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Rector, Annual Report, 2017
The Rev. Catherine D. Hicks

Grace and peace to each one of you.

As a new year begins, I’m grateful for the love and concern we share for one another, and for
our ability to work together as a visible living witness to God’s love out in the world. I’m also
thankful for your disciplined giving and the ongoing care that many of you provide for our
buildings and our grounds.

My report is going to cover three areas—2017 at St Peter’s, 2017 in the Diocese and a few
personal remarks about 2017 and this new year of 2018.

St Peter’s, 2017

Although we are a group of people of various ages, of various races and nationalities, economic
situations, educational levels, political persuasions, and varying ways of interpreting scripture
and theology, we continue to be united in our love for God, for one another and for our
neighbors. This unity heals and binds us together as witnesses of God’s love in this hurting and
broken world.

Thank you to Ben Hicks for putting together our newsletter, The Parish Post, each month, and
for faithfully formatting and producing Sunday’s bulletins each week. Thank you to Ben as well
for maintaining our website and providing a written and photographic narrative of our life
together as a parish. And Ben also keeps our Facebook page up to date so that people can
follow St Peter’s on social media.

Thanks to your generosity with time and with your money, we have been able to continue our
food distribution ministry, the Village Harvest. You’ll find statistics for this ministry for the
community elsewhere in the reports. As word about this ministry has gotten around, the
number of clients continues to grow, meaning that we have more work to do. If you haven’t
had a chance to do so yet, come help with the Village Harvest when you can. Your presence
and labor will be greatly appreciated by your fellow parishioners and by the clients who come
to the distribution.

The Vestry has been working on a comprehensive safety plan for St Peter’s due in part to
continuing gun violence in this nation, including violence carried out in churches and other
places of worship. Chris Hall and Scott Moser from the Caroline County Sheriff’s Department
did a safety assessment of our property in September and reported their findings to the Vestry,
including both the things we are doing well, and the areas in which we could make our buildings
and grounds safer. They were highly complimentary of the well-kept grounds. Cookie has
pruned the large boxwoods behind the church in response to their suggestion so that these
shrubs should not provide hiding places for those who might cause trouble. Helmut Linne von
Berg, the Junior Warden, has installed locks on the heat pump and the basement doors of both

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