Isn’t it funny the way the life of the church often seems to run parallel to the patterns of the natural world around us? We’ve come through winter’s dormancy and the growth of spring and we are now in that season of summer. We are in that time when things planted are growing strong and just need a bit of attention to continue growing in a vital and healthy direction. At St. John’s a year ago, our vestry decided we wanted to get more involved with the diocese and our surrounding community. We realized that we had become disconnected during the years of transition and financial struggle that we went through (our winter). So over the past year, members of our vestry have become involved with the diocesan Mission Council, the diocesan Discernment Committee and I accepted a position on the Commission on Ministry for the diocese. These seeds have grown and the vestry was able to have a good retreat, with the bishop present, at the end of May. The bishop encouraged us in our desire to reach out to our community with a ministry of music and has since invited St. John’s to host the regional confirmations in November, with our choir involved.
The theme of our vestry retreat and the bishop’s message was about building on our assets and strengths which include our strong music ministries. To that end we are exploring starting a community choir with the non-profit group, Major Chords for Minors. This choir will involve youth in our community who cannot afford music lessons. Sharing our passion for music and involving our many members who are educators at SVSU is just one example of building on our strengths. We also want to continue to strengthen our other ministries of charitable outreach that are impacting so many in our community. Our lunch bag program, which distributes over 6,000 lunches a year, has volunteer openings for two hours on an occasional Wednesday or Thursday (10a-12p) to pass out lunch bags. For those who can’t donate time, any donations to the lunch bag program go entirely to buying food for the program and will help us to fund the program through the end of the year. In these small ways and many more, St. John’s seeks to be a witness of Christ’s love to our neighbors and the world. Thank you all for the ways that you help make Christ present in our parish and community