Rector's Report to Annual Vestry 2017: St Andrew's Church, Newlands

“… if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.”
John 13:14 NRSV

Introduction

“Religion, War, Victory, Peace!” was the mantra of the ancient Roman Empire, which Rome didn’t claim to have invented, but did perfect; and every Empire before and after has sought to create “Peace through Victory!”  This ethos entered the Church early in our history, around the time of Constantine, and has been a dominant theme in world mission as  the Church grew on the back of Empire. Yet it is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus, highlighted in the above quote from John 13, that calls God’s people to wash one another’s feet; and seen in Matthew 5 (the Sermon on the Mount) where Jesus enjoins us to love our enemies. We are called to nurture peace, not through victory, but through service.

Our catchphrase as a Parish over the last couple of years, in essence a summary of our Mission Statement, has been “Serving each other; serving the World”: how are we doing with that? How are we serving? How are we washing feet? How have we been served? How have our feet been washed? When and where have we allowed others to wash our feet?

While Annual Vestry is all about reports, elections, and an opportunity to address matters that affect our future and common life, at the heart of these various conversations we need to explore our experience of God, recognising that we do so through each other: we are God’s hands; we are God’s feet. Our words may be God’s words to one another.

One of the desires that envisions our Building Project is to position ourselves as a community Church: a Church IN the community, SERVING the community. How are we doing with that? How have we washed the Bishop and his family’s feet? How have we washed Kildare Pre-Primary School’s feet? How have we washed Maitland Cottage Orthopaedic Hospital’s feet? How have we washed the feet of Creswell House? How have we washed the feet of the Newlands Volunteer Wildfire Services Base? How have we washed the feet of our neighbours in Kildare Road and across the Newlands Stream? How have we washed the feet of our neighbours in Newlands and beyond? How have we washed the feet of our neighbours who drop off and collect their children form the Pre-School each day? How have we washed one another’s feet as we come together for worship, prayer, Bible Study, fellowship and outreach?

You’ll find some of the answers – but not all – in the Churchwardens’, Finance, and Ministry to the Needy (MTN) reports. You’ll find the rest of the answers in your own and your neighbours’ experience.

Looking back: 2016

2016 has been a full and difficult year, and yet within the wider context of social, political, and economic struggle and the more intimate matrix of our personal joys and hardships, there is much to give thanks for in our Parish life. My personal thanks to each one of you for the manner in which we have been able to create space for God’s love to be manifest in us and through us. There are many of you for whom I am especially thankful because your efforts have stood out; there are others for whom I am also extremely grateful, but I don’t know who you are because you have quietly been about God’s business among us. Know that noticed or not, you have helped grow God’s Kingdom in our world: thank you! In particular my thanks to our Churchwardens, to Roger, Rosemary, and Michael (our alternate), for your support, wisdom and leadership; and to our Parish Secretary, Bev, who works absolute miracles everyday in keeping us all on track in an office that more commonly reflects a railway station and storage unit, and demands a broad skill-set! Special thanks to Dawn who gives me incredible support while dealing with all the challenges of being a Clergy spouse, which includes an expectation of omnipresence from parishioners: if you don’t see her around, know she is hard at work ensuring we have food on the table and the possibility of a reasonable retirement one day; or she may just be on the beach, basking in God’s wonderful creation.

Big moments in 2016 included the opportunity to welcome Stephen Middelkoop on board again, together with his family, and the additional gifts he is able to provide, complementing the wonderful ministry Bishop Geoff and Denise Ackermann continue to offer us. We completed the major task of replacing the waterproofing material on the Church roof; and internally, the Lady Chapel at last has new furnishings – a projected initiated before I was appointed as Rector – paid for by a number of bequests, as well a substantial gift from the Bean family in memory of Frances.

Looking forward: 2017

2017 has begun well, and fast! We welcome both Elizabeth Cherry and Jess Gwynne-Evans onto the staff: already they are impacting the lives of our young people. We are thankful for the foundation Janine and William Tough, together with Raymond Quinlan, have laid down over the last few years in this area and wish them well as they explore different opportunities for ministry in this community. It’s wonderful to still have the St Cyprian’s Boarders join us on a Sunday evening, and they continue to add a positive dynamic to our evening service. We welcome Jo Griffiths, the new Kildare Pre-Primary School Principal, to our wider community and look forward to the new energy she will bring to our relationship with the School. We’re thankful for the new opportunity the Chomi Pack initiative brings to our involvement with Maitland Cottage Orthopaedic Hospital across the road, and the invitation to offer a more formal Chaplaincy to that institution. God has blessed us with the core triangle of traditional mission in this area of Cape Town: spirituality, education, and health-care .

