During 2009 our parish community continued to be guided by our October 2005 Visioning Day aspiration that during the next five to seven years the Church of St. Nicholas would be a community of faith that inspires, empowers and equips members to go and do ministry, to serve the Lord and live the Gospel. We believe we have continued to make good progress in achieving this vision.

The Canons or the operating rules of the Diocese prescribe that the Incumbent and the Churchwardens are responsible for the leadership of the parish.

Father Kevin’s main focus is on providing leadership to our worship, liturgy and pastoral care. We are truly blessed by the leadership we receive from him and our ministry team which includes the Reverend Joan Waters-Garner, our Honorary Assistant and Deb Chapman, our Pastoral Associate. We wish to express our sincere appreciation for their dedication to leading us in meaningful worship and guiding our other important ministries.

The Churchwardens are focused on the temporal or business affairs of the parish which means:

• Ensuring we have the appropriate level of clergy and staff;
• Ensuring our property is maintained;
• And that our finances are in order.

Stability in all these areas is a balancing act and key to our ability to actualize our vision. We believe we were able to achieve a healthy balance in these three fundamental areas in 2009 and also we are pleased that we met our primary goals in each area.

At Vestry last year we described our objectives as follows:

1. Continuing to employ a part-time pastoral associate for a second year;
2. Hiring a professional to assess our heating system needs and implementing the recommendations of their report;
3. Introducing a more systematic approach to parochial givings through a Stewardship Campaign and use of a Narrative Budget; and
4. Balancing our finances (breaking even) for the year.

The Executive Committee (the Incumbent, Churchwardens, Treasurer, and Property Manager) work collaboratively to make decisions for our parish and receive input from the Parish Council. The Executive Committee was fortunate to have had continuity of membership from last year and benefited from a second year of working together as a group. Running a Church the size of St. Nicholas is quite involved and requires a healthy mix of new ideas and executive experience. Mark Trumpour is stepping down as Deputy Warden at Vestry after two years in this role. We will miss his valuable insights during our discussions and thank him for his service.

The Executive Committee relies on the Parish Council for their input and review of our work. We wish to thank them for the time spent providing that valuable advice. We also wish to thank Arlene McGuire, Parish Council Chair for her effective leadership of the Council.

St. Nicholas benefited from another year of stable staffing and we are very grateful to our staff members. Deb Chapman was employed as our Pastoral Associate on a part-time basis. Our Outreach programs have benefited greatly from her leadership. The Reverend Joan Waters-Garner, Director of Music, and Bill Goodfellow, Associate Director of Music, continued to provide musical leadership of the Choir and be our organists. Our music directors and Choir devote many hours to preparing music that adds so much joy to our worship. Janet Baron, our parish secretary, continued to keep our parish office running well with her ever faithful and willing support. Mirna Martinez, our custodian, was with us for a third year and we thank her and her family for the good job they do in keeping our premises clean.

A special thank you goes to our Property Supervisor, Malcolm Moffat and his team of “behind the scenes” volunteers, in particular Reg McRae, John Hodder, Dieter Billinger, George Sczepanski and Brian Jones who keep up with the many maintenance projects needed to keep our Church functional. The installation of a new heating system for the Church was the most significant property development this year. We also undertook a number of updates to the rectory after the former tenants moved at the end of May. We were pleased to be able to rent the refreshed rectory to a new family of tenants from the beginning of August. Another special thank you goes to Brian Jones, for his commitment and diligence as our Treasurer. Brian brings many years of experience to this important role. We also wish to acknowledge the contribution and commitment of our Envelope Secretary, Duncan Wood and to thank Charlie Cutts and Brian Jones for providing leadership to our successful Capital Campaign.

The Parish’s receipts and expenditures showed a surplus of $5,986 in 2009 after running a deficit of $7,560 in 2008 and a deficit of $2,270 in 2007. We thank all parishioners who made an extra effort to contribute to this improved financial picture plus all those who made a contribution to the Capital Campaign. Letters will be distributed with the 2009 tax receipts about our second annual Stewardship Campaign for regular parochial offerings. We ask that you assist us in planning our 2010 finances by completing and returning your pledge card.

St. Nicholas is a vibrant faith community because of the many, many hours of volunteer time contributed by so many parishioners. We thank all who contribute their time and gifts to the ministries of our parish. It has been a privilege to serve as your Churchwardens and we take this opportunity to thank all parishioners for their support and guidance throughout the year.

• Joan Wilson, Rector’s Warden
• Doug Goss, People’s Warden
• Brian Todd, Deputy Warden
• Mark Trumpour, Deputy Warden
  
  

The Birch Cliff/Cliffside neighbourhood is defined by the City of Toronto as being east of Victoria Park, north of the lake, west of Midland and south of the CNR railway tracks to St. Clair. The City has prepared a neighbourhood profile available here » Census profiles of the Scarborough Southwest Ward (Ward 36) are available here ».