Wardens’ Report: May 2016
The Wardens’ Report: a brief summary of highlights from monthly Vestry meetings, designed to demystify our work and provide some information about our growth, finances, priorities and progress towards our strategic plan.
As is our custom, we started our meeting with prayers at the rail — this month focused on the ministry of Isaiah Brooms, our Director of Youth Ministries. We thanked God for the vision he has for mentoring our youth and helping them understand the relevance of Jesus to their lives today. We prayed for his committed team of volunteers and asked for creativity and energy as they partner to reflect the love of God while building a strong middle and high school community in our midst.
Our Treasurer, Ramsey Wilson, presented a Finance Team Report that paints a strong picture as we enter the final quarter of our fiscal year. We are essentially on budget with a healthy but prudent cash cushion on hand to weather unexpected changes to the trends. The Finance Team, in partnership with staff, is now deep in the budgeting process with a plan to present a first draft FY2017 budget to the Vestry in our June meeting. We are grateful for the many skilled volunteers in our community who labor behind the scenes and keep us on track financially (and otherwise).
As we’ve written in past reports, much of our strategic focus this year has been on church planting and identifying the next few steps necessary to make meaningful progress towards this aspect of our strategic plan. At our January retreat, we established a Church Plant Steering Team (CPST) and in this month’s meeting, we received an update with recommendations to consider a “Church Plant Residency” program (which, incidentally, was the mechanism at The Falls Church Anglican that resulted in “the Arlington Project” which birthed what we’ve come to love as Restoration Arlington Church!) and a strategy that actively pursues opportunities to partner with other ministries to nurture existing groups in our area into new churches. There is still much to be prayed through and discerned as we prepare to execute our plans, but we are grateful for a wise and prayerful team to advise us.
Please pray for wisdom and clarity and attentiveness to the Holy Spirit’s work among us as we move forward with budgets and plans for the future. And please join us on Tuesday evening, June 7 at the church for our Parish Meeting. We’d love to tell you more about the amazing things God is doing in our community and answer any questions you may have. We need all of you to consider new ways to invest your time, treasure and talents in the work ahead.
In the meantime, if you have questions, concerns, words of wisdom or encouragement, please know that we are open to your feedback on all aspects of our life together on Quincy Street.
You can read an archive of past Wardens’ Reports on our website or Vestry Meeting minutes on CCB, under the ‘Files’ tab in the ‘Entire Church Group.’
-Hannah Royal and Carolyn Weimer, Wardens