The Rector’s Annual Address - The Rev. Joshua D. Walters
Let us pray:
Grant, O Lord, that your Holy Spirit may preside over us now in all our concerns and deliberations for the welfare of this parish. We thank you for all the blessings of the past year, for those who have been joined to us and to the
Church Universal in their baptism into the Faith of Jesus Christ: Thomas Michael Neubauer, Dylan Adams Patton, Charles George Ewald, Tyler Jack Dulberg, Alexander Joseph Pagano, Emily Diane Goodwin, Megan Georgia Goodwin, Isabella Grace Matos, Grace Margaret Murphy, Rylee Lynn Singaram; for the blessing of the marriages of Matthew Csajko to Elise Schmitt and Thomas Csajko to Shaylin Sowers and we pray that we may go together from strength to strength in the year before us. Help us all to dedicate ourselves to you, and to be ready to make sacrifice of time, talent, and treasure for the extension of your kingdom. Guide us, we beseech you, in the choice of our Warden, and members of the Vestry, and may they discharge their duties faithfully. We praise you for those your servants who labored and worshiped here before us and for those who have departed this life since we last met together, especially: Walter Dibbins, Robert Goelz, Sr., Estelle DeRonde, Jean Zimmerman, Elizabeth Middendorff, Ruby Bell, Muriel Meyer, Thomas Smith, Barbara Ellis, Jane Henson, Susan Hoerauf, Margaret “Pat” Zeuthan, Nancy Elliott, and Robert Goelz, Jr. Grant to them eternal rest, O Lord, and let your light perpetual shineupon them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
Almost to the day, I stood here at this lectern addressing you at our first annual meeting together. Then only the rector-elect, it is now official—thanks to the prayers of Bishop Provenzano as well as the very official looking document that hangs in my office. The deal is done, it’s all official, and the work has started.
If last year’s address was about your opportunity to get to know me a little better (I had been with you only two months), this year’s address to you is about numbers; this holy numbers game in which we are living and thriving
in as a community of faith. Some of those numbers are wonderfully heart-warming and some are, if not troubling, most certainly challenging.
The numbers game.
Since our last annual meeting, for the calendar year of 2010, our numbers have been up. In 2009 the average Sunday attendance was just barely 100 people between our two services at 8:00am and 10:30am. In 2010 that number has increased significantly to 126 as the average Sunday attendance for the whole year; with 136 as the average for the program year. Even more exciting than those numbers, is the fact that since September 2010, with the start of the current program year, our average Sunday attendance has been steady at 152 between our two services! Thanks be to God!
In the past week on three different occasions I’ve been asked: to what do I attribute this growth? What have I done? To be honest, I don’t rightly know. I’ve been doing my job to the best of my ability. I know your names, or am learning them, I call when you are sick, listen to your stories and take delight in hearing about your lives. But it’s not just I and folks wanting to meet the new, young minister. You all have had a vital hand in the wonderful growth taking place. Did you know that the average Episcopalian invites someone to church every 25 years? Well, maybe you are cashing in on your 25-year voucher! Thank you for your gracious hospitality that you show to the newest among us. Barely a week goes by in which there isn’t a new or long time returning face worshiping with us. There must be something worth sharing or else folks wouldn’t keep coming back. Isn’t it GOOD to be part of something growing?
In the past year, our worship services and offerings have expanded. Not only with the Sunday offering of two services, the weekly chapel service for the Day School—to which I encourage each of you to attend sometime, you’ll even get to see honest-to-goodness Morning Prayer being prayed—but we have also resumed the timehonored tradition of a mid-week Communion service in our Chapel—even using the eastern-facing altar. But it’s not just the weekly offerings. Our services during Holy Week have expanded with a service available on every day of that sacred week of the church year. The liturgies of the three Holy Days—the Triduum—of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter have expanded and have been tweaked, not only to adapt to the preferences of your new Protestant rector, but also in expanding the liturgical offerings to reflect the great breadth of ways we can worship in our great Anglican tradition. And then there are the steady offerings of baptisms for all those new babies. Our worship life couldn’t be more robust.
For all the expansion taking place in our worship life, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the additional assistance of our new/returning deacon, Betty Belasco. Through her ministerial offerings we have been able to provide a weekly Bible study on Thursday mornings, as well as enhancing the pastoral care that the clergy of this parish are able to provide. I am grateful for her many years of knowledge not only of this particular parish, but of our diocese. I am even more grateful that she also places a premium on pastoral care. Betty is not content to merely do church on a Sunday morning, but wishes to be an active minister for Grace. I am grateful for her devotion and service on our behalf.
In the realm of Christian Education for our children and youth, we are growing. I am enormously thankful that the transition in the Sunday School structure and change in room assignments, as well as the change in our Sunday service schedule has yielded positive results. Our program remains vibrant and the numbers of parents and children in the pews for Communion are on the rise. As a rector, I have been delighted to speak to children on Sunday mornings during the Children’s sermons, which instills in them the knowledge that this church is as much for them as it is for the more senior members of our parish. One special transition in our ministry to the children and youth has been the implementation of a junior youth group, a pre-youth group—and I encourage you to learn
more about that in our Annual Meeting Journal. This pre-youth group is one more way in which we are able to capture and integrate the younger kids into the youth group—effectively creating a feeder program from a younger age.
Since our last meeting I have begun carving out a niche within the life of the diocese. At the invitation of Bishop Provenzano, I was invited to join the Ecumenical Commission of the Diocese of Long Island. In my first meeting
as a member of the commission, we met with the ELCA Lutheran Bishop and his commission to hear their struggles, but more importantly how best these two mainline Protestant denominations can work together as we maintain our ministries within Long Island. Like all Churches, our friends in the Lutheran church are also living with the numbers game.
