With the Muslim Call to Prayer still ringing in my ears, let me begin by saying how blessed I was for those few weeks I was away recently in the Middle East. I have returned not a changed person, but certainly someone with a broader appreciation of what it means to be a Christian in countries that are predominantly Muslim, but perhaps more importantly with a guarded optimism along the prospects for interfaith dialogue. I do believe that there is potential for Christ Church to expand its horizon for ministry, and I look forward to your reaction to my presentations over the course of the next three Sundays.
These Annual Meetings give us a chance to thank God for this parish’s faithfulness. My remarks are something like a “State of the Parish” address, and I have no intention of disguising my enthusiasm for this parish, its ministries, and its people. The leadership we have just thanked and elected for service on the Vestry has accomplished and will accomplish great things for Jesus. The staff is talented, dedicated, and unbelievably hardworking. Read the reports to fully appreciate what the Vestry and the staff and all of you have accomplished in your leadership and the engagement of your gifts, your response to opportunities for ministry, as well as hundreds of others not here this morning but who treasure the experience of God’s work. You all should know how fiercely loyal I am to you and how proud I am to be your rector. Being recognized and receiving thanks should not be our primary motivation for doing God’s work, but I will share with you how frosted I was when we were excluded from a list of parishes who are doing great work published by the Diocese, and I mounted my high horse to say to diocesan leaders who should have known better that there is no other parish in the diocese that expends more time, energy, and money for the wellbeing of others, whether it be Rummage & Benevolence, Christmas Baskets, Heifer, Soup Kitchen, Meals at Home, Teddy Bear Sunday, Lost Boys of the Sudan support, St. Michaels’ Church in Renk, Sudan, and La Esparanza parish in Southeast Mexico, to say nothing of individual parishioners who serve on Episcopal Charities boards or other non-profit boards or who serve as volunteers in those charities’ programs or who support them financially. Not to mention that there is no finer choir program or church school program or acolytes or altar guild or flower guild in the whole of this diocese, not to mention that the participation of our clergy and laity on boards and commissions of the diocese. We don’t do what we do in order to be praised, but I reserve the right to be proud of what this parish and its parishioners accomplish in the name of the Lord. If I have a “State of the Parish” theme, that’s it. These ministries and the welcome we provide for all who wish to be part of this family and the beauty of this worship define us in a way that is both uniquely Christian and broadly compassionate and humanitarian. In many ways, we are privileged people and because we are people to whom much has been given, we are also people of whom much is expected, and we are delivering.
At the risk of excluding anyone, I want to read the names of all who wrote reports, all who are staff, and all who serve on the Vestry. Please stand and stay standing until the list has been concluded: Melanie Cody, Elisha Gray, Carol Schroeder, Jeremy Farmer, Patti Snickenberger (in obvious absentia), Josh Walters, Rick Jones, Jim McGee, Steve Hudson, Liz Lind, Curt Voges, Rick Potter, Elise Covey, Dietrich Knoer, Melly Turner (on sabbatical), Sylvia and Phil Adams, Nina Gray, Jen MacRitchie, Susie Sprowl, Richard Clemmitt, Jane Whitesides, Gail Hodges, Kristen Koepfgen, Bob and Barbara Spencer, Robin Anstaett, Tom Kuhns, Susan Garland, Julie Flood, Deb Emry, Katy Knoer, Gary Martin, Esther Berry, George Harmon, Molly Lien, Ken Gould, Beth Anaclerio, Molly Ethridge, Cathy O’Brian, Charlotte McGee, Elizabeth Clemmitt, Kirstin Synnestvedt, Lisa Kerpan, Jim Caldwell, Sylvestor Bona, Mario Ruiz, Dominic DiPaolo, Julian Collins, Rena Kowalski, Jackie Cameron, and Irene Maniewski.
Vestry, Staff, and Parishioners have all been mixed together in this list because we all work together as a great team. Let’s congratulate each other!
