“Being church” – Page 7 – St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Sweaty Sunday

Today we gathered as people who care about our church and want to offer our talents and gifts in many ways. Our grounds now look beautiful and are ready for mulch (which will involve another Sweaty Sunday)!

We gathered to make a difference to our church yard

We began with a meal, of course, and had a great Oktoberfest potluck picnic, with sausages, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, sauerkraut, cider and lots of goodies such as pies and donuts.

Being nourished in body, we got to work– raking leaves, cutting back perennials, trimming bushes and trees, and removing debris. It was a picture-perfect day for this church event — sunny skies and warm temperatures.

We are so grateful for our grounds which tell our community that we care about our church — but also about everyone who passes by. The beauty of our grounds speaks loudly of our generosity of heart and hospitality to our community.

We’ll have a beautiful bulb garden in the spring

We are so grateful for the wonderful parishioners who tend our gardens on a weekly basis throughout most of the year. They are dedicated souls who care about keeping our yards beautiful– and we are so thankful for their persistent and ongoing efforts.

Our next Sweaty Sunday will be 11/24, when we will mulch the beds and begin to decorate our buildings and grounds for the Advent and Christmas season. Please plan to join us!

Learning the sacred stories

Today our young people gathered to learn more about our sacred stories which ground and shape our faith, as they will do on the second Sunday of each month.

We are using the curriculum Teen Text which takes one of the scriptures heard in church that morning and then pulls it apart — offering context, explaining the story and drawing from our young people the importance of the story.

One of the most powerful parts of the time together was when they were asked to reflect upon whether they know of people who have been disregarded or “cast aside” due to a physical problem. This was the situation in the scripture story – of King Naaman having leprosy and being asked to bathe in the river 7 times to be cured. Several of our young people had stories of friends who had been made fun of or excluded due to their physical illness so they could understand the pain which Naaman felt and the desire to be made well.

The class also discussed the idea of bathing in the river 7 times (which is what Naaman was directed to do to be cured) as an origin for our current practices of baptism.

Having faith in God, as King Naaman was invited to do, is a good lesson for us all, in knowing, as our gospel story shared today, “our faith can make us well”.

Children and youth of all ages are invited and encouraged to come to scripture study. It is an important part of their faith formation and we are delighted to be able to offer it– plus they have fun together!

Pet Blessing with a Twist

This year we changed things up a bit from our traditional pet blessing, when people brought their pets into church for a blessing. We still cared about our pets — we offered prayer cards and certificates for the owners who could go home and bless their pets — but our hearts and attention were turned this year to those in our community who may need help giving their pets their basic needs, such as food.

We invited all worshipers to come to church this past Sunday bringing with them something that pets could use (food, new leash, toys, beds) as part of their offering. We then offered all these goodies (a whole tableful) to our guests and friends from the community who joined us for a meal on Monday.

We are so grateful for all the wonderful donations for our beloved pets that arrived in force last Sunday and were blessed by Mother Robyn at the 10am service! All of your donations- an entire table full of them- were given away on Monday at our community dinner. Special thanks to Bill Gawors who helped make sure that our friends received the necessary items. Bill has shared what a privilege it was to pray for all who received the donations and all who are still in need of necessary items for their pets. This was such a blessing- we’re so glad we were able to share this with our community and hope to do so again in the future. Thanks again to everyone who donated items and who carried them over to the PLC for Monday’s dinner.

“Cofee Hour for Kids”

This week at “Coffee Hour for Kids” we read the first Psalm and then asked each other to draw images that came to mind when each of us had heard it. Two big favorites were “the wind” and “the chafe” which after looking it up, we discovered it meant the empty corn husks that fly about int he wind.

Each person could only paint with one color because we are going to put the pictures all together to make a mosaic.

While painting we all talked about sinfulness and whether it is in us or whether it’s someone or something trying to make us do something bad. We also used the sermon as an example, since this complex parable was told about sin and how the master rewarded the person who had cheated. We all had a lot of fun and thankfully, we didn’t have any paint mishaps!

Come next week for “Coffee Hour for Kids” and Confirmation Class! All ages are welcome. This is an opportunity for our young people to become good friends.

We are grateful for the people sharing their time and gifts to form our young people, especially for Samantha and Brett, who are pros at confirmation and kids!

Taize Worship service

In the vesper light, in the presence of the Spirit, in the calling of our hearts through music deeper into the holy, we gathered together to experience God in the simplicity of prayer, chant, silence, and communion. It was a time of a gathering of hearts turned toward God and it was beautiful.

We then gathered for an amazing dinner, so we could carry the sense of communion into our community. Our hosts for the evening meal, Susan and Keith, brought their warmth and deep generosity into their offering and the feeling of hospitality spread among us. Thank you to everyone who made this such a meaningful event and one where God was praised through our opened hearts.

Please see our photo gallery on this worship service and reception on this website to get the spirit of the event. We all loved this so much we’ll do it again, probably often, so if you have an interest in this simple, quiet type of service, plan to come to the next one, please. You are always welcome!

