June 1, 2008: All Parish Meeting at 9:00 AM

St. Dunstan's has a peculiar call to minister to young people: teens and preteens, especially. It’s part of our DNA code. Not only do I believe it, the Vestry has told me, lay people have told me and the staff has told me. I think it goes all the way back to our patron, Dunstan. Over a thousand years ago, Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, showed a heart for young people in general and a concern for their education and spiritual formation in particular. Oh yes, by the way, Brian, our youth minister told me, as well.

The Vestry and I are calling a special meeting of the whole parish for June 1, 2008 to address some important matters respecting youth ministry in the future. We will start worship at 9:00 and proceed to a parish business meeting immediately after. This will be like our Annual Parish meeting, Part 2.

Here are the FAQs:

Who: All of the parish.

What: General Parish Meeting

When: June 1, at 9:00 am

Where: The sanctuary of St. Dunstan's

Why: To vote to get a parish approval to go-ahead with the building of the Youth/Education building that we have been talking about for over ten years. Why now? For the first time since the parish began working on this, we have all our ducks in a row: we have the architectural plans; we have permits; we have approved contractors, we have plans for funding. Not to address this now will continue to cost us more money in the future and lose all momentum - which we are trying to sustain. Adopting and implementing this proposal will be very helpful in rounding out the job description of the new rector.

It is important for you to know that this is not the kick-off for a new Capital Funds Drive. Our plans at this time do not call for such a drive. We believe that we have the funding for this construction in hand by other means. We need to present these plans to you and gain your approval before we can proceed.

Any church needs two things to do effective youth work: good hardware and good software. Subsequently, there will be two presentations made at this meeting. Brian Hughes will be presenting the program side. This is the software part. The Vestry and Finance committee will present the proposal for the hardware - the plans for funding the new building. The parish will be asked to vote on whether to proceed with the hardware side - constructing the youth educationbuilding. The Vestry has already approved both the software and hardware side of this program. Bringing the whole parish into this decision not only makes good pastoral sense but also conforms to the wisdom of our canons.

Please make every effort to attend this important parish meeting. If you have any questions, please call me or Tracy Fox or Bea Lathrop, our wardens or anyone else on the Vestry or Bob Dwyer, our Administrative Assistant.