I would be remiss not to recognize and congratulate Heath Missner who was recently made a Postulant for Holy Orders, the Vocational Diaconate. She will be attending Deacons School for three years before Ordination, but we are proud of her and pleased to offer our prayers and support.
There are a few specific things I want to mention this morning which are a bit disparate but are also important information. The first is that with George Smith’s departure last February to become the rector of St. Mark’s, Glen Ellyn, and then Patti’s departure earlier this month to become rector of St. Lawrence, Libertyville, we have felt a sense of loss—hopefully not despair—but a sense of loss nonetheless because George and Patti’s ministries have been strong and significant. That has been offset, delightfully so, because of Josh’s arrival last July and then his wonderful ordination to the priesthood last Saturday. It’s certainly a joy for me to have another great colleague in ordained ministry. Heather Voss last spring and then more recently Jackie Cameron have also been valued colleagues for their assistance, but starting March 1 Jackie will be assisting at the Church of the Atonement in Chicago. (Jackie’s in Africa right now on a medical mission, and we don’t know when she’s coming back because British Airways employees are threatening a strike.) I will be searching for a new Associate Rector, and while budget constraints may delay a call until September 1, I’m committed to finding the best candidate for rounding out the ordained ministry and the benefit of that ministry this parish has enjoyed for many years. In recent years the Associate Rector has had primary staff oversight for pastoral care, adult formation, and in collaboration with the Vestry liaison, outreach coordination. The Curate has had staff oversight of youth ministry, liturgical training, scheduling and coordination, and in collaboration with the Vestry, newcomer ministry. All other priestly ministries of celebrating Eucharist, preaching, and pastoral care are shared among the three of us. Between March and September we may want to have some visiting firepersons to assist from time to time, which is fine, but not a long-term solution.
Next, I want to commend Gary Martin and all of you for embracing both the concept and the execution of global mission. Our second mission trip to Southeast Mexico was such a poignant experience of community for the adults and the teenagers who formed that task force which had to do not with just the transformation of a drab church in a poor village, but the transformation of human hearts to understand what it means to be of one heart and of one mind despite language and cultural divides. Visits by Bishop Daniel from the Sudan and of Bishop Benito from Southeast Mexico have strengthened the bonds within the Anglican Communion despite the pressure on our communion to split and divide. It is my hope that some work with Muslims will emerge in addition to our collaboration with Temple Jeremiah in the Golder Lecture Series to broaden our sense of mission perhaps under an umbrella such as United Nations Millennium Development Goals which has been the theme of our adult formation series this year. It’s possible our Thursday morning Bible study in the fall will take up the Koran, the better to understand the religion of 1.2 billion people and what it is we might share or have in common.
Last year your Vestry decided to move forward with the renovation of the West Building. Our canons require a two-thirds majority vote for these kinds of projects and we received that vote of confidence overwhelmingly. The purpose of the renovation is twofold: to enhance Rummage and, therefore our outreach that Rummage represents, and to enhance the rent we receive from two tenants. That work is well underway and I want to take this opportunity to thank Dietrich Knoer for his expertise and guidance, but also to thank that number of you who tackled the question of the West Building a number of years ago. Roger Lumpp’s townhouse could not, regrettably, make the cut—a townhouse I might add he was willing to pay dearly for—but nonetheless we should all be pleased with the security we are receiving that this building will continue to play a major role in our mission.
The next thing I would mention is a challenge we have to address from time to time, specifically that our stewardship match our mission. I’m not going to throw a lot of numbers at you—Steve Hudson has lots of numbers for you on p. 14 Annual Stewardship Report, and Elisha Gray has lots of numbers in his p. 5 Treasurer’s Report. Most of us are not motivated by numbers, as important as they are, but we are motivated by mission, what we are called to do and be. The Stewardship committee has done a terrific job in the materials they produced and presented last fall, materials that are focused on those things we do well and our response to God out of a sense of gratitude. However, the stewardship results to date will leave us significantly shy of being able to fully support those ministries we believe God is calling us to support. Within the next week or so we will receive a letter from our stewardship people which will ask three things:
If you’ve already pledged and increased your pledge, would you consider an additional increase?
