Padre's Ponderings - March 2025

Saturday, February 22, was a chilly morning outside, but St. John’s Vestry was warm inside Mathes Hall at St. Matthew’s for our Vestry Retreat. Your Vestry gathered Friday night at Dave DeBolt’s home for food and fellowship to connect, form bonds of affection, and build trust as a leadership team. St. John’s, we have an extraordinary 2025 Vestry, members of which are listed on the back page of the Interchange.

Part of our work together during the retreat was to discern St. John’s values. I assure you we did not discern them in a vacuum. Rather, we carefully reviewed the collated responses from our Annual Meeting discussion questions. The following themes repeatedly came to the forefront: social justice, inclusion, belonging, and being faithful. Therefore, Vestry discussed and concluded the above four as our St. John’s values.

You might be thinking, “That’s great. The Vestry identified our parish values. Now what?” Thank you for asking. Vestry will use our values of social justice, inclusion, belonging, and being faithful in our work together. We will look to our values to inform our decision-making, when discerning new ministry opportunities, and, through placing our values at the center of our life together, we will grow in our understanding of what our mission is to become. St. John’s has lived with our current mission for quite some time. Through focusing on our values we will be able to prayerfully discern if a new mission will help us move into our future together.

Additionally, our Vestry is shifting to a liaison system whereby each Vestry member will serve as a liaison to a ministry team. Yes, some Vestry members happen to be the chair or co-chair of an existing ministry team, but we don’t need for Vestry to lead each ministry team. I want for St. John’s ministry teams to know the Vestry is here to lead, as well as be a support for their ministries. In the coming month, each ministry team chair/co-chair will be contacted by their Vestry liaison to have a conversation about how their ministries are doing. The Vestry needs to be connected to our ministry teams, and ministry teams need to be connected to our Vestry. I hope that our new liaison system will better support and inform both groups. Thank you for the opportunity to lead such an outstanding Vestry.

I look forward to a Holy Lent with all the saints of John!

In God’s Grace,

Eric L. Miller+

Rector