Our Building Project

Our Building Project looms large on our horizon for this year. We have been aware, since our Annual Vestry in 2015, that we have set ourselves a significant challenge in raising sufficient funds in order to bring this visionary plan to fruition. Best business practice informs us that we have taken on an impossible task, but we are not a business: we are a Church. We serve the God of the impossible . If the Diocese of Cape Town had followed best business practice in the late 1960’s then St Andrew’s Church and this school facility would have been sold off had it not been for the commitment of Barry de Villiers, with Sam Johnson’s help, to ensure the Church was open for prayer on a daily basis, and the belief of the wider Johnson family and others – in the midst of the devastation caused by the forced removals of that time – that the community would rebuild in time to come. The School building exists because of Canon Samuel Hinchliff’s vision of consolidating the Parish commitment to education (going back at least to the early 1900’s, if not earlier) on this site. You and I sit here today, more than fifty years later, because these people implemented a seemingly impossible vision. In another fifty years we want an Annual Vestry to meet in the new Church Hall and reflect thankfully on our courage to be faithful to this visionary plan in our time.

Subsequent to our Annual Vestry meeting in March 2016, the Gabriël Fagan Architects advised that we submit plans to the City of Cape Town for the full project, not just the first phase, as the full project needs to be tested as there are possible parking concerns, for which the Architects are confident an offset can be obtained. Parish Council put the process on hold while the Fundraising Committee did some hard work; work which continues. Parish Council at their meeting in November, after receiving a report from this committee that sufficient funds are available to do the preliminary clearance work (including the relocation of the garages) and the renovation and relocation of the school, agreed that the process of application to the city of Cape Town continue. The Architects have been advised to prepare the necessary plans and documentation and to submit the plans to the City of Cape Town on our behalf. The Diocese has approved the entire project and given permission for the first phase to go ahead, with the assurance that as funds become available we may approach the Diocesan Trusts’ Board for permission to continue with the subsequent phases. We have invested almost R334,000 so far in Architects Fees (our previous Architects and now Gabriël Fagan).

While we are a Church and not a business, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to take reality into account, and Parish Council has been very aware of this in their deliberations. Our fundraising efforts only really got off the ground mid-2016. Our interaction with Kildare Pre-Primary School around a new lease and their contribution was put on hold when Margie Froud resigned as Principal mid-2016, and this has been revitalised with the advent of Jo Griffiths as the new Principal in January this year. The Parish Council (in June 2016) has given Kildare Pre-Primary School a commitment to sign a ten-year lease. Avenues towards raising sufficient funds have not yet been exhausted, and further time is required to explore our options with the plan as it stands at present. At the beginning of 2015 we had R2,000,000 in our New Building Fund: this has doubled, with a substantial amount coming in over the last six months. If we can double this again over the next eighteen months, we will be on a winning wicket. It is my fervent hope that this Annual Vestry will continue to allow Parish Council this scope.

Same-sex Unions

Another issue that faces us in 2017 is the ongoing impasse in the wider Anglican Communion around sexuality and gender, and while this may seem a somewhat distant debate it is relevant to us. Two loved and respected members of this Parish, who are in a same-sex relationship, are engaged to enter into a Civil Union towards the end of this year. Their heartache and mine is that their desire to have their union formally blessed in the Church in which they regularly worship is denied them due to the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) holding firmly to the wider Anglican Communion moratorium on the blessing of same-sex unions. At the Provincial Synod in 2016 it was abundantly clear that this is unlikely to change anytime soon with over 75% of our Bishop’s voting to maintain the status quo, a stance backed strongly by the Laity present, and somewhat less strongly by the Clergy. One glimmer of light is that at a recent Synod of the Church of England members voted to “not take note” of a report of their Bishops to essentially maintain the status quo. Our upcoming Diocesan Synod in August will give us an opportunity to explore local attitudes to this issue, but until ACSA has the courage to be truly inclusive and to reject this discriminatory practise there are at least two people among us who experience the effect of this bigotry and the consequential pain and heartache that accompanies it. I plead that we find tangible ways to demonstrate God’s acceptance and love for this couple, and for other individuals and couples of the LGBTI+ community who regularly worship beside us in the pews of St Andrew’s.

