The Guild of St. Jude
In January, the Rector of our parish, Canon Keith Schmidt, asked me to put together a new guild in the parish whose aim would be to create events and carry on projects that would support the life of our community, principally on the financial level. Hence was born the Guild of Saint Jude.
Saint Jude the Apostle, in Catholic lore, is the patron saint of “lost causes”, which means that he is the saint whose help is sought when our human efforts can’t seem to enable us to attain the goals we have set for ourselves.
One of the Guild’s specific traits is that its members are “doers”, they are people who spend less time discussing, and more time making things happen concretely. Members of the Guild are parishioners but also Friends of Saint John’s, people who are not members of our community, but want to help it remain open and active.
As the parish is seeking to stabilize its finances, the Guild decided to undertake a fundraising project. This project was born of an idea presented by Guild member Brendan Jones. The project was to create a festive Latino night with a band, food, dancing and drinks to be held in the parish hall. He presented his project to the Guild whose members started working together to make it happen.
After a few changes in dates, the event was scheduled for Saturday, 25th March (the feast of the Annunciation, also called Lady Day). Carole Von Bulow Dennevitz was responsible for the decorations. She was helped by Scott Wicks-Potter and myself. Brendan hired a chef, and two bands (one Brazilian, the other Cuban), and made sure that the event would be a secure space. Raphaël Notot, a Friend of St. John’s who is studying sound engineering, took care of the lighting and the sound system for the event. Oliver Jonkus, another Friend of St. John’s, organized the online ticket reservation system. I supervised things, making sure that a room would be available for the musicians, that a coatroom would be organized in the former Mission, and helped setting, decorating and cleaning the room. Loïcia Sanson, another Friend of St. John’s, was responsible for the food and drink sales counter and gave a hand in the general organization of the event. Parishioners Abiose Cromanty, Cynthia Wiltshire and Séverin helped out in the bussing of tables and the kitchen cleaning.
Between 70 and 80 people turned up at the event, which was perfect for the size of the room. Some people were parishioners, but many others were from outside the parish, people of various ages and cultures. They danced, laughed, fraternized and had great fun.
At this point, we are still assessing how much money the event brought to the parish, as certain donations even came after the event was over, but we are confident it will be a sizable amount to help the church with some of its financial obligations.
My heartfelt thanks to all who made of this event the success that it was. My strong belief is that, if we want to keep Saint John’s open and alive as it has these past 162 years, members of the parish need to come together and make things happen as our forefathers in the faith have done when, against great odds, they managed to create and develop an Anglo-Catholic parish in an hostile Low-Church diocese, build and maintain the church in difficult financial conditions, and support a loving community of orthodox believers in a society moved and tossed about by all sorts of winds of doctrine.