This Sunday during our Sunday School Kick-off Celebration we will get to see who earned their Golden Ticket! One of the requirements was to come to church at least once in the summer (if you didn't manage this, talk with Joni, she just might count Sunday as your day in church because it still is summer!) Don't forget to get your mom or dad to fill out your registration form, too. There will be extras at church for those who forget. Make sure you talk to Joni before or after worship about getting your Golden Ticket.
We will have lots of fun with some guessing games and prizes. And we can enjoy cake while we play!
Here's a picture of the two prizes that anyone holding a Golden Ticket can try to win.
Last night was Presbytery night in the Waterloo-Wellington and, as is usually the case, it was a meeting that had its ups and downs -- its high points and its low points.
After adjournment, as happens in many Presbyteries I am sure, some of the members made arrangements to break up a long drive home by stopping off at a local watering hole to talk over (and commiserate over) the events of the evening.
About seven members ended up sitting around a table in a bar. Just by chance, they all happened to be male and they all happened to be clergy.
We talked together and toasted various discussion points from earlier in the evening. We toasted the committees and agencies of the Presbytery and the Presbyterian Church with good will towards all. We were enjoying one another's company.
The place was mostly empty but there was a friendly group over at the bar -- paramedics, it turned out, at the end of their shift. We interacted a bit and they made a few comments about how we were all dressed alike (we all had short sleeved dress shirts open at the collar. I would't have thought much about it but they called it our "uniform").
Uniform?
Anyways, they were talking together for a while. Little did we suspect that they where overhearing our conversation and speculating. They had decided that, whatever we did, we were all in the same line of work and were trying to figure it what that line was.
Finally they could stand it no longer and interrupted us to ask us what we did.
We, of course, refused to answer until they had told us what their guesses were.
Based on how we were dressed and what they had heard us talking about, they guessed that we were:
1) Zehr's executives gathering after a long day of strategy meetings. (Zehr's is a grocery chain in our part of Ontario.)
2) Failing that, perhaps we all worked in the deli department at Zehr's.
3) Accountants
4) A bunch of museum curators.
The honest truth, those were their guesses.
Don't know whether to laugh that they were so far off base...
This morning, with about one month to go before the Jeff-a-thon I met with Herb Gale of Knox Church in Guelph at Crieff Hills on the site where the event will take place. It was a beautiful morning on a most beautiful site. We were going to try out the course of the Jeff-a-thon.
We started running and did a couple of laps around a bigger course than the walkathon will actually take place on
Herb set our pace (slower than I'm used to) and it was a wonderful beautiful start as the sun came up. On our first lap we scared at least three very big deer off of our path.
After about four kilometers we ran into some vagabond named Lawrence Pentalow who actually straightened us out about what the actual route will be:
After 5 kilometers, Herb said that he had done what he could do and left me. I continued (at a faster pace) for another 3.25 kilometers. It was a wonderful morning and I can't wait to see you all at the Jeff-a-thon on October 16. The path is a joy to run though I must admit that there is a bit more up and down than I expected. (You can see the graph above.)
Presented in association with; New Hope Clothing, Cambridge Self-help Food Bank and the United Way of Cambridge & New Dumfries.
New Hope Clothing is a designated stop on the challenge! Teams, helpers and staff to facilitate the challenge are required. Contact either Karen or Joni via the Church Office.
*disclaimer
If you want too...goofy shorts can be worn. No discrimination here folks. Sorry, you do have to wear clothes though.
CAMBRIDGE
Saturday, October 01st, 2016
DID YOU KNOW: This is a chance to connect with your teammates, other Race participants, local businesses and not-for-profits, and your community! It begins when individuals reach out to friends, family and co-workers to form a team of four. Teams begin by competing to raise the most funds for their chosen cause. Prizes are handed out to the top fundraisers. Then on Race Day teams travel throughout their community, competing in a series of fun-filled challenges along the way. The team that finishes the combined challenges in the fastest time is crowned the Race to Erase winner. Note: this is not a running race! The challenges are a combination of savvy and smarts - no goofy shorts required. This is an opportunity to support your community in a fun and meaningful way. The most immediate contribution comes from the fundraising taken on by each team - all of the money raised goes to local organizations. Volunteers create, organize and run the stops while local businesses and charities host them, benefiting from the exposure and awareness created.
In thepast, Karen Nixon with the Beth McIntosh Groups’ oversight led this magnificent legacy and literally "thousands" of pies were sold in short order. Karen’s skills at St. Andrews are both legendary and earned through years of dedicateddown in the trencheshard work. I doff mychef’stoque to her and the groups she led in virtually every task at the Church.
In all honesty, we need all the help we can get on this challenge. This is an open invitation to join the team.