In Conclusion

This is my fourth report to Annual Vestry. In it I have sought to give some direction in at least two important areas that affect our common life. I am aware that my position as Rector gives me a “loud voice”, and I’m sure that before the evening is out, we will hear from other voices that speak loudly among us. Being loud is not about volume, but about perceived influence, and my sense – and I may be wrong – is that in previous meetings some have been nervous to speak, either due to a perception that your voice may lack sufficient influence, or that somehow you may be victimised for expressing a different opinion. Generally those of us perceived to have loud voices are only sheep in wolves clothing, so please don’t be afraid to speak your mind as your words may be God’s words; and your silence may silence God.

“I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9 NRSV

MARK R D LONG
Rector
6 March 2017

Rector's Report to Annual Vestry 2015: St Andrew's Church, Newlands

Introduction

In today's Gospel reading we hear this affirmation of God's relationship with Jesus, "You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy" (Mark 1:11b; NLTse). This relationship was affirmed in last Sunday's Gospel reading, "This is my dearly loved Son. Listen to him" (Mark 9:7b; NLTse). These words, first heard at Jesus' baptism and repeated at Jesus' transfiguration, are key: they draw us into the relationship of love that is God. We are reminded that it is from this base of stable, loving relationship that Jesus' ministered to his world; and it is in sharing in this relationship that we are called to live and minister in our world. Perhaps the greatest challenge of Faith is to truly accept that we are loved by God, and then to live out of and into that space. God's words, "Listen to him" are spoken in this context: we listen lovingly and carefully to God; we listen lovingly and caringly to each other; and we repent mightily when we realise that our self-interest has undermined these interactions.

We are amazingly blessed as a Church community here at St Andrew's. We are good people, caring people, loving people. We look outwards, and we generously share our resources far beyond our own boundaries. If we are not caring, it is of ourselves rather than of others, which was the key learning we made at our Vision Workshop in August. Thank you to each one of you for who you are, and for what you contribute to our common life; for your love for God, and for the multitude of ways you live that out both within the boundaries of Church life, and beyond in the fullness and chaos of your lives and communities.

I have sought to use this first year as your Rector as an opportunity to observe, to get a feel for the ebb and flow of Parish life. I am, however, and active observer, which means that there have been some incremental changes along the way, largely pragmatic and practical in nature. Radical change is normally only required in times of crisis and breakdown, and we are a healthy community. But just because we are a healthy community does not mean that there are not areas of concern, and these do need to be addressed.

Partnerships

One major area of concern for me is that we hold lightly the responsibilities God has given us for our Bishop and his family, and for the Kildare Pre-Primary School; and it has taken the building project to highlight this. Both relationships go back close on fifty years, a life-time for a person such as myself. Strangely, in a number of conversations over this last year the perception I get is that these two relationships are considered a hindrance - rather than a blessing - to us as a community. Instead of asking how we can be supportive of the Bishop of Table Bay, his ministry and family, we are praying for the return of the house to Parish use, with an underlying implication that Diocesan use of that facility is somehow illegitimate. Instead of seeing the school as a partner in mission, we appear to see them largely in transactional terms, somehow begrudging the fact that a facility built in the 1950's to house a school for a poorer community now houses a school for the wealthy, when in fact it still serves the community that surrounds it. In both cases I believe we are putting self-interest ahead of the Gospel. My only concern is in how we can nurture both these relationships, not end them.

It is important to note that living in Newlands gives the Bishop easy access to the Diocese as a whole, and with all the pressures of Episcopal ministry this centrality is important and life-giving. The Diocese has recognised this and has substantially invested in the house over time. In terms of the school, church and school are interwoven in the wider Newlands community perception, and we under-appreciate this at our own risk! We have this link to thank for the involvement over the years of numerous families in our church life, of whom Debbie and Rob Coombes and their family, amongst others, are a present example.

Annual Vestry 2014: Actions taken

Our Building Project

The Building Committee has worked hard to produce the results asked of them at our 2014 Annual Vestry Meeting, and we will receive a full report from them. I hope that their presentation and recommendations will receive our full support. What the committee will be proposing to us really is the only option if we are to take our responsibilities for our partnership with the Diocese and the School seriously, and still provide for our own needs as a Church community. A perennial question that arises in any Church community seeking to build often revolves around asking how we can possibly be considering spending money on ourselves when the needs "out there" are so pervasive and immense; and we are no different. However, there is a difference between self-interest and legitimate self-need, and sadly in the Christian community we often ignore legitimate self-need and in the process undermine our ability to meet the challenges of the Gospel.