If you pledged and did not increase your pledge or if you decreased your pledge, would you consider an increase?
If you have not yet pledged, would you do so and would you consider an increase over your pledge from last year?
One fact of the matter is that for the past two years we have balanced the budget by not being fully staffed. In all likelihood this year we will balance the budget in part because we will not be fully staffed for six months. Please know how grateful I am for the gifts that you bring and which you share with such enthusiasm. Every gift counts because every person counts, and every person counts because we are, all of us, children of God, loved by God, but created by God to serve one another.
Finally, I want to offer my thanks to the parish for your support most recently in being able to accept the invitation to travel to the Middle East. I’m especially grateful for the support of my family and Bev, in particular, who followed my progress meticulously day by day knowing that each day brought me closer to returning home safely. Bev and our girls and now our girls’ guys play a unique role as a clergy family, and it’s safe to say that I could not be standing before you today without their patience, support, and enthusiasm.
Part of my trip involved understanding the ministry of Christians in predominantly Islamic countries. In Egypt the Christian presence is primarily that of the Coptic Church, about seven million members, or 10% of Egypt’s population. The Coptic Church is ancient, tracing its heritage back to St. Mark in the First Century AD. I’m not entirely sure of the demographics of these Coptic Christians but had an experience of one concentration I found moving. Outside Cairo there is a city called Muquattam. It is populated by Christians and is also known as Garbage City because the garbage collectors in Cairo are exclusively Christians. Garbage City is a place with streets teeming with garbage in various stages of recycling, a surreal picture that defies description. Up above Muqattam a vast church has been built in a hillside cave, a church that seats 10,000 people and is presided over by a charismatic blind Coptic priest. It is a vibrant, spiritual center where the residents of Garbage City worship and also thousands of other pilgrims who come there by bus and by car every Thursday night. Aside from the physical connection of this extraordinary church to Garbage City, there is an extraordinary spiritual connection which begins with a young boy who found a valuable watch in the garbage he was sorting. He believed that keeping the watch or selling it would be tantamount to stealing, and he had been taught by Jesus not to steal. And so he took it upon himself to attempt to find the owner of the watch. Through an amazing set of circumstances some would call miracles, the young boy found the owner of the watch, a wealthy owner of a construction company that had been doing work near Garbage City, and the boy presented himself against all odds at his apartment in Cairo with the watch in hand. Now the owner of the watch was not a religious man, but he invited the boy in to ask him why he had returned the watch which then gave the boy the opportunity to tell him about his relationship to Jesus. The boy’s story so moved the owner of the watch that his own embers of faith began to burn and ultimately resulted in the construction and expansion of the cave church in order to accommodate the faith of garbage collectors, in order to accommodate the faith of the poorest of the poor.
Great things for God can result from faith as tiny as a mustard seed. As many resources as we have at Christ Church, the needs of the world can appear so overwhelming, so daunting so as to lose faith, to lose hope. Some might question the value of seven or eight clergymen from the United States visiting Islamic countries in light of the massive threat posed by fundamentalisms of every stripe and variety in our dangerous world. It’s a bit like the question posed by the disciple who found a small boy with a few loaves and fishes when there were 5,000 people to feed, “what is this to feed so many?” Every one of us has something to offer for God’s work, no matter how large or how insignificant. There are many things over which we have no control, and so we must depend upon God to make what God will of that over which we do have control namely, whatever gifts we have been given to be faithful.
I think of that young, Christian garbage collector in Egypt, and I think of the young boy who gave Jesus a few pieces of bread and fish, and I think of little Lindsey George who played our Baby Jesus in the pageant and I marvel at what God can do and what we can hope for with that which is so small and vulnerable. How much more can you and I do great things for God—imagine the miracles we can be a part of! What more hopeful and exciting work can you and I be engaged in? I’m so grateful to be in this together.
Thank you.