“The Angels arein the details" according to Canon, Karen Kovacs”
This Session sanctioned Fund-Raiser has been implemented to reduce debts and make us self-sustainable. The merchandising starts October 23 and all orders must be received on or before November 13th. Pies will be released to customers on Saturday the 26'th., Sunday the 27 and Monday the 28th. In between then andnow, the magic has to happen. All and any are welcome to join us for an hour or the full 3-4 days it takes. A detailed schedule for times will be delivered shortly including morning/evening and afternoon slots for your participation. The rest of the details will be revealed soon. Rob H, COS
isten, Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, we’ve got a problem and we need to talk about it. Our religion is in trouble. Yes, we have religious freedom and people are able to worship as they choose, but they just don’t seem to be choosing our religion anymore, at least not like they once did. Oh, there was a time when people would come together in places like this and lift up their voices in prayer and worship. It was the place to be and everyone felt like they were a part of something that mattered.
But then the world changed. Now, all of a sudden it seems that people have other places that they need to be. Their lives are in other places like Babylon and Persia and they don’t seem to need the old ways of their ancestors anymore.
But don’t you worry, Heldai, Tobijah and Jedaiah, because we have a plan. We’re going to get a bunch of supplies together and raise some funds and we’re going to build us a temple. And it will be the biggest, best and most beautiful temple that you have ever seen. And then we’re going to set up the best of worship services, festivals and sacrifices in that holy space. You’ll see, when we do that, people will come from all over the place to see and to be part of it.
So, what do you say, Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, will you give us a donation of, say, 20,000 talents each so that we can build it? If you do, and if we build it, they will surely come.
That is essentially the pitch of the prophet Zechariah in our reading from the book that bears his name this morning. The issue he is dealing with is the same issue that we are dealing with in the church today: the general decline of traditional religious institutions.
And, make no mistake, that is what we are dealing with. We are living in a time that has seen the fastest decline in affiliation to all religion that has ever been seen in Western society. The statistics and social science are undeniable. The decline is no longer seen just in certain denominations or certain theological points of view. All are declining. It is not just so-called liberal churches for example. In fact, for about a decade now the fastest declining denomination in the United States of America has been the ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Church.
Some people don’t see the decline, of course, because there are, always have been and always will be significant exceptions – specific churches and groups of churches that see dynamic growth. You can definitely find those churches in most cities and we ought to study them and learn from them.
They are not all, by the way, churches that have the same theology. Some of them are extremely conservative and some extremely liberal with all the shades in between. The defining characteristic of a growing church is no longer its theological bent, but there are certainly other factors that do matter.
This decline is made all the more dramatic because it is part of a generational shift. The incoming generation, often called the “millennials” and the generation that is coming up after them (that nobody has named yet) is the least engaged in religion ever.
I don’t tell you all of this because I think it is a reason to despair or give up on the church. I actually feel that, more than anything, these are hopeful signs and that God is using these sorts of cultural changes to renew his church so that it will be strong and ready to meet the challenges of the future. But, in order to find that strength, one thing is necessary. We need to respond to these challenges in the best ways possible.
What we read this morning from the Book of Zechariah is one possible response to a very similar situation. The prophet is concerned because of the decline of the traditional religion of the people of Israel. The reasons for this decline are different – have come mostly because of a major disruption of the entire society and culture by an enforced exile of the people to Babylon. But the challenge is very similar.
Zechariah’s response is to say, “We need to build something really impressive here.” He is trying to rally the people to build a temple. And he encourages them to do so by making a promise: “Those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord; and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. This will happen if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.”The promise is a promise from God through the prophet and the promise is, “If you build it, they will come.”
And that seems to be the solution that people most often go to. If the institution has fallen on hard times, people’s automatic response is to say, “Let’s build up the institution and make it beautiful and impressive and that is what will make everyone want to be part of it. And I will admit that there are times when that kind of approach is the one that works. It seems to have worked (at least to a certain degree) in Zechariah’s time. People did return and there was a renewal of the faith of Israel. I suspect that the terrible cultural loss that was the Babylonian exile left people hungry for the stability that a new temple institution promised.
Of course, there were complaints, there always are. “This new temple just isn’t like the old one.” People got nostalgic for the “good old days.” That is something that always seems to happen whenever you try that “if you build it” approach to institutional growth. Nothing ever seems to measure up to the “good old days.” That is definitely the kind of complaint that we hear all the time in the church to this very day. But, when the conditions are right, it certainly can be true that, if you build it, they will come.
I don’t believe that we are living in such a time, though. In our gospel reading this morning, we catch Jesus at a very interesting moment. Jesus, we are told in the first verse of the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, has just left the temple. This will be, by the way, the last time that he ever leaves the temple in this Gospel. He will never enter it again. And he clearly does not leave it on the best of terms. He has already effectively shut down the temple’s revenue stream by stopping the people who are buying and selling and changing money. And he only just finished expressing his disgust at the hypocrisy and the favouritism towards the rich that he sees in the place.