We are not a community that suffers overly from self-interest when it comes to sharing our resources: through the Ministry to the Needy (MTN) we have given away R5,000,000 over the last ten years. That is not insignificant, and is substantially more than a tithe on what the Building Committee is proposing we spend on getting our facilities up to scratch for our needs as a Church community in this part of Cape Town. Our present facilities have served us well over the years, but our needs have changed and our commitments have grown; we need to spend substantial money to modernise, upgrade, and extend our facilities in order to make them more user-friendly and accessible to ourselves and to the wider community. The project is daunting on a number of levels, but that should not be our primary concern in moving forward on this project for which we already have a seed fund of R2,000,000 invested with the Diocese. We need to draw on the example of our forebears in the 1890's who had the courage to build this church with no less daunting financial costs, comparatively, and with a far poorer community-base than we have today.

The South African Book of Common Prayer

At our Annual Vestry last year the ongoing use of the South African Book of Common Prayer (SAPB) was queried, and Parish Council was asked to reflect and make some decisions around this. Council made the decision to use the Anglican Prayer Book 1989 (APB '89) for the early morning Christmas Day Eucharist, but on my request has delayed a decision on possible changes to the Sunday 07:30 and Wednesday 09.30 Services. This is in part due to my needing time to get a feel for the worship life of the Parish, but also in needing this to be addressed in the broader fame-work of service times, hymn choices, and the purpose our various opportunities for worship offer. In the next short while you will receive a survey sheet in this regard, which l encourage you please to fill in and return. Additionally, Synod of Bishops' have indicated that experimental material will soon be made available as part of a revision of the APB '89, which will add further pressure to move away from the SAPB, and to begin to consider the APB '89 as the "Old Prayer Book".

Youth Ministry

Also at last year's Annual Vestry, concern was raised about our ministry in particular to Teenagers. It is a phenomenon in many Anglican Churches that a new Rector is expected to miraculously have answers to the chronic issue affecting many wealthy suburban Churches of traditional origin. There are no miraculous answers. Our young people, generally, are in schools that demand the bulk of our children's time, have parents that fill the rest of their time with extra (beneficial) activities, and whose options for entertainment are multitude; and they find the forms of more traditional worship we offer boring in the extreme. Despite these almost insurmountable obstacles we have made some headway to retain our small group of Grade 8 and 9's, largely though the efforts of William Tough in creating a ''Teen Church" group that has some definition distinguishing them as different from the bigger Children's Church; and they are showing some interest in forming a Servers' Guild. We have also instituted a regular family-focused evening service that draws families with teenagers and young adults together on an approximate monthly basis, which is valued, but still needs some work on the recipe. We must, however, be doing something right as the St Cyprian's School boarders have elected to join us on a weekly basis at our Sunday evening service. They will review this after Easter, but in the meantime they are a definite value-add in more than just the additional numbers they bring to our attendance figures!

Ministry

Layministry

Our Layministers have recently undergone further training at Archdeaconry level and have been re-licensed by Bishop Garth at a joint service at St Paul's, Rondebosch. We welcome Dawn Long as a valuable new member of the team, and congratulate Jill, Edgar, Rosemary, Graham and Margie, William, Bev, Sheena, Denise, Ivor, Tony, and Jenny, on their re-licensing as Layministers. Alison's circumstances conspired to prohibit her from attending the training, but as her license is still valid for another year this was no problem. Daphne Myburgh and Steve Bethke have made the difficult decision not to renew their licenses; Daphne for health and family reasons, and Steve due to his studies and move to Brakenfell. We are thankful to them both for their contribution to our worship and pastoral life over an extended period of time. Edgar Ruiters and Bev Voight have both asked for a period of Sabbatical, which Council has agreed to; please keep them both in prayer. Thank you to each of our Layministers for honouring the call on your lives, and for being of service to us all at St Andrew's. l also take this opportunity on behalf of Vestry to congratulate Denise Ackermann on her appointment and licensing as Canon Theologian of the Cathedral.

