The vestry is the elected governing body of the church. St. Mary’s vestry consists of 12 lay members of the congregation and the rector. Four members are elected to three-year terms each year at the annual meeting. The Vestry typically meets on the second Tuesday of most months. You will find regular updates from them here.
Our last Vestry report, which was posted on the St. Mary’s website in January, reflected back on the Christmas and Advent seasons, along with the rise of the Omicron variant back in November. We were—admittedly—a little disheartened by the extreme weather disasters and pivots back to remote activities that ushered in the new year. The joke about 2022 as 2020 too felt more cruel than funny, and we wondered how we would endure yet another “unprecedented” stage of the pandemic. So far throughout the months of 2022, our Vestry meetings have continued to be illuminating moments of community, shared hope, and excitement for this year. We remember that it is a rare and wonderful privilege to be a part of such a caring and gracious group.
Back at our December meeting, Jesse W. visited us to discuss an annual audit of St. Mary’s bookkeeping and financial practices and to give us recommendations for improvements based on overall best practices. We were happy to hear that everything looks good, and also to consider certain things that were put on hold during the early days of the pandemic that can now feasibly be reincorporated into our functioning. Jesse also visited us at our January meeting to report about the annual budget, and we are excited to begin 2022 with a balanced budget. We send a big thank you to Jesse for conducting the audit and for his work with the budget. St. Mary’s financial strength and stability continues to stem in large part from our parishioners’ faithful giving.
In January 2022, we received a generous gift of $400,000 from parishioners to make a transformative impact on our outreach ministry and our children and youth ministry. At our February meeting, the Vestry voted to invest these funds while the details of how to use them are still being worked out. We will be working with the donors to create a structure to use the funds in a prudent and transformative way at St. Mary’s. This is an exceptional blessing--thank you so much!
Also at our December meeting, we discussed the Episcopal Church’s “Becoming Beloved Community” document and our next steps in the journey towards racial healing, reconciliation, and justice. We recognize that the journey is more of a “becoming” since it is a long-term, open-ended process. It aims to move ever-towards an ideal, but its nebulous nature is also part of what makes it so difficult. Our discussion about racial justice is ongoing, and we are looking into ways that we can specifically focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion at St. Mary’s this year. This issue and the broader “becoming” of the St. Mary’s community continues to be at the forefront of the Vestry’s goals, and we will keep you updated about our ideas as we move forward.
The season of Epiphany is always a season of change for the Vestry as we say goodbye to our Senior Warden and three other members who finish their terms, and we welcome four new members. We want to thank Carolyn G. one more time for being our Senior Warden this past year. We will miss her thoughtful leadership, along with Don L., Peter V., and Lydia F. We welcome new members: Flossie B., Hillary K., Don M., and Lisa K. This is always a bittersweet time, but the conviviality and closeness of the Vestry’s annual retreat the last weekend in February usually serves to transition us into the new Vestry year with renewed enthusiasm and a firm sense of our group identity. Last year, we held the retreat entirely on Zoom, and this year, we had of course been hoping for in-person retreat. Due to the fluctuating COVID situation though, we’ve decided to postpone a partially in-person retreat to the first weekend in April. While this seems distant, we know that time goes by so quickly—we’re now already looking towards Lent and the coming of spring!
Finally, we want to thank you all for your patience during the long process of updating our ventilation system—which is DONE! (Or at least it has been turned on and is working. There may be some fine tuning to do). This calls for songs of thanksgiving, celebration, singing together, and seeing each other in-person again. Or perhaps we can do all of these things while attending one of the services in the sanctuary with its new and improved, fresher air. Thanks be to God!
