Warden’s Report: October 2019

The Wardens’ Report: a brief summary of highlights from monthly Vestry meetings, designed to provide information about our growth, finances, and priorities.

At our October 22nd vestry meeting, we enjoyed dinner together and prayer before starting the meeting. This month, Erica Chapman led us through prayer which included praise and intercession for our Rector David Hanke. We thanked God for David and his leadership of our church. We gave thanks for the fall at Restoration (the retreat, Pints and Perspectives, preaching) and prayed over the coming 10th anniversary celebration and unveiling of our strategic plan, Good Things Grow Here. We prayed for David as he leads our staff on a retreat next week and as he helps our newest staff members to transition onto our team. We gave thanks for David’s family and prayed blessing upon them in a busy season. We prayed over David’s office and all the meetings he holds there, that the Holy Spirit would come and make himself known.  As always, please join us in praying over the staff, vestry, and all of God’s work on and through Quincy Street.

In our meeting, we heard our last official update from Incarnation Anglican Church as they elected their first vestry this month.  In November at our annual diocesan synod, there will be a vote to receive Incarnation as a new parish in our diocese.  We trust that process will go smoothly and then in December, Incarnation will officially become a congregation with Rev. Liz Gray instituted as their rector. We are rejoicing with them for a successful first year and praising God for His faithfulness to them as they joined Him in boldly starting and growing this new church. 

David Hanke led us in working to finalize our strategic plan, Good Things Grow Here, and we discussed plans for our 10th anniversary celebration as we both celebrate 10 good years of God’s faithfulness to our church and look to Restoration’s future. We talked specifically about the financial gift of thanksgiving that we are asking our congregation to make during our 10th anniversary celebration. Our goal is to provide an opportunity to worship and give thanks for what God has done in our church while also launching our congregation into the next 5 years. We are excited for how we could use this gift be it on a smaller scale or larger one.

Johanna Montague talked us through the possibility of creating a curacy position during 2020. A curate is a finite position for a recent seminary graduate to join our team for the purpose of being formed as a priest and to serve our congregation. It is a good opportunity for us to help grow new leadership in DOMA, to build our connections with priests in the area, and to allow this individual to assist our staff/pastoral team with caring for our congregation.

Brad Jones, our treasurer, gave a brief update on our finances and we are grateful that we were on target with our budget in September and that our giving has stabilized after being under budget for much of our previous fiscal year. Thank you for giving generously to our church. Brad also led us through a discussion of potential options for handling our mortgage. The vestry will make a decision about our mortgage in the first half of 2020 before our interest rate changes during the summer of 2020. 

If you have questions, concerns, words of wisdom or encouragement, please know that we are open to your feedback. 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’

– Chris Belen and Johanna Montague, Wardens