Parish ministries

Despite a seemingly large group of Layministers, staffing three services a Sunday is proving difficult, and we are in need of additional members. If you feel called to this ministry, or perhaps to helping out with just the prayers, please speak up. This goes for other ministries, too: we are always needing to complement the present group of readers, sides-people, tea-makers and providers, Children's Church teachers, soup-makers, flower-arrangers, pray'ers, sacristans, servers, and youth, small groups, and our annual Morning Market. Please don't wait to be asked: offer! Please feel free to chat to me, to Bev-in-the-office, or to someone already involved in the area you are interested in. And at this point my huge thanks to everyone already involved in facilitating or participating in these ministries.

Worship

My thanks to Bishop Geoff for his ongoing commitment to be with us to preach and preside on the 1st  Sunday of the month and his input into a number of our small groups, and to Denise for her willingness to preach on a regular basis; and to them both for their ongoing commitment to our Lent Course. There is great value in having more than just the Rector's voice speaking into our common life, and I am hugely appreciative of their contribution. My thanks, too, to Elizabeth Cherry in particular for being willing to step into the gap in my absence. It has also been good to have previous Rectors of this Parish, Keith Griffiths and Mike Keggie, take services during this last year. Our Sunday worship has been complemented by regular Quiet Mornings, and I am appreciative of Rosemary's continuing to champion these as part of our membership of the Quiet Garden movement. Sadly, our Taize Services have fallen away for 2015, but my huge thanks to Esther and Karin for giving leadership to this over a number of years. We are hoping to offer some form of more reflective worship at the Sunday evening service when there is a 5th Sunday in the month.

Mission and Vision

In our August ''Vision Workshop" we took time to reflect on our purpose as a Christian and Anglican community here in Newlands. It was a useful morning, highlighting that we have been somewhat self-forgetting as a community, and that while we reach out meaningfully to the wider community of Cape Town through our MTN programme, we need to become more conscious of caring for and loving each other; and as mentioned above, a modernised, upgraded and extended hall and meeting facilities would enhance our ability to do this. Out of this meeting came the tag-line "Serving each other; serving the world." This is a first step towards renewing our mission and vision statements; and I am planning for us to explore this further on our Church Camp in March. We are also needing to explore how we can become more hands-on and personally involved in the projects and needs we support through the MTN programme.

Closure

In closing, firstly my thanks to my wife, Dawn: being a clergy spouse is never an easy space for a variety of reasons, and it is often difficult to "belong" in the same way the average parishioner "belongs" in parish life; and being married to a community-owned person often makes sustained intimacy a distant goal. In addition, she has the added burden of being married to me, which is not quite as idyllic as you may suppose. I am an introvert by nature, and Dawn often has the daunting task of coping with me in my "down time", where l can be distant, uncommunicative, and grumpy. l greatly appreciate her ongoing and sacrificial support of my ministry.

Secondly, my thanks to Bev Shaw, our Parish secretary. Bev has an amazing supply of patience and friendliness. Particularly amazing is her inner-resources in coping with the impact of the Morning Market on her office space! Additionally, she has the challenge of coping with my often distracted attention and seeming indecision, not to mention the family dogs! And then of course, there is the small matter of the rest of the Parish ...

Thirdly, my thanks to our out-going Churchwardens, Simon, William and David, and our Council members: thank you so much for your time, your commitment, support, and wise advice, your gifts of insight and practical help, often at cost to your own pocket. Special thanks to Noël Peagam who steps down as Dedicated Giving Coordinator and Honorary Treasurer after over ten years of substantial service to the Parish in this capacity. It is noteworthy that Council is appointing three people in Noël's place! Thanks, too, to Raymond for his facilitation of our Youth activities; to Mark and Jos for our Sunday morning music; to Steve and Andrew and our Sunday evening music teams; to Margie Barnard for overseeing our beautiful gardens; and to our garden and domestic staff, Wanda and Mombelli.

Finally, thanks to you all. You are St Andrew's: without each one of you we would not be the vibrant and healthy community we are today. Thank you for "Listening to him" (Mark 9:7b; NLTse), for being available to God's purposes for God's kingdom as God continues to work out those purposes in us and through us here at St Andrew's in Newlands.

MARK R D LONG
Rector
22 February 2015

Thoughts on an Annual Vestry

Definition

The Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (and affirmed in the Acts of the Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town) require that "The Parishioners of the Parish shall meet in Vestry ... at least once every calendar year not later than the 15th of March" (Canon 27).

