PROGRAM YEAR STARTS SEPT 10 | A Letter from the Rector
Dear Sisters and Brothers at St. Matthews.
September 10th is the start of our program year!
The vestry, lay leaders, and staff have been working hard over the summer to prepare for our new program year. While there will be many offerings that fulfill parts of our Strategic Plan (ENGAGE TO GROW 2022-2025), I want to highlight particular programs chosen by the Vestry as our chief priorities for this fall.
PRIORITY 1: ENGAGE the PARISH TO GROW IN LOVE
Wednesday Nights! A big, new initiative is to center our weekday programs on Wednesday nights for fellowship and formation . Each Wednesday night starting Sept 6 the youth choir and adult choir will practice, with a meal in between. Youth Choir is 5:30, Dinner is 6:15, Adult Choir is 7pm. In October, our Newcomer Program will meet on Wednesday nights during Youth Choir time and continue for meal fellowship.
Taco Tuesday will be woven into this, becoming Taco Wednesday, now on the first and third Wednesdays of every month. Taco Wednesday is a full community meal for parishioners and anyone at all. Invite non-church friends for a casual and enjoyable meal for all ages, and a fun time especially for children. On the other Wednesdays of the month, we are going to provide meals at least for the choirs with the hope this will grow into a general potluck for everyone. If you’d like to be involved in organizing a potluck team, setting and cleaning up, contact Vestry person Anne Kenyon.
For more information regarding our youth and adult choirs, contact Jason Wright, our Director of Music.
PRIORITY 2. ENGAGING HISTORY TO GROW IN FAITH
For the past four years we have engaged in serious Christian formation in Sunday Forums, Sermons, book studies, and in Hugh and Joseph’s Bible studies . We have reflected on the core theology of Christianity: that the God of Jesus Christ is active in history by Spirit and Word. The aim of God’s action is to create a new kind of humanity in community to reveals God ’s Kingdom in this world — and we get to be a part of this!
Most important for our parish history, we have explored in the You, Redeemed, and We, Redeemed Lent programs how this God takes the sin and suffering endemic in our lives, and uses it to inspire new mission in the world — new love, new connection, new grateful selflessness. With our strength in this kind of Christian faith, we can be bold. We can face more truth about ourselves, and more truth about our parish. We need less sugar in the tea of our history to make it palatable. Our history of faithfulness and faithlessness grounds and directs our mission now.
The Rev. Lisa Frost Phillips and Elizabeth Hays are continuing this formation in 2023-2024 with a series of pilgrimages in a context of rich fellowship and group formation. These pilgrimages involve a reckoning with our parish’s historical involvement in enslavement, and racial violence, but far from being experiences of guilt, or self-righteousness, they have proven to be moments in which, strangely, we are touched by the Sacred in powerful and unexpected ways. All of us know the Prophet Ezekiel’s promise that hearts of stone will, by God’s spirit, be made into hearts of flesh. This is what happens in these pilgrimages programs — humility and compassion are born.
For my part, I will be leading a two forum Sunday formation program on the Holy Eucharist this fall, called One Bread, One Body. The point of this is to inspire a deeper engagement with Sunday Eucharist, the central liturgy of Christianity (the one Jesus commanded and goes back to the very first Christians.) We will use the Eucharist, presumed as God’s way of meeting us, and us meeting God, as a paradigm for Christian life. This will connect to and amplify our work around our parish history by demonstrating how God call us together, then speaks to us, receives us, integrates us into Jesus, and sends us out into the world. This Sunday Forum program, Sept 17 and 24, 9:15-10:00am in the Fellowship Hall, will develop into the Newcomer evening programs mentioned above.
3. ENGAGING OUR COMMUNITY TO GROW IN LOVE
At the time of this writing, this priority is less specifically defined, but plans are developing fast. The parish fellowship and growth in faith, drives engagement with the people outside St. Matthew’s, with the children of God from whom we are divided by choice or chance. Our history with enslavement creates a new humble wonderment: can we be a part of the Beloved Community “down the hill” with the descendants of the enslaved and strategically disempowered? We have made it a priority to re-engage our longstanding relationship with Dickerson Chapel AME church, even we have started planning for public fellowship and worship with historically black churches in northern Orange County. Collaboration on projects will flow from this relationship building, but there is already energy coming from the historically black communities to address the homelessness in northern Orange County where we have no shelters.
This letter has gone on long enough! You will have to read further on our website or in the weekly bulletins and newsletters to get a sense of just how much is going on.
God bless us all this program year!
Robert