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Feb. 2008 Rector's Report
____________________________________________________________________________________________
February
3, 2008
Dear Friends,
This report shall look at several different aspects of Christ Church. The first is the spiritual and congregational aspects of the life of Christ Church; the second is the situation in the Diocese of Long Island, the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Communion, and third, the financial and physical restructuring of Christ Church.
There is much that has been very good at and for Christ Church in 2007 and there should be great hope for the future. The Sunday School has done well. Our children’s worship and education programs have attracted new families with young children who are valued additions to our parish family. We have 51 children from pre-K to 6th grade. We have a devoted and caring Sunday School Staff, to whom we owe great thanks. Included in this group is our director, Heather Bennett and the teaching and assisting staff (Lisa Carr, Arlene Blocker, Susan Bunyon, Pam Storozum, Cathy Trezza, Jeannine Daly, Elaine Phillips, Laura Pavlovich, Emily Bunyon).
We have also had great success with our choirs. Last Sunday the Archdeacon of Nassau and Provost of the Cathedral presided at the services at Christ Church and made special comments about the excellence of our senior choir. He knows choirs because of the excellence of the choirs at the Cathedral. Kyle Babin and the members of the choir deserve special credit and thanks for what they have done over the past year—not just on a Sunday-by-Sunday leading of the service music, but also for their special services at Easter, Christmas, at Evensong and the Lessons and Carols for Advent. We have just re-structured the youth choir and look forward to growing that choir in the coming months.
The Vestry has provided important leadership for many activities at Christ Church over the past year. Special thanks are due to the out-going members of the Vestry—Peter Andel, Warden, and Penny Tadler, Tim Carr and Jeff Lightcap. Each of these people have provided special leadership in the areas of youth, plans for the redevelopment of the Christ Church campus and the Every Member Canvass. Beyond that, they have all been wonderful people to work with. We look forward to welcoming the new members of the Vestry. They include Scott Ivers (Warden) and Heather Bennett, Jeannine Daly, Kathleen McGill and Cathy Trezza.
Worship, education and pastoral care are three areas in which the Rector has special responsibilities. I am please to report that attendance at weekday and Sunday services has continued to grow (although modestly—while the national church has reported a 20% drop in attendance), our adult education programs have been well appreciated and attended and our pastoral care activities have touched the lives of those who are home-bound, are in long-term care facilities and in hospital. In 2007, there were 160 services of Holy Communion in homes, hospitals and nursing facilities.
In 2007 we continued to have some of our old fellowship and fund-raising activities—and some new activities as well. Among our traditional programs was the Progressive Dinner, the Holly Fair/Almost New Shop; among our new activities was the Evensong/Spring into Summer Party and the Lessons and Carols for Advent/Advent to Christmas Parish Party. They were all successes and thanks go out to Audrey Eisser, Valerie Siener, Oriana Cyprus, Ariana Paterson, Penny Tadler, Beth Morningstar, Debbie Czegledy, Susan Bunyon, Anne Schellbach, Mary Lowry and Anita Schmidt for their special contributions.
For many years Gloria Ryan has provided both professional services to Christ Church as our liaison with the accounting firm Geller and Marzano. She has also done invaluable help for the church by doing the counting of the Sunday offerings and recording them in our accounting records. She has now taken ‘time-off’ and we are working hard to keep-up with the work she has done. It is a difficult task; so a big thank-you to Gloria for all her work; and thanks to her three regular Sunday assistants—Ariana Paterson, Carole Beinecke and Beth Morningstar. Finally, thanks to Kathy Hoffmann, who has added to her other many jobs the recording of the offerings and to Michael Henahan, Tom Prichett and Marina Conrad who are doing the “Monday counting.”
The second part of this report will look at the church beyond Christ Church, Manhasset. The Episcopal Church is what I would call, a modified ‘Catholic church.’ That is, it has many qualities of the Catholic hierarchy and yet was established at a time when there was serious distrust of the power of monarchs, bishops and non-representative institutions. Although many powers have devolved to the ‘rector, wardens and vestry’ of individual parish churches that are part of the respective dioceses of the American Episcopal Church, there remains a strong sense of ‘Episcopal oversight’ as well. The inherent tensions of this arrangement have been tested locally, nationally and internationally in the past year.
In our own diocese there have been no movements by parish churches to opt-out of the Episcopal Church. There is on case, however, of a parish which several years ago decided to leave the Diocese of Long Island and to align itself with another ‘Anglican’ group (St. James Church, Elmhurst). Although the congregation is welcome to do so, the issue is who gets to keep the property. Traditional legal thinking is that in ‘hierarchical’ churches, the church property is held by the congregation in trust for the diocese and eventually for the national governing body of the denomination. In the case of St. James, Elmhurst, this is being tested in the courts-of law.
Elsewhere in the Episcopal Church, there are numerous parish churches and even a number of dioceses that are seeking to leave the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church and to join other oversight bodies, including nation churches in places like Uganda and Nigeria. For these groups, the pressing issues are not only doctrine and discipline, but also property rights. The coming years will be filled with litigation and acrimony.
Our internal issues also have an international component. The American Episcopal Church is part of a larger body, known as the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is a loose alliance of national churches that have common historical and doctrinal ties to the Church of England. From a legal perspective, the Anglican Communion, and its informal head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, have no compulsive power over members, save to dis-invite members from meetings. In this sense the Anglican Communion has many parallels to the British Commonwealth (although the Anglican Communion pre-dated the Commonwealth and the Anglican Communion includes the American Episcopal Church while the United States is excluded from the Commonwealth because of the American War of independence).
The issues of fissure within dioceses in the Episcopal Church and between the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are mainly over social issues connected with sexual orientation of clergy. The signal event was the consecration of Eugene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in spite of his openly homosexual relationship. For a time the American Episcopal Church was not allowed to have representatives at meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council (which discusses issues of common interest within the Anglican Communion). In September of this year the ‘exclusion’ of the American Episcopal Church’s representative was rescinded, but the issues within the Communion are far from resolved.
These diocesan, national and international issues within the church have been a distraction at best and a barrier at worst for the mission of local congregations, national churches and the larger Communion. It is hoped that these issues can be justly and compassionately resolved so that the church may focus on the proclamation of the gospel.
The final part of this report is about the redevelopment of the Christ Church campus. For those who are new to Christ Church, some history may be of help. The original land owned by Christ Church included most of the current Christ Church cemetery, including the land on which the church is located. It covers a little less than two areas. The church and the cemetery were established in 1802. In 1821 additional land was obtained, including much of the area on which the parking lot, the parish house and the so-called blue house are located. In 1888, the Rosemount Cemetery was deeded over to Christ Church. This is the portion of the cemetery across the path north of the main cemetery. In 1942 the house at 66 George Street was purchased. It had a large back yard, a large portion of which became to lower parking lot behind the parish house. In 1968, the current rectory (54 George Street) was purchased in 1968. The total area of the Christ Church campus was 5.47 acres.
The current parish house was built in 1929-1930 to be a private school for the growing Manhasset community. The Great Depression caused plans for the school to be put-on-hold. The school was deemed necessary because the school on Plandome Road (where the Mary Jane Davies Park is today) was too small for the growing Manhasset community. In the mid-1930s the Works Progress Administration (WPA) …
… commercial project on the Northern Boulevard portion of the property. If this is necessary, the church will use the rear (northern) portion for its parish house and parking. This is not the preferred use of the property by either party.
[remainder of Rector’s Report covered Parish property issues and were discussed at the Annual Meeting]
Faithfully yours,
David B. Lowry
