Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields

What is God calling us to now?

It is clear that the people of St. Martin’s love many things about the parish as it is now and have an eye on places we can go. Three separate parish gatherings for stewardship discussions held in the fall of 2009 produced stirring commentary about what St. Martin’s means to people and their ideas about the future. A later meeting in January, “Creating Our Vision: The Future of St. Martin’s,” brought nearly 200 parishioners together to voice their hopes and desires.

A quality of St. Martin’s mentioned over and over is fellowship. The challenge is how to promote and deepen the ties within our sprawling family spread among four services on Sunday mornings.

A second strongly voiced desire is that we ignite a spirit of sustained, generous stewardship. The last line of our Mission Statement, expressing what we are centered on, cites “the call to be agents of Christ’s love in the world.” Even though we have a large and varied corps of involved parishioners, not everyone is aware of our Mission Statement and each person’s calling to be an agent. We are often happy with the feeling of freedom and wide opportunity provided by the church, but not as aware of our own responsibilities. This desire for more generous stewardship is echoed in the hope that we can also revitalize our commitment to outreach, not only in financial ways, but also by encouraging and supporting people’s involvement.

“We get off balance sometimes. We struggle to get ourselves back on course. We wrestle with our Baptismal Covenant, and yet we constantly give thanks.”

We love the central role that worship plays in life at St. Martin’s and want to continue to deepen spiritual growth within our community. On a busy Sunday morning this is somewhat difficult. We have our assorted desires and plans and go in lots of directions. It has been said more than once that it’s akin to herding cats around here. Yet as one parishioner expressed, “It is less about herding cats than about the impress of grace, which takes so many amazing forms among us. We get off balance sometimes. We struggle to get ourselves back on course. We wrestle with our Baptismal Covenant, and yet we constantly give thanks.” We will continue to wrestle and give thanks, experience grace and find renewal, and “seek and serve Christ in all persons” with encouragement and support in our spiritual evolution.