The Canon goes on to say, "By Parishioner shall be understood any person ... who either is on the list of confirmed Communicants ... or ... being baptised, and not being a member of any other religious body, is an habitual worshipper in the Church ... of the Pastoral Charge in respect of which a vote is claimed."

What happens at the annual Vestry meeting?

We look back and we look forward. We look back over the preceding year, which is done primarily via a report from the Churchwardens on the year's activities, supplemented by additional reports from various Church activity groups, along with an audited report of the state of the Church finances. Looking forward is the primary function of the Rector's report along with what the Canon describes as, "the care ... of the Parish in matters affecting worship, stewardship, ministry, education, evangelism, unity, development and social responsibility." In looking forward we set the tone and direction of Parish life for the year that lies ahead. Decisions taken by the Vestry are binding on the Church Council.

The other role of the annual Vestry meeting is the election of two Churchwardens and an Alternate, Parish Councillors (at least five), two Synod representatives and alternates with an additional representative under the age of 25, and three Archdeaconry Council representatives. There will be a Synod this year from 14-16 August, and there will be two Archdeaconry Council meetings on 22 May and 13 November. And it will be good if we can receive nominations for all these positions prior to the Vestry meeting.

What is the process and who should we nominate as Churchwardens?

Canon 29 requires that, "Every Churchwarden ... within this Province shall be a confirmed Communicant of the age of twenty-one years and upwards" and further stipulates that, "They shall be elected by the majority of Parishioners present and voting, with the subsequent agreement of the Incumbent [Rector]." The precedent for voting, set by Provincial Synod, is that each person present will have two votes (as we are electing two Churchwardens), resulting in the nominated persons gaining the two highest votes becoming Churchwardens, and the person receiving the third highest votes automatically becoming the Alternate Churchwarden.

At St Andrew's we have a long-standing policy that Churchwardens should have a limited tenure (tenure is not limited by Canon 29) of three to four years in order to encourage others to step forward into leadership. To ensure that we do not break Canon 29 in implementing this policy, there are two options: the first is for those individuals who have served us as Churchwardens for an extended period to not re-accept nomination; the other is for Parishioners present at the Vestry meeting to exercise their vote in such a manner as to ensure that this policy finds traction. Also it is useful, but not required by Canon 29, that those nominated for Churchwarden have had recent experience on Parish Council. And, perhaps needless to say, we need three or more people nominated!

What is the process, and who is eligible, for election as Parish Councillor (and Synod and Archdeaconry Council representatives)?

Anyone who fits the above definition of "Parishioner" and is a confirmed communicant is eligible for nomination and subsequent election. Vestry decides on the number of Councilors to be elected. Again as per the precedent set by Provincial Synod, if the number of people nominated exceeds the number decided upon, a vote will be taken. If the number of nominations equals or is less than the number decided upon, then those nominated will be deemed to be elected.

If you allow yourself to be nominated and are subsequently elected as Churchwarden you will be required to attend at least a monthly Parish Executive meeting and a monthly Parish Council meeting, two Archdeaconry Council meetings during the year, an annual Diocesan Budget meeting, and any other ad hoc meetings requested of you by the Rector, Archdeacon or Bishop. If nominated for Parish Council and subsequently elected you will need to be available for a monthly Parish Council meeting, and be willing to pick up some form of portfolio commitment as a member of the Council. Synod and Archdeaconry representatives need to be available to attend monthly Parish Council meetings, attend Diocesan Synod (Synod reps) or Archdeaconry Council (Archdeaconry Council reps). Please note that those nominated for Churchwarden, if not elected, are not automatically nominated for Parish Council. This needs to be a separate nomination.

Can we access a copy of the Constitution and Canons, and the Acts of the Diocese of Cape Town?

A full description of responsibilities for Churchwarden and Parish Councillor can be found in Canons 28 (of Parish Councils) and 29 (of Churchwardens and Chapel Wardens), and a full copy of these can be requested from the Church Office, as can a full copy of the Canons and Constitution of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and the Acts of the Diocese of Cape Town.

Hopefully the above information gives you sufficient understanding of what the annual Vestry meeting is all about, and sufficient basis to attend! I look forward to your participation and involvement, and pray that if you are approached for nomination to any of the above positions you may have the courage to allow your name to go forward for election.

MARK R D LONG
Rector
30 January 2014