant, healthy St. John’s Parish on to future generations, just the way it was handed to us.
I hope to see you at the vision committee meeting on November 12th. Bring an open mind, and bring your best ideas. Join us for Potluck, we’ll provide the main dish. If your last name begins with A – M, bring a salad or side dish, if it begins with N – Z, bring a dessert. See you then!
Jeff Endean
Jr. Warden