Dear Friends,
This coming Sunday at 10 am we will hold the 188th Annual Parish Meeting of Saint Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York! One hundred and eighty-eight meetings are a lot of annual meetings, but a few things have changed over all the years.
In 1836, when St. Bart’s had our very first parish meeting, Andrew Jackson was President, Arkansas was admitted as the 25th U.S. state, and the Battle of the Alamo took place in San Antonio, Texas. In New York City, almost everything north of 14th Street was still open country.
After a series of cholera epidemics ended in 1835, the Great Fire of New York City broke out in December of that year, leveling 50 acres in the Financial District. Pumps and lines ceased to function in sub-zero temperatures and the fire was fed by gale force winds. The inferno was finally brought under control when, in a last-ditch effort, buildings were blown up in the fire’s path. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed and thousands of New Yorkers were left without work.
Holding a meeting following a crisis like a pandemic, then, is not such an extra-ordinary experience for us! For St. Bartholomew’s Church, the Annual Parish Meeting is an opportunity for the staff and vestry of the parish to communicate to the congregation what we’ve been doing over the past year and what we plan to do in the future. It gives us an opportunity to carefully listen to the concerns of our members. Meetings, like this one, allow us to regain our bearings, share our mistakes, celebrate our successes, and make critical adjustments to our strategies going forward. We try to always move forward in faith. We always seek to honestly face the challenges in front of us without becoming intimidated or overwhelmed.
As a Kenyan churchman once told me, “Despair is not an option.”
The primary challenge to St. Bart’s continued existence is economic sustainability. This was true when I was a candidate for the position of Rector here and it is still true eight years later. Will the people who belong to St. Bart’s Church, value the mission and ministry of this parish enough to fully and generously support it? Will the people who say they love St. Bart’s (and all that it stands for) realize that they, and they alone, must be the ones to sustain it? We will talk about many things at the 188th Annual Parish Meeting, but none will be more important than this one. I invite everyone to attend and to participate in our extraordinary collaborative effort to “Transform Lives. Transform the Church. Transform the World.”
In short, we are seeking to do something great here. Come, and be a part of it.
Faithfully,
The Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe, D.D.
Rector