George Townsend | June 17, 2026 

This is my first time participating on a vestry and I’m very proud to have the opportunity.  It’s been an enriching experience.  I’m also very honored to participate in our services as a Lay Eucharistic Miniter and to serve as your Junior Warden.  Our vestry a wonderful and capable group.

I’m pleased to report that our vestry has been working very well together and getting a lot done.  In fact, most of the things I had hoped we would accomplish during my three-year tenure we have already made progress on.  We have arranged for the first independent outside CPA audit of our financials in eight or so years to be completed in July.  We have made and continue to make needed improvements to our financial accounting and information reporting systems.  We are upgrading our church management software system this year.  We are establishing a new building maintenance reserve account including a sizable initial deposit.  We have started a much-needed review and update of both Grace Church and Grace Foundation bylaws. We have managed a number of building and grounds repairs and improvements, and we are working on a number of other projects.  If you wish to discuss any of these or other topics, I encourage you to contact me or any other vestry member as we would like to hear from you.

What I have found and love about Grace Episcopal Church the most is that I feel we have and share some ingrained need for one another and we all aspire, by a kind of basic instinct of grace, to be a community in which the Spirit of Christ speaks to us and guides us.

I’d like to share with all of you one of my favorite readings from one of my favorite books, the 1949 book titled Seeds of Contemplation authored by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

“Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with fire.  Shine in my mind, occupy my heart with Your tremendous Life.  Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory, and let my hands touch nothing that is not for Your service.  Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving You great glory.  Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens.  Possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love for which one thing alone is necessary.  Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity but for love alone.”

Peace,

George Townsend