Loading...With the advice of this month’s Devotional still ringing in my ears, I am nonetheless inclined to look back over where we have been in 2016 and where we are going in 2017. To begin with numbers, as is my habit, in 2016 we had:
183 services of public worship
11 Vestry meetings
7 Christian education series
6 funerals
5 Purpose & Vision Committee
meetings
5 parish lunches
3 parish suppers
1 baptism
1 wedding
We collected something in excess of 40 bags of groceries for Panther Packs in January, at least two carloads of clothes and bedding for the Fair ministry in September, and gave Christmas presents to 37 people at Our Orangeville Manor and (the newly renamed) Gardens at Orangeville.
We provided a place to meet for yoga classes, a Daisy troop, a public health nurse, a BU fraternity, clergy Bible study, and a PEO chapter. The church was used for guitar, piano, and vocal concerts, as well as an AGO organ recital. BTE staged three plays in the lower parish hall, and we ourselves did soup and stories upstairs.
We planted a new garden, painted the rectory, installed a new sidewalk, expanded the parking lot, put up new fencing on two sides of our property, and planned for new landscaping in a neglected corner. We commissioned one thorough review of our buildings and another of our trees and grounds.
We sent vestments and prayer books to Puerto Rico. We continued our support of our seminarian (a gift to the Church). And we sent donations to Episcopal Relief and Development and to the Presiding Bishop’s Good Friday Appeal.
We began a new relationship with the BU Protestant Campus Ministry (PCM), hosting worship and dinner. I and others served the town and the region on boards and committees of charitable organizations. Many of us gave time, talent, and money to support the good work of service groups of all kinds.
And somehow along the way, we found time for a holiday bazaar, a sales booth at Renaissance, visits by the BU choir and the Bucknell bell choir, a sponsored tree at TreeFest, and a few rounds of hide and seek with a bat in the parish hall!
All of this is to say that we did not sit still in 2016. We did what all faithful people must do – we tackled the work that was put before us, looked for new ways to build the Kingdom of God, and did out best to avoid burying our talents in the ground (as the Gospel puts it).
I am optimistic that we will build on this work in 2017, producing even more for the Jesus Movement that our Presiding Bishop is so tireless in proclaiming.
We made our first tentative experiments in video recording of worship at the end of 2016, and will push on with this as 2017 progresses. My hope is that eventually we will be able to post all of our worship on-line for those who can’t be with us or who may not even know much about us yet.
We are also working on an interactive on-line program for Lent. This will combine some modern meditations on the Stations of the Cross with music and images by the African-American artist (and devout Episcopalian!) Allan Rohan Crite.
Our study of poverty will begin to move into a new phase of action, with small group gatherings to discuss Doing Good is Simple, the book we have been reading as a parish. From the reactions and ideas that come up, a plan for how we might work on the problems of poverty and homelessness in our community may emerge.
Finally, 2017 will be a year punctuated with special events. One is described in the Campus Ministry section below. Another will be the ordination of John Shirley to the diaconate on April 29th (God willing and the people consenting, as the traditional formula has it). We will also welcome Bishop Scanlan back for a pastoral visit in November.
I hope that all of this is as exciting to you as it is to me. We have much to be proud of in the past and much to gather our energies for in the future. May God prosper our handiwork. Happy New Year to all.
Blessings
Howie+
