I am so pleased and thankful to have Fr. Stephen Mazingo joining our staff part-time as Sr. Associate for Family Ministries at the end of this month. (He’ll be ¼ time through Nov/Dec, then goes ½ time in January.) While some internet issues interrupted our “Meet and Greet” with Stephen this week, those who attended…
Well, we had a brief moment this summer when it seemed life might return to some version of pre-pandemic normal – at least for those who are vaccinated and not seriously immuno-compromised. But sadly, with case numbers rising rapidly once again, that moment appears to be passing. At this point, our diocese has reinstituted an…
From The Rev. Sarah Phelps, Rector Past, Present & Future In early 2019, St. John’s made an historic decision with parish-wide participation and financial investment, to hire a half-time minister to lead our children and family ministries for the first time in our parish history. We hired Sarah Bentley Allred fresh out of seminary at…
It is the middle of summer and not the most opportune time for a parish meeting, but I know many of you are curious and interested (concerned?) to have a status update on various areas of our life and ministry at St. John’s as we continue to navigate many changes in our life together. I…
Things often get kind of quiet at church in the summer since lots of people are away for vacations or weekends at the beach; and this summer especially, many of us are absolutely itching to get away since we’ve been homebound for so long with the pandemic. While Covid-19 continues its rampage across the globe,…
Tomorrow is the Feast of Pentecost, and I had a choice to make when planning our Eucharist this year: I had to choose between the classic Pentecost reading from Acts where the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples in the sound of a rushing wind and tongues of fire, or Ezekiel’s prophetic vision of the…
I have a bunch of gangly hydrangea bushes along the fence in my back yard and a few camellia bushes that have gotten very leggy. They need to be pruned back now so they’re ready for the burst of growth coming this spring. If I don’t do the pruning, the bushes just get more unmanageable…
I’ve continued to reflect deeply this week, as I imagine you have also, on the violence visited upon the Capitol on January 6 – what it means about that state of our democracy, the state of race relations, the state of our political relationships, and the role of religious extremism in this country. I mentioned…