HOLY TRINITY CHURCH SOUTHCHURCH
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2010
April
The
following is the Rector’s Report given at the Annual Parochial
Church Meeting held in the church on
25th April:-
Rector’s report to the
APCM 2010
Don't you just love those
management speak expressions? Hit the ground running, after that is you've
woken up and smelled the coffee.” Thinking out of the box” .
“Being in the zone”.” Blue sky
thinking”. The school I'm a governor of recently held a Town Hall
meeting. I though this was something that happened down the Civic Centre. But
it means a meeting where everyone gets a chance to say their bit. A sort of 360 degree review. But that's another story.
The management-speak phrase that
really fits this 360 degree review, though, is the one about the elephant in
the room. The enormous issue or problem that nobody really wants to acknowledge
is really there. Well, there is an elephant in this room all right and I will
be returning to it before long. But before we address it let's have a look at
what else is in the room apart from that elephant.
I'm not going to give you the
old-style review of the year because that is now done very effectively by Mike
Penry in preparing for the PCC the annual report which is available for you.
But I do want to reflect for a moment on what a church like this one is there
to do.
I think that it (and the sooner I
replace "it" with "we" the better) it is there to further
the
That means the first job of a
church is to model the Kingdom. To show people something
different. To be a different sort of community that holds different
values in many respects from what we mistakenly call the "real" world
out there. The church powers that be may have wholeheartedly adopted some of
the jargon and tools of business management. But this is not, for example, a
meeting of shareholders or the AGM of the bowls club. It is the family of God r
sustained and challenged by word, scripture and sacrament, seeking to further
the
This morning in here we celebrated
the fact that this family of God now has 14 new full members. One of the
drawbacks of a congregation as big even as ours in this sort of church with its
range of services at different times is that often people don't know even what
other members of their family look like never mind knowing their names. Another
drawback is that because there is a range of Sunday service times and styles we
might be liable to think that this is about our choice. That we can come to
what we fancy when we fancy it or when we haven't got a place in Fred's car
going down to Brighton. Our choice. Not God's call.
Not what the Prayer Book calls "our bounden duty and service".
I believe that that style of being
church, a style inherited unreconstructed from the early 1950's, I believe that
style is finished. This or any other church will not survive, never mind thrive
and grow, that way. I also believe that we have been sheltered from the effects
of this change for quite a long time.
My father was, as many of you know,
also a priest. He was an Archdeacon during those momentous years in the late
'60s and early '70s when the Church of England hauled itself into the 20th
century in its liturgy and worship and also in its structure and especially its
finances. He said that when he spoke to Diocesan Synod about coping with these
challenges he felt a bit like a farmer standing in front of his herd of cows
holding an empty milk pail and saying, "Come on, dears, you know you can
do it." No-one should underestimate the genuine challenge now to church
members.
We are blessed here at Holy Trinity
with considerable resources. A beautiful building. A great musical tradition
which Roger and the choir work very hard to keep up. New growth in among others
those 14 confirmands, about 14% of our congregation. I am greatly supported by
an excellent Associate Priest and Reader. We do not need to feel despondent and
powerless and we don’t need to buy all that stuff about declining congregations
unless we read too much of the Daily Mail. And it is a great honour for Holy
Trinity and a privilege for me to have been invited to act as Chaplain to Cllr
Ann Holland in her year as Mayor. There will be a civic Service here in June,
our always splendid 9 Lessons and Carols will become the Civic Carol Service,
and there will be other chances to celebrate this church’s contribution to our
community during the year.
So we are not about revival. We
don't need resuscitating. But we are about renewal. About travelling on and
travelling on together. Our aims and objectives for the year are therefore
designed to resource that journey and to move us on in faith and commitment to
Jesus.
We plan to develop the Sunday evening
service so that it combines the best traditional and modern worship. We want to
continue the full Choral Evensong once a quarter, dated in advance so we can
put the word around and invite people in to what is nowadays a rare experience
but something we have as it were specialised in. Among other aims, and you are
invited to read those and pass back to me any views on them, is a planned Quiet
Day, time out if only briefly to listen to what God may be "saying"
to us. We also among other things wish to get the word round locally about Back
to Church Sunday. To be a success that will of course need the Church (i.e. you
and me) there to welcome people back into.
The main thrust of this is to flag
up (you can't beat these management - speak expressions) to flag up that the
time is here to stop going
to church and start being
the Church. We are not there to compete with
This brings me at last to the
elephant in the room. That elephant is our financial position. At present our
expenditure greatly exceeds income and we cannot continue without addressing
that. The Treasurer's report in a few minutes will fill you in on all this.
What we do about it is going to be the big challenge for the coming year.
I don't want to get into details
now. That is for later. But I would like just to say four things about money.
1. By far our major financial
commitment is the Parish Share. We aim to meet this in full. I have never yet
been the vicar of a church that wouldn't pay this and I have always been very
proud that this church has always paid in full In
diocesan management-speak we are a Platinum Parish. I believe that if we
proceed in faith (and what else are we surely about if not that?) and accept
the challenge to give realistically then God will provide the resources.
2. The Parish Share is not a tax
paid by "us" to "them". It is our contribution to ministry
costs here and in other places in the diocese with fewer resources than we
have. But there is work that needs to be done about the allocation and we shall
be seeking to limit the increases.
3. We cannot use restricted funds
(the money from the glebe land windfall some years ago) for ordinary
expenditure. It can only be used for specific things mainly to do with the
building. People need to know this otherwise they will believe we have access
to this money when we haven't.
4. Last and most
important. In the church world of the 1950’s, the world that I am suggesting is long gone, inherited resources of one kind or
another paid much of the bills. So the larger congregations of those days (not
necessarily larger for particularly good reasons) were able to get away with
putting the odd bob or two in the plate when and if they came to church. We are
now in much more challenging times. The biggest challenge to our faith nowadays
is what we do with our money. The challenge is to put God first in our personal
budget and not at the end of it. It is to give a proper proportion of what we
have.
Maybe that's enough of that for
now. We shall have as a family of God here to address this. So I do feel a bit
like the TV announcer who says on Saturday night that if you don't want to hear
the football results leave the room now. I know we don't like talking about
money in church, though of course we talk about it in the "real"
world all the time. I know people feel offended when asked to give more, though
we don't feet that way when invited to spend our money in that “real” world.
But the hard fact remains that unless we do this we shall not be able to pay
for God's work here.
One last biblical
quote. No
apology for that because we have to take the risk of living by what the Bible
says. So, the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples want
Jesus to send the people away. He says, "You give them something to
eat". They say, "We can't afford it". ("Are we to go and
buy 200 denarii worth of bread?", that is 200 day's pay's worth.) So Jesus
says, "How many loaves have you" “Go and see". Give me what you
have got”. That is, of course, what they did. And the rest, as they say, is
history.
There's a fashion now for
contextual theology. What does this scripture mean in our own context? What
does it say to Holy Trinity Southchurch in 2010? I invite you to come
with me in faith, and find out the answer to that one.
Michael Ballard
April 2010
May
Our regular Coffee Mornings in the Parish House to raise funds for the
Church are held on Wednesdays between 10am and 12 noon. On the first Wednesday this always includes a
Cake Sale. As well as tea, coffee and
toasted tea cakes we also have an excellent Fair Trade stall and
a White Elephant stall.
On Saturday 22nd May a concert will be held in Church at 7.30 pm in memory
of Keith Gush. The music will be sung by
the church choir and friends. It will
include the Faure Requiem and some of his other favourites. There will be cheese and wine served at the
back of the church. There will not be a
charge for admission but there will be a collection in aid of Myeloma UK.