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St Alban’s Balmoral – Annual Meeting 20th April 2008
This will be the second time I have been privileged to preside over the Annual Meeting of St Alban’s Balmoral. In recent times there have been two deaths of note – Wendy’s Mother Violetta Edith Cranston who though not known to many was in fact a parishioner, and Fr Lloyd Cullen who was with us for several months. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.
St Alban’s is still a fairly fragile community, but a place of great potential and significant growth over the past year. We certainly aren’t as fragile as we were a year ago.
Among our weaknesses – we are a small eclectic congregation. Eclectic means that we don’t meet each other at any time other than church so we have to work hard to build a sense of Christian fellowship. Small means that if one or two families are away, the congregation is notably diminished. It also means that most of the work falls to a few committed, already busy people and like that bunch of New Testament disciples we are fairly motley crew – self included.
Our finances are a reflection of our fragility – we get by – just, with nothing left over for any unforeseen expenditure or for any development projects related to either the building or ministry.
Despite the fact that the sanctuary sometimes seems heavy with clergy, there is no full time ministry here, both a result of and a contributing factor to our fragility. And the building – as lovely as it is, is in a poor state of repair and we can’t even keep the possums out let alone the rain.
Well if I stopped there you might think the place is on its last legs, but of course you know that the very opposite is true. Yes we are in a sense the church of the upper room, a small group of people slightly overwhelmed by some of the tasks ahead of us so that we try not to think about them too much.
Well the church of the upper room was also the foundation for the Christian church across the world and it has proved to be a very worthy and strong foundation.
We may be fragile, but in the past year – our average Sunday congregations have grown by around 60%. I doubt that many other congregations in diocese could make such a claim.
Our giving has increased and subsequently our income has increased. We are building a strong sense of fellowship where people enjoy worshipping together and being with each other and there is a notable lack of factionalism in this Christian community. Coffee after mass on Sunday’s has become a great event in its own right. This sense of cohesion fed into a Shrove Tuesday pancake party and an Easter picnic. We have just enjoyed a profound Holy Week and Easter in which people kept coming to church every time the doors were opened and during which both individuals and the whole community seemed to move another stop forwards.
We are a baptising community – 2 new members of the church from within our own congregation at Advent and 3 confirmations on Easter morning. We are a worshipping community and the eclectic nature of the community enables us to engage in Anglican worship of a strongly and reliably catholic spirituality and ethos. We are just about the only place in the diocese of such an ethos and without being unkind, those who don’t like it are quite literally welcome to go elsewhere.
So whiles we know all too well that we are fragile in a number of respects; we are also very strong with everything to look forward too and few if any regrets.
During the past year we have had a hard working vestry. Most of the work goes in between the meetings and I hope that this will develop with a firm sub group structure of action based people in the next year. The vestry is a place to which people come to report what they’ve done since the last meeting with regard to a whole range of tasks and activities. So thank you to each and every vestry member.
Thank you to the Wardens. Jan has been and continues to be a fantastic Bishop’s warden and I personally am very grateful to her for her wisdom, her friendship and her businesslike attitude which prefers action to words. Jan continues in this roll and office.
Paul is not standing again as people’s warden and I want to say a very special thank you to Paul. Paul was the only church warden when all that time ago Fr David brought a group from Paul’s here to St Alban’s and gathered a group of bossy clergy together (I speak for myself anyway).
Paul took it all in his stride and his quiet acceptance of things being done differently and outside the comfort zone of the existing St Alban’s congregation gave the lead for others not to get too ruffled either. Thank you Paul for being able to see the bigger picture and for offering that lead to others, even when it might, as it sometimes must have, seemed like an imposition.
Just of note – such has been the growth in the sense of community that we never hear talk any more of the original St Alban’s people and the newcomers and I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all had Paul not been an important part of such talk becoming redundant.
I want to make mention of those who aid our distinctively catholic and yet contemporary worship. Readers, intercessors, Ken who does so much in every part of this church’s life, the servers and of course Jenny our organist.
This church is enriched by a group of clergy who individually and collectively help to build this community of faith. Philip is currently away but his enthusiasm and vigour when he’s here is a wonderful contribution. Wendy is the mainstay of the pastoral ministry and in the past year the Vestry has turned her small honorarium into a small stipend which gives her a bit more security and gravitas in the diocese. Wendy of course does far more than the small stipend acknowledges.
It is a particular pleasure today to welcome back to this community of faith Fr David Guthrie. David has been away for the past two months or so and now he has returned – but his ministry has taken a new path since we saw him last and he is returning as a member of the community but not to the ministry team. David’s new ministry is increasingly established as each week goes by, he is recording both the New and the Old Testaments for a major recording company and later will be on a road show around New Zealand promoting his work – and of course the Word of God. He also has interest from the USA for more recording work and so the snowball gathers pace. So welcome back David and be assured of our prayers as you explore this new facet of your vocation.
Of course it’s always dangerous to name people in a report such as this because it has to stop somewhere.
When I thought of all the people I could and maybe ought to thank publicly for something it read just like the parish roll. So thank you to all and each of you for contributing to the life of this place.
So where to from here? How do we continue to make ground? Well in the next year we need to build on the strong sense of worship and spirituality. We shall do that with a series of special celebrations as we mark various milestones in the church calendar – not just on Sundays. We shall build the on the sense of Christian fellowship by meeting together socially and spending time together. Those two things can be nicely combined and so for example in a few weeks we shall keep the Feast of Corpus Christi in Church and follow it with a social event – inevitably around food. Keeping feasts at the altar and feasts around the meal table is a good and appropriate way of building a worshipping community.
We will need to raise some money to keep the roof over our heads and we shall apply for grants to help us to tick off at least some of the items in the church’s conservation plan. We will need to maximise our income by improving on the hand to mouth situation we are in. Among other things will mean grasping the nettle of the church hall which currently brings in the princely sum of $150 a month – and that only very recently. I would guess that is about 10% of what the hall could bring in and so with or without the Serbian church in it we need to correct that if we are to be responsible stewards of that resource.
It would be great to a large thriving parish with daily masses, a full nave on Sundays, several teams of servers, a choir and music group, youth groups and Sunday schools. Well we eventually we achieve some or all of that – but we can only take one step at a time. We may be small and in some senses we are fragile. But we are also vigorous and strong and growing apace in so many respects. We like being part of this worshipping community and we like being together. So if God is with us, nothing can prevail against us.
Fr Jonathan Kirkpatrick Priest in Charge
April 2008 Annual Report, 2008 | Clerical Roster | Readers and Intercessors | June 1, Ordinary Sunday 9
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