Dear People of God,

As I write this most of our parish activities are in full swing, making this a very busy time of the year. Plans for the Fall Festival are moving along well, the church, adult education, youth activities, choir, worship guilds, library, men’s and women’s groups, are all meeting, and participation and leadership have been excellent. All of this is an indication of a healthy, emergent congregation. I give thanks to God for what the Spirit is doing among us and pray that we continue to be led by the Spirit and give glory to God in all that we undertake.

I would like to mention that our 11:00 a.m. service has a new look, or better said, a new sound. Under the leadership of Estale Daniel and the choir we have recently added a few new things. The choir has been chanting the psalm at the Eucharist and, when the proper copy write information gets to us, the congregation will be learning the responses. We have also begun chanting the Sursum Corda, (The Lord be with you…) and the Memorial Acclamation, (Christ Has Died, Christ is Risen…) during the Great Thanksgiving. We will be adding music to the proper preface as soon as I can learn it. For me these changes have enhanced our time of worship, and I invite those who don’t normally attend this service to check it out.

The Vestry has been working very hard and I thank God for their dedication and leadership. We went on a one day retreat in October and shared prayer, information on polarities and how to manage them (I will speak to this at the annual meeting), and began the process of articulating a new vision and mission statement. We also spent some time sharing the history of All Saints’ from the time our longest attending member on the Vestry could remember. That was our Senior Warden by the way. This exercise proved beneficial to all, especially our newer members. The Vestry continues to work on by-laws revisions, site and building studies and the possibility of adding staff.

Studies have shown that it takes one full time (or equivalent) staff person for every 100 members to grow and one per 150 members to maintain. Below this, a church is staffed for decline. The bad news is we are currently staffed for decline, but the good news is we have exceptional volunteers who have stepped in and done a fine job as ministers for the church. I have spoken often about the need to increase staff, but this will take a financial commitment from all of us. An anonymous person has offered to match any monies raised for the hiring of additional staff in the near future. We will explain more about this later.

Finally, in the midst of our busy time we look to the future. Soon we will be asking for your pledge for the year 2003. You have been faithful in giving and I pray that we will continue to be good stewards of our resources as we respond to God’s will for us. It is also the time for all ministry heads to submit budget requests for next year so that we can make resources available to do the ministries God has called us to. I pray for the Lord’s protection and blessing for all of us as we approach the holiday season.

Faithfully,

Fr. David.