Fr Jonathan’s report to the Annual Parochial Church meeting : 29 April 2012
The Fourth Sunday of Easter is traditionally known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” when we celebrate in particular the pattern of love and care which Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shows to the world – a pattern of love and care which he calls all his followers to emulate in the world in our own times. What an appropriate theme that is on this day of our Annual Church meeting as we celebrate all that has been good in our life together at Emmanuel. In common with the practice of many priests in our Diocese and beyond I am this year going to give my Priest in Charge’s report during the Eucharist as the Eucharist is the particular context that Christ bids his people remember in love and thanksgiving – because he, as Good Shepherd, first loved us and has put an answering love into our hearts.
Looking back over the past year our first reflection must, as always, be one of thanksgiving. As Christians, our primary response to God must always be one of thanksgiving – for the creation and redemption of the world and how in Jesus Christ you and I are quite literally loved into salvation. The principle service of the Church – the Eucharist – means literally thanksgiving, for it is in the Eucharist that we offer our whole lives to God, in thanksgiving for all that God has given us.
The main highlight of the year past must be Mother Alysoun’s ordination to the priesthood, alongside Mothers Emma & Christine at Hampstead Parish Church by Bishop Richard Harries and then her First Mass two days later on the happy occasion of our Patronal Festival of Corpus Christi. This in itself witnesses to the inclusive generosity of the heart of God, beating at the centre of the universe and shown to us in Jesus Christ whose life and whose love each and every one of us is called to mirror in the world.
Later in the year we celebrated the happy occasion of Mother Annette’s formal licensing to the parish by the Bishop of Edmonton as she continues in her much appreciated ministry of prayer and pastoral care amongst us.
It has been very good to see our team of altar servers growing larger and larger with more children as well as adults fulfilling this important ministry of service, enabling others to worship God in the beauty of holiness. We are grateful to our sacristans who prepare the sanctuary for worship, as well as to all those who wash the linen and the servers’ albs, clean the church and arrange flowers for the great festivals of the year. Special thanks in this respect go to Casey Hammett, Diana Malzer and Matthew Shirley.
Alongside this, our choir and musical tradition has continued to be enriched and develop apace. After a year with us Ben Lewis-Smith, having graduated from Queen’s College, Oxford moved on to a new position at St Columba’s, Church, Knightsbridge. We thank him most sincerely for all he did in his time with and we wish him well for the future. After a couple of months of Deputy Organists, we were delighted to announce the appointment of Andrew Earwaker as Organist & Director of Music of Emmanuel, which took effect from February of this year – and what a great start he has made with all the wonderful music most recently during Holy Week and Easter. Thanks are due to all the members of our choir, young and old, who enrich our liturgy Sunday by Sunday and on the feast days and seasonal solemnities of the year.
Our Sunday School goes from strength to strength and we are most grateful to Claire Hammett, our Sunday School co-ordinator in ensuring all this goes smoothly and efficiently. It goes without saying that extra children in Sunday School need extra adult leaders and helpers. As ever we are always grateful for further help here, so do please talk to Claire or any of the clergy if you can help in this way. We’d love to hear from you.
And yet, what gives our liturgies authenticity and rootedness are ALL the members of the congregation, which once again this year has grown incredibly along with the size of the formal church membership. Thank you to each and every one of you for all that you give to Emmanuel in your time, talents and financial support of the Church.
The finances of any Church are always a cause for concern, not, I hope, because we money grabbing so and so’s, but because it is the finances of the Church which enable the ministry and outreach of the Church in the service of the Gospel. It often surprises people to realize that ALL the finances of the Church from the upkeep of the building, to insurance premiums and the electricity and gas, to the stipend of the Parish Priest all have to come from the local congregation. There is no external subsidy. We still have some way to go before we are in the eyes of the Diocese a fully funding parish – and it is our aspiration to be so by 2015 – so your generous support in this is very much appreciated.
One of the ways in which we monitor the whole life and mission of the parish is through the Mission Action Plan (MAP) which we are expected to review regularly. On your behalf the PCC has recently revised Emmanuel’s Mission Action Plan and all that is left to do now is to add some statistical information which is presented to today’s Annual meeting before it is sent to the Bishop and the Parish Ministry Development Adviser and then it will be posted on the website.
In the current revision of the Mission Action Plan we have identified some key areas we wish to develop in the coming year – a new parent and toddler group, work with teenagers and young people and how we grow the prayer life and spirituality of the parish. Growth in numbers is always a wonderful thing, but our prayer and aspiration is always that this might be accompanied with a concomitant growth in prayer and spirituality, for without prayer and attentiveness to God we are nothing.
