February 26th: A Rector’s Assistant

St. Matthias’ was officially founded as a mission of St. George’s, Place du Canada, in 1873, which means our community is 150 this year! For the next 12 months, we’ll be diving into the archives to shine the spotlight on particularly interesting parts of our history.

In January 1938, then-rector Rev. Gilbert Oliver complained in his report to Vestry that “whereas there were over 700 families in the Parish who look upon St. Matthias as their church, approximately only 400 families are regular attendants, and only about half of those families attending bear their share of the expense.” It was not the first such complaint from a Rector or a Warden, nor would it be the last, but in Rev. Oliver’s case, concern about attendance may have been exacerbated by an issue in the parish that had been ongoing since before his appointment a decade previous: the parish was simply too large for a single clergyman to manage. St. Matthias’ would spend over 50 years trying to hire an Assistant Rector before finally putting an end to the project due to lack of funds and, perhaps more significantly, the marked decrease in parish numbers after 1970.

St. Matthias’ numbers were on a serious growth curve for its first century! In 1887, with 145 children in the Sunday School and an average Sunday attendance of 167, the parish felt the need to build an extension to the sanctuary in order to add an additional 80 seats; as noted above, Rev. Oliver counted 400 active families by 1938. As a consequence of this continued growth, Vestry 1927 passed a motion authorising the Rector and Wardens to “take steps to try to find a suitable assistant, with full power to appoint such [an] assistant if he can be found,” but a year later, Vestry 1928 was forced to turn the matter over to the Finance Committee, as no assistant had been found in the intervening year. A Rev. F.J. Simmons (or perhaps Simonson) was introduced to Vestry in 1932, but by Vestry 1933, the assistant question was once again open, and the Corporation was empowered to hire someone, anyone, to help the Rector. No wonder Rev. Oliver found himself so frustrated!

An unnamed curate was finally appointed in time to take over the Sunday School Superintendency as of Vestry 1934, acting on the 1928 request of Mr. Lydon, the Sunday School Superintendent that year, that any assistant hired be someone who could handle the transition between Sunday School and regular church attendance. Thus began a rotating door of curates, most lasting less than two years before moving on to take on their own parishes, to return to school, or to get married. The shortest-lasting curacy was Rev. Robert Mackie’s; he was introduced at Vestry 1945 and started work shortly thereafter but was gone before Vestry 1946.

In 1949, the Wardens lamented in their report to Vestry that, despite the fact that the church was at 500 families counting at least 2000 people, St. Matthias’ had been unable “to secure the services of a permanent assistant.” 1950’s Rev. Peter Farrell came from England to serve at St. Matthias’, and although the Wardens expressed the hope that “he will be able to stay with us,” in 1951 they again introduced someone new. By 1974, the Wardens counted their failure to hire a long-term assistant as a “sin of omission.” But despite these issues in retaining suitable help for the Rector, the parish had continued to grow. The parish statistics of 1957 count 533 families and 291 individuals for a total of 1890 members of the parish, 538 of whom were envelope subscribers and 356 of whom were Sunday School-age children.

1970 was St. Matthias’ peak: 650 families and 251 individuals, although it is unclear how many of those were in attendance, as in 1971 only 66 children were attending Sunday School with any regularity. It’s very possible that the pattern Rev. Oliver noted in the 1930s continued to be the case, as it is certainly the case today: a marked difference between parish affiliation and service attendance. Sunday School numbers, when they are available, are one of the few indications we have of the actual Sunday attendance, as average service attendance numbers did not begin to be included in the statistics reported to Vestry until the 1990s.

Indeed, by 1983 the 317 families and 178 individuals on the parish rolls registered only 30 children in the Sunday School, with the report for that year neglecting to note actual attendance. 1994 saw 167 families and 143 individuals, with 25 individual children occasionally attending Sunday School, and by 2005 the rolls had reduced again to 129 families and 109 individuals. Curiously, in 2013 St. Matthias’ reported 424 families and 98 individuals for a total of 869 individuals, but with an average Sunday attendance at both services combined of 57, we can imagine that once again, Rev. Oliver’s formula is at play.

Now, almost 100 years after the first stab at hiring an Assistant Rector, Fr. Patrick Wheeler has a whole collection of honorary assistants, including the retired Bishop of Quebec. These assistants don’t fulfill the roles that Rev. Oliver and other rectors handed over to their assistants, nor do they have anything to do with the Sunday School. But Fr. Patrick isn’t interested in the kind of assistant that Rev. Oliver so desperately needed; he prefers to cultivate the gifts and talents of the lay members of the parish, and to use his supervising energy – when he has it! – to help train up the next generation of priests. Although the community is smaller now, much more manageable for a single clergyperson, Fr. Patrick doesn’t see his work as terribly different from that of 50, 75, or even 150 years ago. Rectors in all times, he says, are invested in making sure that the community under their care is alive and well. Sometimes that involves considering attendance and giving statistics, and sometimes that involves recruiting extra help, but it always involves loving and caring for people regardless of how often they attend services and regardless of how their contribution to the community is counted.

If you’re interested in the archival documents that inform this week’s entry, contact the office!