The numbers game, it continues in another fashion as well. As Nancy so eloquently elaborated, even as so much good is taking place, there remains the perpetual challenge of what it truly costs to maintain full-time ministry. Even with the generous and overwhelming increase in annual pledges—for which you have my unending gratitude-- and even with the austerity budget with which all fat has been trimmed away; money still remains an issue. Quite frankly it remains an issue for both sides of the parking lot. It’s expensive to maintain 6 ½ acres of prime real estate in Massapequa. It’s expensive to do ministry here. I’ll be the first to recognize that supporting a full-time clergyman and his household is no small financial matter: I cost about $150,000 dollars when salary, health care, pension and housing are added up. I am keenly aware that I make up the biggest ticket item in our budget; yet a congregation this size needs a full-time clergyperson and, truth be told, should our population continue to grow, in time we will need another full-time priest… a reality that looms on the horizon.
Likewise, our biggest visible ministry outside the walls of this holy space—the Day School—is also in a period of financial challenges and is struggling with the numbers game. Recruitment and retention are forever a struggle. It is even more profound given that our school is tuition-driven. I am also very aware that this ministry of ours at this time, is largely a ministry to non-parishioners. Living in a good public school system as most of you all do, the thought of paying $9500 per year, even with the 25% discount which I put in place for parishioners still makes it a ‘hard sell’ for the vast majority of this congregation. But how could this change?
Challenging times lie ahead for both sides of our parking lot, and I ask for your prayers and your willingness to help solve the problems. In the fall, the Board of Trustees of the Day School entered a transition in leadership. As of January 1 and at my request, John Caracappa is BOT Chair and President. This is my way of beginning the process of shrinking the “parking lot”. Effectively what will be our road map for the present moment and immediate future, we will have a Warden for School and a Warden for Church. I am extremely grateful for Ron
Staib and John’s willingness to try something new, and for their willingness to add another meeting to their monthly calendars as well as all the calls and emails which they certainly have and will receive.
At the most recent meeting of the vestry, last Tuesday evening, I told your representatives that business as usual cannot continue. We as Grace Church have to begin a period of intense study and discernment as to how we continue to maintain our foothold and our ministries at the corner of Cedar Shore Drive and Merrick Road. I have asked for their blessing in establishing a Strategic Planning Committee to look at member development, our current governance structure, our current financial rubrics as well as the best practices by which we can break cycles of co-dependency and move forward into a hopeful and healthy future as Grace Episcopal Church AND Day School. None of this will be easy, but now is the time to make the changes, for there is no better time than the present to take ownership; just as there is no better time than the present to live into a re-birth for this grand lady of Massapequa and the diocese.
Undoubtedly the challenges that we have before us aren’t all that different from what every generation as had to struggle with, even back in 1844—hey at least we’re still open from Christmas to Easter! (I suppose that could be one way to save money.) This “numbers game” is not new. In the past year I’ve heard harrowing stories from 50 years back about how former treasurers held oil companies “at bay” while token payments were made to make it through another month. I’ve heard stories of a rector’s father-in-law making pay roll for his son-in-law the rector. Money and people are always needed. And it’s not just within our modern context that the Church has had challenges. Looking back throughout the entirety of Christianity there are always challenges of every generation—at least we’re not faced with martyrdom or persecution—even from the earliest days of the church people and money were needed. It’s a fact of the institution.
But let me tell you this: even on the hardest of days I remain hopeful—if at times somewhat sleepless-- even with the odd-cropping up of a growing thatch of wisdom in my brown hair—I have joy in my work with you all. Even as I see my hairline receding like the polar icecaps, the sacrifice is necessary to get to the other side of this place of utmost and astounding potential.
I thank you for your blessings and prayers as you entrust the running of this organization into my youthful care. I thank you for raising up good and faithful leaders to represent you on the vestry. I thank you for your willingness to lift a hand and offer help along the way.
No matter what I am able to do, none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the thousands of hours of volunteering done for everything from the School Board to our brunch immediately following this meeting. You have entrusted a vision into my care; yet I depend on your willingness to follow it through. To my vestry I am most grateful for your wisdom and willingness to be worker bees. To my wardens, I am grateful for your counsel and advice. To my treasurer, I am grateful for your diligence and fiscal prudence. To our clerk, thank you for your
speedy writing! And to all the people who make this document more than just a journal but the work of this church put into real ink, in black and white detail—thank you for your ministries.
My old boss, every time the stewardship season rolled around, would re-hash the same joke. He would say: Church, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The Good news is that we have the money to make our budget. The Bad news is that it’s still in your pocket! The good news for us is that whatever challenges that come ahead of us in the year to come, the good news is that each dollar and every answer to our questions are in this room, within this faith community. The bad news, no not the bad news, the other good news is that God will be calling you to put those talents and treasure toward his will and purposes.
I could not finish my address without thanking a critical partner in my ministry—my dear bride, Emily. Back on a frigid day, on January 20, 2007, she let me be ordained to the priesthood on her birthday, knowing that it was the only date which the Bishop of Indianapolis could make the visitation. The love, charity and grace with which she let me hone in on her special day has been a touching symbol for what she has allowed me to do as your rector. I am unimaginably grateful for her willingness to be my counsel, a steady support, patient ear—as well as a welcome voice of challenge in my own pursuit of a higher vision for this parish. And I am thankful for my children, who, despite rustling through all my books and papers and who can never leave anything of mine alone—I am thankful for giving me the opportunity to be their dad and playmate.
I thank this parish for your generosity of spirit and the love with which you have made my family and me a part of yours.
The challenges do lie ahead, but so do innumerable joys. And with God’s help and yours, Grace will carry the day. And let us never forget that all that we do is to God’s glory.
AMEN
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