Sunday Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis, Vicar MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 7
Jan 01
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
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A
Synopsis of the Vicar's Report
to the 77th Annual Meeting
of the Church of Our Saviour
I held my tongue on the subject last year - I didn't want to seem pedantic. But I can speak out now. I'm one of those people who believe that the new millennium began with 2001, not 2000. So this year is my time to think about everything in terms of new beginnings -- great past and great future -- watersheds and changes.
And our congregation, I'm here to tell you, is on the brink of new things. I only wish I could tell you more about what new things we're facing starting right now. We have a new Diocesan Bishop who is on the verge of lining out a new vision for our whole diocese - one that will include the end of the Department of Missions as we know it and thus very significant changes for "mission" congregations like ours. But, because of my faith in God and in you - I'm not too worried about the horizons we're about to start crossing. Parroting the President in his State of the Union Address, I'm happy to tell you that the state of our congregation is hopeful.
When I look at key factors in parish life -- our average age, the state of the local economy, and the changing shape of religious life in America - I simply have no way of knowing what our church will look like in five years, or ten, or twenty. But what I do know -- what we all know -- is that we won't look the same on down the line. What we are certain of is the certainty of change. We face the dilemma and promise expressed in the title of Bishop Spong's last theological book. Christianity -- and its local congregations must change. Or die.
We find ourselves at the beginning of a new year and also at the end of a fairly loose 5-year plan that the Executive Committee began to set not long after I came here. Our 1995-2000 goals included several plans that have come to reality. When I came here, the leadership of the congregation spoke of moving the Church of Our Saviour more prominently into the life of the Diocese of Newark and of Secaucus and Hudson County. We aspired to improve the stewardship of our people and the stewardship of our congregation, especially when it came to outreach. We wanted to freshen up the space we worship and socialize in and to make the churchyard present a spiffier face to the world passing by our doors. We wanted to see congregational development -- growth -- both in numbers of people and in the interior life of the people who make up this church family. And I believe that over the past years we have done a pretty good job with all of these things. More than pretty good -- of course, pretty good can always be better. But I look back with satisfaction on the way those goals have played out among us.
Looking particularly at the first goal I mentioned -- raising the profile of our congregation in the public arena -- I feel especially satisfied. Just to skim the many maps we're now on (and you can decide for yourself what that's worth) we were recognized as 1999's "Church of the Year" in large measure because we were a "mouse that roared" by being a small group of folks who didn't let our size stop us from growing and serving in many ways.
With particular thanks to Don Roberts, we have one of the most ambitious congregational web sites on the Internet. My colleagues from across the U.S. routinely consult it and imitate it whenever possible. And through it we have received thanks and requests for help from as far away as Paris and Toronto and as nearby as Harmon Cove. The web site, actually, serves our own congregation well. Mothers of small children are among its most frequent visitors. And there are several parishioners who feel connected here even when they can't be with us in person, thanks to the web.
Also, we are now on the beat of quite a few journalists and media figures. And that means we've attracted and then merited attention from sources as diverse as the Jersey Journal, the Vision cable TV network, the New York Times, and national Geographic Magazine and Television. (Look for a picture of our Sunday morning service in the February issue of National Geographic Magazine.)
We could do better in some areas. Two come to mind in particular. Christian education for children and adults needs to be better. Learning never starts to early, and never stops for people who are serious about their faith. And I hope we will be much stronger in that area before too much longer. Problems of critical mass and time use make that one of our harder goals to achieve. Critical mass, especially, is a challenge. We don't have enough children to have the Sunday School I'd love to see. And the busy life of work and school activities makes it impossible to follow old patterns to achieve new goals in education. But, when the time is right and the necessary demands and commitments from lay people mature, then new solutions will begin to arise. But we can never forget the central importance of ongoing education and enrichment for all in the life and health of a church.
By the same token, I still have many hopes for our musical life. Somewhere along the line, people stopped making music in our society and switched over to passively listening to it. Church services are now among the very few community events in which people who aren't self-assured and confident singers can get together in a roomful of people and make music come out of you. I'm very grateful to Sunny for playing week after week faithfully and with excellent musicianship.
But we can never just settle down into doing the same things over and over and expect vitality to grow and grow. One of my goals for the next five years in our church's life is to move more and more into top quality contemporary Christian music (don't worry, I don't mean the dreck that is so common out there) that will use modern technology to involve us and excite us more. It is a well-known fact in church circles that music plays an enormous role in bringing people to worship and keeping them there. It can never be taken for granted without dire consequences. Again, quoting my favorite Bishop, "The church's greatest threat comes not from controversy, but from boredom." I want us to be an even more exciting and participatory congregation than we are now -- and thrilling music sensitively tailored to our capabilities is one way to make that happen.
And, of course, outreach can always be better than it is. We continue to move, year-by-year, toward our ambitious goal of 50/50 giving. Someday, God willing, we'll be sending a dollar out our doors and to places in need of our help for every dollar we spend here on ourselves. This year, we're approaching the 20% mark. And, again, the realities of our size and critical mass make that hard to reach. The answer to that problem is a simple one: We need generous hearts and a willingness to grow. We have the attitude. Now we need to make it happen. And I have every confidence that we can, in God's time.
Back on the subject of the watershed where we find ourselves today. One important shift -- more than many people who come here mostly on Sunday mornings might know -- is the change in leadership in the Bishop's office. Bishop Croneberger is faced with the challenges of following a very charismatic predecessor and with making a clear plan for our future come to being. One way he's doing that is by wrapping up a year of study by a diocesan "blue-ribbon" commission with what he's calling a "Visioning Conference" to be held the 26th and 27th of this month. Our representatives to that gathering of almost 800 people from all parts of the diocese will be Edna Mondadori, Don Roberts, and Georgia Schmidt. The goal: To come up with plans that everyone is enthusiastically behind. And that we can realistically achieve. Everyone says -- and I have come to believe -- that there is no unspoken agenda. A real searching process is going on with a real openness to what God might have in store for our diocese.
