St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Vestry Statement on a Lay-Driven Church

St. Paul’s is a "Lay-Driven Church". What does that mean?

1. We are a shared ministry, among parishioners, clergy, staff, and the Richmond community. We are about relationships, with one another and with God. We are servants to one another. Parishioners, clergy, vestry and staff minister together as a fluid team.

2. At St. Paul’s we are blessed with a substantial endowment. It vests lay leadership with a forward-looking sense of responsibility to the church and to the Richmond community.

3. Experience teaches that a church initiative or activity without lay leadership and substantial parishioner involvement can easily become staff-driven, which in turn can make the activity prohibitively expensive, and less likely to succeed and endure.

4. Parishioner energy fuels the work and mission of the church, including its new initiatives and ideas. We are blessed with talented parishioners whose passion and organizational ability attracts non-parishioner volunteers. Many of our new members, who are a major source of our strength, came initially to St. Paul’s as volunteers. We strive to leverage and build our initiatives with parishioner and volunteer involvement, and through cooperation with other organizations. In so doing, we extend God’s work well beyond the limits even of our significant financial resources.

5. Our tradition is bottom-up, with new energy emerging from unpredictable places. The free exchange of ideas fosters this emergence. Our parishioners are empowered to lead, and to define the church’s priorities and agenda themselves, within our canonical and financial constraints.

6. We have proudly built a Lay-Driven Church culture over many years. In St. Paul’s the greater Church and the Richmond community possess an asset that cannot readily be duplicated. With constant awareness and diligence, our asset – our blessing from God – will be nurtured and maintained.