Report to the APCM, 29 April 2009

St Peter’s Eaton Square
The Vicar’s Report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting,
Wednesday 29 April 2009

The Revd Nicholas Papadopulos


In the sermon he preached here on Passiontide Sunday the Archbishop of Canterbury asked how the death of Christ might be represented; not how a crucified man might be represented, for enough is known about the Romans’ vicious methods to allow us to do that with ease; rather, how the encounter between the living God and desolate death might be adequately represented.

He drew our attention to three truths disclosed by Silvia Dimitrova’s numinous icon. The first is the hands of Christ which are open and uplifted in prayer. In death, even in death, Christ prays, offering all that he is to his Father. The second is that radiating from Christ’s body, twisted in agony, is the unearthly light of God. In death, even in death, Christ makes visible the light of his Father. So when the Son of God encounters the ‘no’ of death he entrusts himself to his Father in prayer, and in so trusting he reveals heaven’s light. Yet the third truth is that the truest representation of Christ’s death and resurrection is composed not in oils or even in tempera on wood but in us: in our living, or rather in our dying to self and living anew, remade and recreated, by heaven’s light burning within us.

Prayer, light, and embodied change have characterized our priorities here since 2007. We are a community; we are one community, not a number of parallel and occasionally colliding communities. We are a community which prays and offers itself to God in worship, believing that in worship we encounter God and that that encounter inspires change. We are community which is growing in discipleship of Jesus Christ, trying to become more like the one who shows us what God is like and to shine with his light. We are a community set in the world, a community which, believing itself remade by God, longs to remake the world around it so that it is more God-like. Worship, discipleship, transformation; if you will, prayer, light, embodied change: this is what I believe the priorities of our mission continue to be.

Allow me to sketch for you not an exhaustive and exhausting list of all we have done in the last twelve months. The Annual Report does that. Instead allow me to sketch for you a few examples of what a community which takes seriously its worship, its discipleship, and its world actually looks like.


Worship

On the last Sunday of Advent our church became an unruly cattle-shed located in Bethlehem some two millennia ago. The sidesmen were dressed as shepherds, the deacon as a donkey, and at least two former churchwardens as sheep. Alisa and Claire’s nativity play drew us together and asked us not to look in on the charming story of Christmas but to live it for ourselves. On the night the Archbishop was with us no one who was here will forget Andrew Smith’s brilliant setting of St Anselm’s Ave Crux, sublime music which combined with Silvia’s icon and a drama of lights and incense to bring heaven close to earth. ‘There’s glory for you’ as Humpty Dumpty said to Alice. In Advent and in Passiontide, all through the year, worship changes us.


Discipleship

One Sunday evening in Lent nearly twenty of our young people shared crisps, pizza, ice cream and even salad with James and I in this very room. They wanted to be there; they wanted to come again; they knew that in some way they belonged together and belonged here, in a Church. Last September we gave over four Sundays of the Family Eucharist to a series on the liturgy of the Eucharist, remembering together how we gather with God, listen to God, share with God and are sent out by God. Person after person told us how they had appreciated the teaching, how it had reminded them of long-lost Confirmation lessons and of Confirmation lessons they’d never had. In Lent and in the late summer we took hold of our Baptism and explored together what it means.


The World

In February on successive Sundays we heard from preachers representing the two causes upon which the PCC has decided to concentrate its support. Neither is a fashionable or easy charity. Angola is a far away African state whose bitter civil war has been eclipsed in our memories by those in Rwanda and Sudan. Yet it is desperately poor and has an urgent need of civil infrastructure. We have a partner in the parish of St Matthew Kimvuenga; we will build them a school and walk with them as partners in prayer and mission. Zacchaeus 2000 is a Christian trust whose call is to create an inclusive society. We are fond of the adjective ‘inclusive’: Z2K exists to remind us that the greatest barrier to inclusion in Britain in 2009 is poverty and the ill-health and educational underachievement that accompany it. In adopting St Matthew’s and Z2K we are acting to transform God’s world.


In all these ways we have taken forward our mission priorities since we last met, and along the way we have welcomed a new priest in James and a new deacon in Mark; we have almost completed work on the organ, launched a new website, and installed a new PA system; we have seen nearly twenty candidates confirmed by the Bishop; we have hosted the Diocesan Synod, the Conference of the Church of England’s liturgical officers, and the induction day for Back to Church Sunday nationwide. James made a guest appearance on the Vanessa Feltz show while I recorded ten episodes of Pause for Thought for BBC Radio 2. We have not stood still.

That we have not stood still is due in large part to the very hard work of a very considerable number of people. I have already thanked the parochial officers and the members of the PCC. I would like now to sing a few of the unsung heroes (or rather heroines) whose efforts all too often go unnoticed. Deborah Hulett, for example, whose green-fingered magic keeps our garden looking beautiful in every season that God sends; Mary Drummond, who has spent hours this year removing wax from hassocks and washing and ironing the choir’s surplices; Carl and Cressida Eatson-Lloyd, whose artistic gifts underpinned the Giving Campaign and brought it to life; Elizabeth Parker, who has given years of service as Mrs Tiggywinkle laundering the sanctuary linen and has even found in Saskia Sissons a willing successor. I could go on, but that St Peter’s flourishes as it does is thanks to hours that are given freely and willingly.

