Is an annual parish meeting “spiritual?”
Short answer:
Yes.
Long answer:
It is easy to think of life as an artificial partition between the things that are ‘material’ and the things that are ‘spiritual’. In this arrangement “secular people” care only about the material world, while “spiritual people” (like Christians) care ultimately only about “spiritual things.”
But none of this makes any sense in real life… for either the secularist or the spiritualist. For example, what is ‘economic justice?’ It cannot be merely a matter of nature or matter. Matter couldn’t see beyond itself to ask questions of morality.
Or what is ‘the mind?’ It can’t merely be the brain as corpses have brains but not ‘minds’. Matter by itself cannot account for the world.
Neither can a kind of gnostic spiritualism. If ‘economic justice’ is on one level spiritual, it is also true that it is also not merely spiritual, it concerns material things (money, goods, means of production, stuff).
The life that God has called us into is both physical and spiritual. And we are not called to oscillate between a material and a spiritual mode of living, but to inhabit the world as fully embodied spiritual creatures.
The local church is one such material-spiritual embodied Thing. God has called us to rule and reign with Christ (Rev. 20:6), and this means living a life that cares, as God does, for both the “spiritual” parts of our parish life and the “material” ones —actually it means understanding them as parts of one whole unified life in Christ.
On Sunday during potluck we embody this life of the church as we vote on vestry members, look into the finances of our parish, and walk in a unity of vision for this next season of church life.
Our annual parish meeting is one small —but very real— way of bringing God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). We want his will to be done here among us —not merely in our worship or preaching (though there too), but in our use of wealth, our decisions around leadership, and our common vision for mission in the harvest God has called us to.
Come and join us on Sunday… And join us for more than “taking care of the worldly business of the church” —join us as we life-out the embodied Life of the Kingdom which means both prayers and songs and sacraments AND tithes and votes and secretarial minutes. For there is no part of Life which does not belong to King Jesus.