Tim Butka
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Our family moved to Broadlands in 1999, and found St. David’s a year or two later. Since that time I have witnessed much change and growth within my own family, with two daughters that were in grade school when we moved here and are now in high school and college, my wife who was an undergraduate and now has her Master’s degree and is teaching at a local middle school, and myself working for my third employer since the move.  With that growth and change we’ve each at times had different priorities and goals, as well as obligations.  We’ve experienced and shared differing opinions, developed different perspectives, and often changed our own opinions and perspectives.  But underlying that all is the fact that today we are still the family that we were when we moved here.  We’ve learned that we each bring different things to the family, that it’s more productive to respect those differences, embrace them, learn from them, and that the stronger our commitment and greater our individual contributions to the household, the greater the benefit and growth that we experience both as individuals and as a family. 

For me, St. David’s is little different from that family experience.  Over the same time period, St David’s has seen multiple changes such as those in staffing, membership, and services for example.  During that period of time I’ve personally expanded my participation from serving as a lay reader and Eucharistic minister, to serving on the technical ministry team, joining a Shepherd Group and training as a leader, participating in the visioning process, and recently joining Kevin to help re-establish the 5 PM service.  I’ve sometimes agreed and at other times disagreed, both with changes and individuals. But what I’ve seen, particularly with and through membership in a Shepherd Group, is that the wider my heart is opened and the more willing I am to participate, the greater my blessings and personal experience of a living God has become.

These are to differing degrees both my experience of and vision for the future of St. David’s.  I am truly excited by the opportunities in that vision and an honored to serve on the Vestry, to not only help St. David’s bring to fruition the goals embraced by the parish as a result of the visioning process, but also flourish as an intentional, inclusive, covenant community where no one stands alone.