Ways to Pray Formation Series

This past Wednesday evening, after a time of laughter, joy and a meal shared together, we settled down into a deep and profound conversation about our spiritual lives. We had each completed a Spiritual Type Inventory, based upon our natural preferences for the order in worship, in the structure and time of worship, style of prayer, music, preaching, support of causes, membership criteria, ritual and liturgy and concept of God. The four spiritual types articulated in this inventory are “Earth, Water, Air, Fire”.

To complete the inventory, please click on the link below.

Paths toWholeness Download

We then opened up the conversation, to what specific part of the Sunday worship experience draws your heart the most. The answers were diverse and deeply profound. The idea set within our Christian lives is to deepen that experience. Our current spiritual practices keep us where we are now with God, but our spiritual life is never static, we are always called to go deeper, so we can live into and out of God’s blessing which meets us in our prayer life.

If you would like to talk with Mother Barbara or Dina Carter Ishler, our Field Placement Intern, about this Spiritual Types Inventory or how you might be able to deepen your practice, please reach out to them. You can call the parish office (717-532-8089) and leave a message for them to contact you.

Coffee Hour for Kids Begins

Welcome Back Sunday

Today was our Welcome Back Sunday and it was glorious! We resumed our regular 2 services and everyone felt “back in their groove”. Some parishioners, who have moved elsewhere, came back to be a part of our parish family and it was fabulous to see them. There was a real sense of community of hearts gathered.

At the 10 a.m. service, we had two young people offer their musical talent to our service and we all felt blessed by their offerings.

One of my favorite images from the worship was watching our young acolytes, especially our gospel bearer who takes his ministry very seriously and does it exactly right!

After the worship, we gathered for our picnic — right on our front lawn! There were grilled hamburgers and side dishes galore. We all were fed with companionship and great food.

In addition, we worked together on two projects: installing a “good neighbor” sign, which invites us to love all those who are not like us. A good Gospel message!

We also worked on painting our “little food pantry” which is about “feeding neighbors, nourishing neighborhoods”. As soon as it is ready to be filled, we invite you to fill it with pantry items that can be shared with our neighbors in need.

Please see our photo gallery here on our website for more photos of a glorious day!

Mass on the Grass

Occasionally changing where and how we worship changes our perspective. It allows us to hear familiar lessons in a new way, invites us to see the church as “us” outside the building, and refreshes our sense of God in our midst while in the beauty of creation. Yesterday we worshipped on our front lawn, in the refreshingly cool air, and gathered together to praise God in a slightly new way. One of my favorite parts of the service was when we had completed singing the Communion Hymn, and in that usually quiet space when we wait for the ministers to return from serving people at the Episcopal Home, the birds carried forward our hymn in their own birdsong. It was a day that will be remembered well as a faithful expression of God in our midst and out into our community. Thank you for all who set everything up for worship and all those who were with us! It was really glorious.

If you would like to see more photos of the day, please go to our website and click on photo galleries. If you have photos of the day to share, please put them on our Facebook page or email them to Mike Rhodes or me and we’ll get them on our website. It’s fun, and faithful, to share our good news of being the church outside our building walls.

With joy, Mo. Barbara

Offering the Peace of Christ to all gathered.

A beautiful gathering of people of all ages.

Death, Resurrection, and Eternal Life

Our Wednesday evening faith and spiritual formation small group has been tackling this very interesting and often difficult topic. We have learned what the scriptures say (and what they don’t say), how the theology of resurrection developed in the early church, how the Eastern and Western churches took a different take on resurrection, how our theology of death and resurrection shows up in our liturgy, and finally, we planned our burial services.

We set all of this in prayer and trusted community, which allowed us to do this faithful work of exploring what we really believe, and what the church’s tradition offers us on that moment of ultimate healing, when we move from our earthly reality to our eternal reality.

Social Justice Weekend

A number of us from St. Andrew’s recently attended a weekend workshop focused around the theme, “Healing a Broken World”. The keynote speaker was The Rev. Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest, who has created an enterprise who engages and serves women who have been trafficked, abused, or engaged in prostitution. In addition to being inspired by someone who heard the call of God to make a difference in the world and has done so, we also learned about the social justice efforts which are happening in our Diocese, addressing such topics as: Autism Advocacy, Gun Violence Prevention, the Opioid Crisis, Asset Mapping, Addiction and Recovery and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. We came away ready to study the issues that affect so many people in the world and to roll up our sleeves and to make a difference.

To listen to the most recent video on the Way of Love, which features the work of Becca Stevens and so many others through the organization, Thistle Farms, please click here.

Carson’s baptism

One of the most joyous occasions for a parish family is a baptism of one who becomes, for that moment, the world’s newest member of the Body of Christ. Baptism is a sacred moment that connects the person with the heart of Christ in a brand new way. We were blessed to welcome Carson into our hearts and into the fellowship of all other Christians.

To read the sermon preached for us, with him in mind, please click here.