His leaving the temple institution at this moment is not just a matter of stage direction. It is an act that is full of meaning. In fact, his leaving the institution of the temple is analogous to the exit from the church of some people in our own day because they have become disillusioned with the institutional church due to the failings or hypocrisy that they have seen.
And the disciples see what Jesus is doing. Of course they do. And it is distressing to them that this man whom they love and respect should turn his back on the central institution of Jewish religion and culture. So what do they do? They try to give him a reason to stay around, just like we try to do when we see people drifting away from the church.
And what is the reason they offer? “Look, Teacher,” they say, “what large stones and what large buildings!” Take careful note of what they are doing here because it is the very same thing that we do all the time. They think that the way to get Jesus to stay within the institutions of the Jewish faith is by drawing his attention to what has been built and how impressive it is. They are saying, “They have built it, you should come.”
Obviously this approach doesn’t work with Jesus. In fact, it sets him off on a rant that will go on through the rest of the chapter – a rant in which he basically says, “Stones? Is that the best you can do? You think that stones will impress me? I’ll tell you something, in no time there won’t be one stone left on top of another in this place.” His message is that the “if you build it” approach may even lead to the fall of the institution and that even more than that will fall apart.
The passage in Zechariah does teach us that there are times when you can accomplish a lot with an “if you build it, they will come” approach. It is a necessary approach when you are living in times, like Zechariah was, when the basic cultural infrastructure of a society has been taken apart. But Jesus was not living in such a time. The issue in his day was that abuse and hypocrisy had called the institutions themselves into question. This was something that Jesus specialized in pointing out. In such times, people will not come just because you build it.
I believe that we are living in such times today. Certainly many people have the same reaction to institutions as Jesus did. When they begin to lose their relevance and luster, the impulse is to leave and to predict that the stones will not stand for long one on top of the other. One thing that that means for the church of the present and the near future is that we cannot count on people coming just because we build it, which is a problem for the church because that seems to be our biggest growth strategy.
Jesus didn’t grow the movement around him by building anything. Did you ever think about that? He built no buildings and didn’t even establish any sort of formalized structure. He didn’t even establish any rituals or worship liturgies apart from the two very simple sacraments (the Lord’s Supper and baptism) and one prayer. He established some leaders but no power structures. All of those trappings of institutionalism came later as the church struggled to create institutions out of what Jesus had begun.
But, while Jesus didn’t have any real “building project,” he still managed to get people excited about being part of what he was doing and involved in working towards changing the world. That is why I do not think that we ought to be worried about the future of the church. Yes, it is true that people will not come to the church these days just because we have built it, but that does not mean that they won’t come. We need to approach the invitation more like Jesus did.
We will look deeper into the approach that Jesus took next week, but the basic idea is pretty simple. Jesus could have waited for people to come to him, but he just didn’t. Do you remember the time when Jesus made a big splash in Capernaum. He healed a woman in the synagogue, cast out a few demons and by the end of the day people were lining up at the door of Simon Peter’s house where Jesus was staying to see him. He could have stayed there and waited for people from all over Galilee to come to him. Peter’s house could have become the church that he built. That was even what Peter was expecting him to do and when Jesus disappeared the next morning he hunted Jesus down and angrily demanded that he come back and stay.
But Jesus said no. Jesus said he had to go out to where the people were, he and all of his disciples. He had to take the kingdom of God to where they were and not wait for them to come to where he had built some institution of the kingdom of God. He had to invite them to come and see.
I know that the other approach sounds so much easier to us. If we could just build it – you know, maintain this beautiful building and our amazing programs and activities and people would just come. We wouldn’t have to engage them. We wouldn’t have to tell people where were were and what we did on Sunday mornings, those who were so inclined would just come on their own. But we are not living in a time when it works like that. We are living in an age when some churches grow but none of them grow just by virtue of being there. We are living in the age where it falls to all believers to let others know that they can come and see.
#140CharacterSermon “If you build it, they will come.” Not how church growth works in an age when people view institutions with suspicion.
At the Annual General Meeting in 2016, the congregation moved that "Session will research and implement programs that will eliminate the current debt as well as, create a sustainable long-term monetary strategy for St. Andrews." Session quickly implemented a Task Group to meet your expectations. This recovery operation has been brought to you by a group of dedicated individuals and I’d like to tell you who they are. Members of the Sustainability Task Team are; Ray Godin, Jane Neath, Scott McAndless, Ron Paddock, Vern Platt, Steve Marsh, Joni Smith, Donald Paddock and Patrice Wappler.Cooperating and assisting these members include the Stewardship Committee, the Operations Committee, and Session. In every sense this was a team dedicated and detail oriented, working to make St. Andrews’ Hespeler vital and sustainable for another 160 years with Gods’ helping hand.