A small but faithful band of people have been supporting the celebrations of the Eucharist throughout the week. These celebrations aren’t simply some add-on extra for odd God-bothering people who like that sort of thing, but fundamental to the prayer life of the parish as each day we pray for the sick and the departed and have a particular prayer intention as shown on the pew sheet each week. Please do consider supporting these weekday celebrations if you possibly can as we undergird all we seek to be and to do in prayer and in faithful attentiveness to God’s still small voice.
One of the key resources for mission here at Emmanuel is our beautiful building as we recognise our mission as presence and engagement at the heart of this local community. Over the past year more groups from the local community of West Hampstead have used our facilities at the Church and this coming week we will serve the community as a polling station as the people of the wider community express their democratic right to vote for those who will serve them in mayorality of this great city. Originally English parish Churches, as well as being places of prayer and worship were places for the whole community and a whole range of community activities and life would take place within their walls.
Our biggest hinderance in serving the community as much as we would like to is the very poor state of our undulating floor and the lack of proper kitchen and toilet facilities for people of all sorts of challenges and mobilities. We are nearing the end of what seems an interminable process of finalizing plans for what we would like to do to the building which includes the urgent under-piling and replacing of the floor and the addition of new rooms and facilities at the west end of the Church. This will be a major development project for us and we have asked our architect and structural engineers to revise the plans so that the new rooms on the north and south sides of the Church will have the potential to be two floors.
The timing of this work will be determined by our raising the funds necessary once the formal tenders come in during the coming months. You will notice from our accounts this year and in the two previous years that we are sitting on a very comfortable portfolio of investments. The majority of these came from the sale of the Church Hall in Bloomsleigh Street to Camden Council almost three years ago.
Whilst these provide a very comfortable cushion for our day to day income which keeps the Church warm and lovely for us on a Sunday morning, we must surely reflect on why the hall was built in Broomsleigh Street in the first place in the late nineteenth century. It was the vision of its founders and benefactors to be as a resource to the whole community of West Hampstead, not just the gathered, worshipping congregation.
In planning our development appeal in the coming months, the PCC on your behalf will be reflecting on how we raise the funds. Quite simply, in an area of comparative affluence such as West Hampstead, we will not be eligible for grants and loans whilst sitting on such a large portfolio of investments. We will, of course, be acting prudently and it will never be the intention to sell all the family silver but crucial to our thinking will be how the development project is central to our Mission Action Plan in the coming years and as we honour the intention of those who initially raised the funds for the hall so that Emmanuel Church continues to be presence and engagement for the whole local community.
Anyone walking down Mill Lane cannot fail to notice our lovely new School building going up adjacent to the open space, due to open its doors this coming academic year. By agreement with the Borough and other local schools we will gradually be filling up from reception class upwards so that we will not be at full capacity on roll until 2017.
There is, however, a dire shortage of school places throughout the Borough and especially in the north west part of it. As our school will not be at full capacity until 2017 the Governors agreed to a request from Camden that we should take an extra, parallel reception class for the coming year. Our new £8 million building, financed by public money, would at first be like a brand new hospital opening without all its wards in action and so, after taking very careful advice, we agreed to this request. The extra places in the parallel reception class have been offered by Camden to children in the immediate local vicinity of the school so that we continue to be an inclusive school at the service of the whole wider community.
Well, any priest of a parish, is only as good as his or her team and the life and witness of a parish is something in which must see ministry as partnership, not only with clergy colleagues and officers, but with each and every person in the parish. In this regard we are ALL ministers in the fullest sense of the term. As a priest friend of mine often says the Church is like a ship in which we are all crew and no one is merely a passenger.
But special thanks must go to William and Don our Churchwardens, to Marco, our treasurer, ably assisted by Diana as book-keeper and to all the members of the PCC.
Above all my heartfelt thanks go to my clergy colleagues Mothers Annette, Alysoun and Claire who assist me so very ably in the pastoral, liturgical and spiritual life of the parish. People don’t always realize that they all do what they do for the parish as self-supporting ministers and without pay. On your behalf may I thank all of them for all that they do.
And so, in concluding, my sincere thanks go to each and every one of you for making Emmanuel such a wonderful place in which to serve as your parish priest and as we commit ourselves in the service of the Good Shepherd and his people throughout this local community in all that is to come. To God, then, who in Jesus Christ loves us into salvation, be praise and glory, both now and in all eternity. Amen.
30 Apr 2012 Fr Jonathan 0 comments









