Annual Vestry Meeting
St. Jude’s Annual Vestry Meeting
The Annual Vestry Meeting is more than a constitutional requirement or a review of budgets and reports. It is one of the ways St. Jude’s gathers to remember who we are, to discern where God is leading us, and to commit ourselves—together—to the work God has entrusted to our community.
At this meeting, we will:
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Give thanks for the ministries, people, and partnerships through which God’s mission has taken flesh in the past year.
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Receive reports that help us see the whole picture of our common life—our worship, our outreach, our stewardship of resources, our care for one another, and our presence in the wider community.
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Elect leaders who will help guide our parish in the coming year, not as managers of an institution but as companions in a shared vocation.
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Review and adopt a budget that expresses our priorities and our hope—an act of faith that aligns our resources with the mission God has given us.
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Attend to the responsibilities that keep our parish healthy, transparent, and accountable, so that our witness remains trustworthy and our ministries sustainable.
We want to be clear that this meeting will include routine business such as financial reports, budgets, and other necessary parish matters. While these are important, they are part of a larger story.
Beneath all of this business lies something deeper: Vestry is a moment of communal discernment. It is the annual pause in which we look at our life with clear eyes and open hearts, asking how we might continue to join God’s ongoing work of healing, reconciliation, and renewal—in our parish, in our neighbourhoods, in our diocese, and in the world God loves.
The Annual Vestry Meeting is, in its own way, an act of worship: a gathering of the Body to listen, to speak truthfully, to hope boldly, and to offer ourselves again to God’s mission. Everyone’s voice matters. Everyone’s presence strengthens the whole. And everyone is invited to take their place in the story God is writing through St. Jude’s.