We are to receive a significant honor connected with the conference. Some weeks ago, the Bishop called me and arranged to make his very first congregational visit after the convocation. Here, at the Church of Our Saviour. So, on 4 February, he'll be visiting us to speak to us about what he learned in the yearlong planning process. His choice tells me that he wants us to have an important part in the ongoing life of our diocese, wherever we're headed.
And the importance of the change at the top of our diocese is not all about who sits behind the desk where the buck stops. For us here in Secaucus one of the important differences lies in the way my time gets used. With Bishop Spong's departure last year, my duties and involvement around the diocese fell from an all-time high of chairing or sitting on 14 committees and boards to today's low of two. Although those two are big ones. I am still spending much of my time that this congregation makes available to the diocese as a trustee of Christ Hospital and of the new joint venture board that established and now oversees the joint summer camp program shared by the Lutheran Synod of New jersey and the Diocese of Newark: The only one of it's kind in the nation.
But, before this year is out, the hospital's joint operating negotiations (it's not a real merger) will be complete and a new company will be managing Christ Hospital in tandem with Hoboken's St. Mary Hospital and St. Francis Hospital and the former Jewish Home in Jersey City. Another first in the nation: The first time a Protestant health care system has reached a genuinely mutually acceptable agreement with a Roman Catholic system. And four Hudson County health care providers who were once losing nearly $2 million monthly will be operating in the black. And by this time next year my term on the founding board of the Lutheran/Episcopal camp and conference center will come to an end. It's been a great ride and a great education for me. But I think the time is coming for me to focus still more strongly on the life of our congregation and our future in this community.
Still, we're not lazy in the community. Secaucus Social Services in letters to the Home News regularly thanks us for our local outreach activities undertaken co-operatively with town agencies. And, in addition to our web site (loaded with local information and resources -- and even plagiarized in a commercial brochure: the sincerest form of flattery) our outreach, and our provision of public worship opportunities, I have officiated at dozens of baptisms, weddings, and -- especially -- funerals of local residents and town employees who had nowhere else to turn for the services of the Christian Church. And, through my almost weekly column in the Secaucus Home News I have tried to show readers something of our congregation's personality. Even though I usually only hear any reaction to the column when retirees in Florida complain to friends if I skip a week or two.
Bishop Croneberger has frequently mentioned -- and not just to me -- the important strategic potential in our congregation. We are poised on the edge of all kinds of possibilities because of our location, our community, our people, and our history of co-operation with local and diocesan initiatives. Secaucus is growing -- even the demographic consultants the diocese hired from outside point this out -- and we are a strong and healthy presence at the very heart of it. Who knows what kind of new ministry development we might be able to swing over the next few years?
I have to admit to myself that it might not be exactly the kind of new ministry I had imagined. Although it might be. You have all heard me enthuse over the possibilities connected with becoming a provider of day care to local adults with dementia problems, such as Alzheimer's disease. But, as Edna Mondadori has pointed out to me when I felt discouraged about the slow growth of the plan, that ideas come to fruit when the time is right. And so we still continue to wait and see -- to wait and see what God might have in store for us even as we trust that God DOES have something in store for us.
That may be my favorite thing about the Church of Our Saviour. Where so many congregations worry about the future, and fret about survival, and squabble as they fret. My experience here has always been one of deep gratitude for forward-looking and hopeful people who have a good outlook on what comes next. Because of that, my colleagues in far larger congregations are routinely jealous of my good fortune in being allowed to serve here.
This has gone on a long time. And so I'll use that as my excuse not to thank people personally for the many efforts and loving services you offer to our church's life and health. There is not one person in this room who has not contributed twice as much to our congregation as you think you have. And I' ll stand by that statement brooking no argument. I could go from person-to-person and tell you all about it if you'd give me the time.
One person I will mention is my friend Dorothy Fowlkes, such an important part of our journey toward the future here. She has comforted and helped so many of us -- myself included. Someone said to me recently, "I just can't imagine the Church of Our Saviour without her now". But, Dorothy understands this well, you really must. And picture it without me and without you, too. We serve and exist for the sake of God and our community and for the future. Living for the tomorrows after we're gone is what congregational health is all about. Living for ourselves is the beginning of the end.
I'll end with a personal thanks to you for letting me live here with you for a seventh year. Now we all know each other's strengths and weakness so much better than we did at first. And that's what makes any family work well.
[As a rule, I don't encourage people to address me as "Father". But I don't mind it now the way I once did. You aren't children. And I'm nobody's parent. But you have taught me something about how joys and tears can mean so much more than I ever thought they could that I feel better about answering to "Father" than I did the day I came to this wonderful place.]
Mark A. Lewis, Vicar -- 7 January 2001
Officers elected at 77th annual meeting of the congregation
The annual meeting of the congregation was held on Sunday, 3 December. The following officers of the church were elected: wardens- Bill Schmidt (3rd year) and Catherine Murray (1st year); treasurer - Don Roberts; executive committee - Hank Allen, Helen Allen, Robert deGeorges, Lisa Dever Johanson, Ellen Lewis, Fran Millard, Jim Monahan, Alfred A. Namendorf, Jo Ann Namendorf, Henry Saurborn, Georgia Schmidt. Elected as delegates to Diocesan Convention were Edna Mondadori, Don Roberts and Georgia Schmidt.
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