December 2025 Vestry Meeting Highlights

The Vestry is our church’s governing board and is made up of elected members from our congregation. The vestry is responsible for everything that happens at St. Stephen’s - the finances, the worship, the care of the community, the repairs to the building — everything. If it involves St. Stephen’s, the Vestry must deal with it.

The Vestry meets after church on the 3rd Sunday of the month, and all parish members are welcome to attend. On November 16, we discussed and voted on a number of important issues including the following:

1. The Vestry voted to hire Jim Freeze, a man skilled in church sound systems, to do a major overhaul and updating of our antiquated sound system. It was Jim who managed to get our microphones working again last month after several weeks of silence. We hope that things will be much improved and simplified. The expense is being covered by a generous gift from Mary Ludwick in memory of her husband.

2. The Vestry also heard a report from Kimberlee Rossi and Elwood Mills who have been developing a lovely welcoming banner which we plan to hang outside the church as a way to invite people passing the church to join us. They developed something that is really quite stunning, and the Vestry approved the project’s continued development.

3. Holly Masulis reported on her ongoing efforts to update the member directory to include the many new names of people who have begun attending the church since the last directory. She is nearly done.

4. Mary Ludwick and JoAnne Markowska reported on their success with last month’s maiden voyage of the new newsletter and gave out the dates for submitting for the December newsletter.

5. Classical Conversations, a play-and-study group for homeschoolers, has offered to provide the church with a new play structure at their expense as a donation. This group which meets every Tuesday afternoon at St. Stephen’s, and they would like to help us upgrade that playground area. The Vestry approved their gift.