We are as ever hugely fortunate in our staff. Douglas the verger, Olivia the administrator and Susan the book-keeper all work longer hours than they should and do so with infinite grace and good humour. Each of them is dedicated to what they do, and I am glad to reassure them of just how grateful I am to each of them on behalf of us all.

Our Director of Music Andrew Smith has surpassed himself this year. He is a consummate professional with exactingly high standards, but even he ought to be pleased with a year that has seen the release of not one but two discs and an unflinchingly high standard in liturgical music. He and Dan Moult make a wonderful team, and it was a delight to see them presiding over the national Organ Day which drew organists from all over the country to St Peter’s in March.

Stephen Brown, organist at the Family Eucharist since my arrival in 2007, left us at Easter and will even now be tearing into the keyboard part of a German musical resembling Blazing Saddles in Berlin. We miss his spirited playing and his empathetic leadership of the Family Eucharist choir. And Maurice Mantle, employed by the St Peter’s Eaton Square Charity as parish Groundsman since 2002 has retired. We wish him and Carol good health and every happiness in the months ahead. Processes are underway to replace both Stephen and Maurice.

I have already alluded to what is probably the most significant change that has occurred in the parish in the last year so far as I am concerned. It is that this year I address you as a member of a clergy team, and words do not do justice to my pleasure at being able to do so. Clergy throughout the Diocese and beyond decry their ordained colleagues as the crosses which they have to bear. I rejoice in my ordained colleagues; I count myself blessed in having them and cannot imagine having any finer. James, Claire and Mark bring me (and hence you) huge gifts of pastoral care, prophetic wisdom, sharp wit and sheer hard work. I am deeply grateful to them all.

And that is an appropriate point at which to remind you of my last report to the APCM. Twelve months ago I ended by summarizing my priorities for the year ahead, and there would have been little point in doing that unless I had been prepared to revisit those priorities twelve months later. The first of these was the nurture of an effective clergy team, and while I am content that this priority is in hand my colleagues will remain a priority. Thankfully, the biggest change to the team that we can envisage at present is a very happy one, namely Mark’s ordination as priest at Petertide.

My second priority was the introduction of new initiatives on discipleship. I have given examples of these; the forthcoming Life course will be a further significant development; my instincts are that two further tasks under the discipleship priority beckon urgently. One is building on that Lenten pizza evening and refounding a parish youth club for the twenty-first century; the second is developing our ministry of hospitality and welcome. This will sound brutal, but all too often a first-time worshipper at the Family Eucharist is confronted by our intimidatingly crowded portico, some mashed-up polystyrene cups and two empty coffee jugs.

My third priority was that I hoped we might be able to judge our success not just by the numbers coming through our doors but by the impact we have on the community we serve. This is the Church in the World priority and here I believe we still have work to do. We are St Peter’s Eaton Square, the parish church responsible for a slice of central London. The great challenge for us is how we relate to that slice, how we are transforming it and making it more God-like. Beyond our excellent links with our school our impact on this place is still limited. The Bishop of London told Sunday’s Confirmation candidates that the Church could never be risk-averse. Perhaps this is the year when we will take some risks. Here’s a thought. It might cost £5,000 to hire the SW1 Gallery in Cardinal Place for a week. But just suppose we did. Just suppose that that was our Church. If it was, how might we make use of it – what opportunities for play, refreshment, artistic creation and spiritual exploration might we offer to the transient community that throngs around it? Do we have a story to tell between Wagamama and Marks and Spencer?

My last priority was that I hoped we might take a more mature approach to our finances. We have – as Peter Wild has already said, the Giving Campaign has made a good start. But it falls far short of the sum we set out to raise, and this year we will face a very stiff test. The five-yearly inspection of our building last year generated a heavy schedule of works that are necessary, particularly to our roofs. But I don’t want the work done to be purely maintenance; I want to take the opportunity to reimagine and refurbish the public spaces in our building, those rooms we currently let out and some we currently don’t, so that we can better serve the city and make this place a seven-day hub of activity where community is built and need is met. If you have not joined the Giving scheme then please do so tonight: if you have but your friends and neighbours have not then please speak to them.

Perhaps it seems odd to conclude an annual report by talking about money, but money is not an optional add-on to those three priorities of worship, discipleship and the world. Without funding there is no building to worship in; without proper consideration of funding there is no growth in discipleship; without a commitment to sustained funding there is no long-term resource for Angola or anywhere else. In this parish this ought not be an obstruction to the mission God has given us.

I have said this before and I will say it again: this remains an exciting place in which to be a priest and many of you have shown me great support and kindness in the year that is now behind us. I am very grateful, and look forward to the worship, discipleship, transformation (and parties) of the next twelve months.