![]() We had held retreats and cottage meetings. Acceptance of the need to change did not make the older leaders any less anxious.įor three years we had been feeling our way through a transition. Reluctantly our parish leadership agreed if the parish was to survive there had to be change. The congregation on South Pender, exhausted, volunteered to attend the services on North Pender and close their beloved chapel. By then the parish leaders, many of who were in their late 70s and 80s, were tired. Four years ago I was asked to serve as supply for the summer. Her successor was let go after six months because of budgetary problems. At one point the wardens and council asked the bishop to remove the incumbent. Decline created anxieties that played out, mostly in the North Pender congregation, in conflicts over liturgy, financial control, and clergy. Our parish, now about 45 families, has been in obvious decline for over ten years. The largest island, North Pender, has a year-round population of about 2,500 the smallest, Saturna about 350. In 2010 the Parish of the Penders and Saturna Islands had three congregations on three small islands. We have experienced a sense of the Holy Spirit working through us and with us, and the experience has left us personally exhilarated.” Ours is a congregation that is more Canadian than charismatic in temperament in what ways has the Holy Spirit worked through us? The council (we want the council - not the clergy – to speak for the congregation) had crafted a letter to the bishop that read in part: “You will have picked up our enthusiasm. They had seen five incumbents (rectors) in five years change was elusive.īut change can happen: At our last council meeting, in Easter 2014, we met for six hours and left feeling energized. They had seen many meetings like this one. I promised, in my most authoritative clerical voice, “It is not going to happen again!” They could read my begging subtext: “Don’t leave!” I am sure that they also knew that I was not fully confident that I could fulfill my promise. I ran to the parking lot to intercept the exodus. The quiet were ready to quit the parish council (“vestry” in the States), leave the church, retreat in anger. At the end of the meeting I feared that I was seeing some of their faces for the last time. The quiet ones stared at the floor wishing they were home doing their taxes or cleaning their gutters. ![]() A three-hour meeting had been reduced to three arguing voices (mine included). It was Lent 2013 Robert’s Rules of Order had worked its penitential magic.
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