Below you will find the path forward to sustainability.
St Andrews Long Term Revenue & Expense Sustainability:
Background Issues:
St. Andrew’s is carrying $24,225 plus in debt that has accumulated between 2013 and 2015. This amount does not include additional debt that may be created in 2016.
While substantial efforts were made to reduce expenses for the 2016 budget year, the initiatives envisioned as revenue generators in 2016 are unsustainable in the long term. Those initiatives include at least 4 events/fundraising initiatives to be scheduled throughout 2016 with a target of raising $20,000 in revenue.
Capital expenditures and maintenance costs need to be compiled and prioritized to mitigate surprises and emergency repairs also.
The church has become involved in a valuable outreach program that includes Hope Clothing, a site for a Food Bank depot, Thursday Night Supper and Social, Alcoholics Anonymous support groups and counseling services provided by a community organization. The church needs to determine whether it wishes to provide funding to sustain these outreach programs from its own resources in 2016 and beyond.
Projects/Liabilities Needing Consideration:
Estimates show that budgeted costs will be $10,000 less than anticipated and plate offerings will be 10% less than anticipated. This means $26,000 in Special Event Sponsorship of bulletins (details are not fully developed). [Recommendation #6d ]
Please Note: Session will charter a task team in September to focus on systematic, growth/outreach to the community. Also formally reaching out to those who we do not see at church. [Recommendation #7]
fundraising would be needed to break-even on the 2016 budget. This excludes the cumulative year deficit of approximately $24,225.
Due to changes in office staffing, there will be anticipated savings of $6,000 in 2016.
Share the Warmth has $14,252 remaining in unspent funds. These funds were donated
to St. Andrew’s for the purpose of funding the heating project at St. Andrew’s in 2014.
·Various non-endowment funds have positive balances that could be used to alleviate the overall indebtedness. Funds available for capital projects (as of March 31, 2016):
·Capital Purchase Fund - $10,449
·Share the Warmth Fund - $14,252 (funds remaining from 2013/2014)
·Video Project Fund - $1,615
·Capital Endowment Fund - $3,476 in earned income available
·The 0% interest loan/grant from Presbytery of Waterloo repayable at 10% of $25,000 principal yearly (we have an 8-year repayment schedule left) needs to be managed in the most advantageous way possible.
·The roof over the church extension, that house: the offices, gym and Sunday school level needs replacing at a quoted cost of $19,500. Shingles are starting to curl so we recommend that we do it this year before leaks appear.
·The Audio/Video equipment project with an estimated cost of $30,000 - $33,000 has been approved by the congregation “when the funds are available.” $1,615 has been donated to this project as of March 31, 2016.
·Hope Clothing has received gifts and grants that will sustain the organization until mid-July 2016. The current contract of the coordinator has been extended to June 30, 2016 at $590 per month. Sustainable funding needs to be realized.
· Recurring scheduled maintenance of the Organ needs to be started before damages accumulate. The est. cost of cleaning/adjustment of the organ is $9,750.
The plan to recovery:
That remaining funds from Share the Warmth, the Capital Endowment Fund and any giving doors opened in response to the need to re-roof be used to replace the “new” addition roof in 2016 [Recommendation #1 ]
We fundraise specifically for the Organ repair (“Buy a key” campaign) [Recommendation #2 ]
We keep the Video projection system on a “warm pause”. [Recommendation #3 ]
We fund any shortfall in our commitment to Hope Clothing not raised by donations as follows (70% from the Mission fund and 30% from the Memorial Fund). [Recommendation #4 ]
With respect to the loan from Presbytery, we recommend repaying it over the remaining term ($2,500 per year over next 8 years). No use of the balance is currently scheduled. If you will it is a savings account or emergency fund held in reserve. [Recommendation #5 ]
Session endorses the following fundraisers between now and the end of the year:
A late September Meat Pie sale (estimate of $4,000 in proceeds). [Recommendation #6a ]
A late November Christmas Dream/Wish Auction (estimate of $7,000 in proceeds). [Recommendation #6b ]
A fun and visible initiative to collect loose change (estimate of $3,000 in proceeds). [Recommendation #6c]
Sponsorship of bulletins (details are not fully developed). [Recommendation #6d ]
Please Note: Session will charter a task team in September to focus on systematic, growth/outreach to the community. Also formally reaching out to those who we do not see at church. [Recommendation #7]
Your comments and suggestion are appreciated and needed. All submissions will be held in confidence if sent to Clerk of Session. Rob H.
