Our Vestry

Dear Creator Family,

This past Sunday we successfully concluded the Annual Meeting for 2023. Keeping the treasurer’s report in mind, perhaps the most significant action we took during the meeting was the election of your Vestry for 2024. The Vestry is an invaluable part of our life as a parish. So important, in fact, that the establishment of the Vestry is required by church canon. As administrators of parish business and overseers of parish finances, the Vestry provides continuity from year to year as the parish strives to live into God’s call. If these were the sole responsibilities of the Vestry, they would surely be enough; but they are not.

The Vestry is so much more than the canon requires and of greater importance than most realize. The roots of the title “Vestry” date back to the Middle Ages.  Before there were grand parish halls, classrooms, and conference rooms, simple parish churches consisted of a nave, a chancel, and a vestry. The vestry was a simple room that often doubled as the sacristy where sacred vessels, robes, and altar hangings were stored. Weekly, in the room, priests would vest for services, and from this room, the chancel would be prepared for worship. The vestry was a sacred space unto itself where prayers were made in thanksgiving to God for the provisions to serve God and petitions were made to make the unworthy clean to lead the congregation in worship.

The vestry, due to the lack of other spaces, was also a place often used by the clergy for meetings and counseling. During this time, based on the ancient model, men were elected from the brethren to the sacred duty of care and oversight of the church, God’s house of worship. The actions of this committee were, as they are today, a mixture of the secular and the sacred. Over time, the committee that met in the vestry to safeguard the house of God began to be referred to by the title of the room in which they met. The committee, now the Vestry, continued in its sacred duty bearing the name of a place of sacred action.

The role of the Vestry was much more far-reaching than it is today in one area: community care. Since the church and state were merged in England, the Vestry was also in charge of municipal health and they were tasked with maintaining roads and providing for the common good. Perhaps it was here, where the church and state merged, that the sacred call to church governance began the long dilution process. Now responsible for actions outside the specific arena of the worship and adulation of God, the role of the Vestry began to be regarded as more of a job than a calling. It is not so today.

In the USA, where church and state are separate (thank God), the church has striven to recapture the image and understanding of the Vestry as a call to ministry and a sacred responsibility. All too often I hear the horror stories of corrupt vestries and the wounds they inflict on congregants and fellow vestry members alike: members served for selfish reasons and brought their own agenda to the vestry along with their quest for power. With this type of experience in the memory of many and these stories heard by all, it is no wonder that parishioners fear serving on vestries.

Thanks be to God; at Creator, we have been all but spared the kind of debasement so many parishes suffer. Aside from a short period many years ago, our parish has been blessed by members whose service is truly dedicated to God and who seek to answer the call to this sacred ministry. This is the Vestry God has raised up here at Creator. Many a year I have been told by an outgoing Vestry person that their prior bad experience of Vestry service had been redeemed by their service here. Our Vestry meetings have been more like family gatherings than business meetings. Laughter has been our expression and good humor and godly presence, our focus.

The Vestry is integral to our life as a parish family and a faithful answer to God’s call towards our mission and ministry. In recent years, we have had fewer and fewer seek to serve God on the Vestry. This year we have only four parishioners answering the call to serve God on the Vestry. While we will persevere in our sacred duties, how much more might be possible if we were joined by additional godly hearts and voices?  

If you were wounded in the past by your service on a Vestry, consider serving again so that God may redeem your experience and replace your horror story with one of love and filial devotion. It’s never too late.

Serving with the Vestry,
Fr. Bill+