Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

We are one of the lucky Episcopal Churches to be blessed with an abundance of children. So far this fall over 150 kids have visited our Sunday School. This means we find 100 roles for children in our Annual Christmas pageant.

The buzz around the pageant begins in mid-November when the casting gets done. Next come the costume fittings. We end up every year with a full choir of angels.

We also invite the littlest ones to wear animal costumes of their choice to be part of the manger scene. We may be the only Pageant with a lobster.

With all the bustle at this time of year,...

St. Nicholas stopped by our church last night.

Although today is the feast day for the bishop, our church celebrated his vigil on Sunday evening with crafts, cookie decorating and lots of young kids squealing and chasing each other around the tables.

St. Nicholas made his grand entrance, and the room stopped. Eyes widened. A few toddlers cried. A sister taunted a brother : “I told you he was watching. You better be nice to me.”

Read more...

Last night I addressed the Advent calendars:One to each of our daughters, one to Bill’s aunt, and the last to Bill’s father.   

Sending Advent calendars is my way of sharing Advent with people I love - who, due to distance, I do not see often enough. Each day, we will share the same simple act – opening a paper door - the way my sisters and I did growing up and the way my own family did when we were all under one roof. 

Mailing Advent calendars the Monday after Thanksgiving is...

I broke with tradition last night.

Normally the tree decorating ends in tears – mostly mine. See, I like my tree to be just so. The artificial limbs spread out in an appealing fan, the favorite ornaments occupying the prime real estate.

When my young children clump the ornaments at about three-feet up or my husband leaves an entire side light-less, I feel my idea of the perfect tree-trimming evening slipping away. Then I get grouchy, the kids start to pick at each other and the evening dissolves into a mass of disappointment.

I promised myself this was the year to break the cycle.

When my son made z-shapes out of the limbs, I smiled. When my daughter begged to hang one of the favorite ornaments in her room, I conceded. When I spotted big holes in the tree, I waited until my husband went into the kitchen to fix them.

Letting go of my need for perfection allowed me to experience the evening as I’d always imagined. The kids even listened to stories about the ceramic Santa I painted as a Girl Scout and the bedraggled bell that my mom made the year I was born.

Advent and Christmas are full of traditions and expectations.

I wonder what I’m willing to give up, what my family is willing to sacrifice, what our congregations are willing to change, all that we might prepare the way for the coming of Christ.

Thanksgiving, or giving thanks, as a form of prayer, is technically the church’s principle act of worship, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, and in many places, like this Monastery, day after day. The Eucharist is itself an extended prayer of thanksgiving.

That’s what the word means, actually, from the Greek, eu, meaning well or good or great and, kharis, meaning favor or gift or grace. Like so many other Greek words that have become part of the Christian lexicon, eucharist had no specifically religious meaning in the first century—it was a completely secular word and simply meant well-favored or good gift or great grace. And so we call that part of the liturgy where we take and bless and break and share bread and wine, the great thanksgiving.

Giving thanks, like all other forms of prayer, is a practice,...

I complain. I hate to admit it, but I do. Not all the time – I don’t think that people who know me would see it as a primary characteristic. But I do it more than I’d like to admit, and more than is healthy for my mind and spirit.

And let’s face it: we do a lot of complaining...

I had someone come into my office and share that they wanted to become a priest.

This will be the fourth time that as rector I have responded to such a conversation by pulling together a formal discernment group. They will meet over nine months and at that time together with the “asprirant (is that really a word?)” they will come to our vestry if they believe the person is called to the priesthood.

Sitting on the State of the Church Committee for...

In the second installment of his Fieldwork contribution, farmer Paul Clever reflects on The Good Earth Farm’s meager harvest: “It is easy gathering in abundant fields swollen with pride. Your hands fill bags upon bags, knowing that not only will you help feed many people, but you, good farmer, brought it to fruition. It is much harder mining through your failure, sifting through scattered golf ball sized potatoes. The rows keep getter longer while you think, “What is the use”. Even though there are still enough potatoes buried to feed dozens of families through the winter, I want to forget the fact that I failed.”

What does it mean to fail?

Episcopalians corner the market on Thanksgiving.

Sure, everyone across the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in some way, from cranberries and turkey dinners to lazy afternoons watching football and parades to studious planning of Black Friday shopping.

But the best I can tell --from Google searching and quizzing my resident priest, the Episcopal Church is the only denomination that considers Thanksgiving a feast – of the religious kind.

I love that we set aside...

I remember the day I was flying home from the east coast on Halloween and as I was getting off the plane I heard on the muzak the first Christmas carol of the season.

Living with a retailer (my wife runs the Cathedral Shop at St. Mark’s Cathedral), I know that the Christmas season actually begins in July with the ordering, planning, and preparing for a five-week run from Thanksgiving to Dec. 25 when stores need to earn a third of their income for the entire year.

The culture leans into Christmas this year with...

I’ve been thinking a lot about “work” lately. The value of work, types of work, and how people work. St. Paul got me thinking even more last weekend with his letter to the Thessalonians. Bluntly put: if you won’t work, you shouldn’t eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-13).

There’s nothing like living at a small scale farm to bring that message home. In our community of eight people, four Episcopal nuns and four resident companions, there’s little room for “idleness” (in Paul’s words). Laboring day in and day out, this community sows seeds, cultivates crops, and tends the harvest in order to eat.

What’s more, these sisters have explicitly made...

The first semester of our experiment ends tonight.

My church is a typical county-seat congregation in the foothills of Appalachia. If only Christmas Eve were our typical attendance on Sunday mornings, we’d be a packed 150. Instead, most Sundays, we’re half that, with each family getting their own pew.

In the past five years, we’ve tried lots of techniques to build up Christian education. Sunday School – on Sunday morning – was a flop (before – and after – the main service). We tried a once-a-month Evensong, with activities. No traction. Our Beer and Bible study had been a hit for three years, but attendance fizzled.

Last school year, we picked up kids from school and brought them to our house for two hours of GodSquad. The kids loved it – but it happened in a vacuum, 20 minutes from church and away from all of the adults (save two teachers). 

We wanted a program that integrated...

The Bible would be a very different story.

Checking my email on this cool rainy morning, this headline stood out: “Top 10 Things Religious Leaders Say about Happiness” published on The Huffington Post. I clicked through not quite knowing what to expect. 

Here’s what I learned:

Christian Formation when it is done right costs money. The money makes the commitment to education stronger; where your treasure is there will your heart (and head) be also.

Tonight we finished our...

Faye laundered money. Literally.

At the small, rural church, she collected the offering at the end of the service and hid it in her clothes hamper until she could make it to the bank.

We discovered the occasions when she washed the purse with the rest of her laundry. The ink would run off the checks, and she'd call, asking how much we had given.

Today, on All Saints Day, we remember the guardians and martyrs of the faith, the Saints of The Church.

I also like to remember the saints in my churches.

Faye was nearly 90 years old -- and widowed for half a century, but she turned up at the church nearly every time the doors opened. Her shoulders hunched over and her knuckles looked like walnuts, but she never failed to clean up after potluck dinners or to give a pat to the child who hugged her leg.

She didn't offer herself to the lions or spark a reformation, but Faye and so many others seem to fit the definition of a saint -- a person of exceptional holiness.

Give a shout out to the saints in your churches, in your lives. Post their first names here. Add a sentence or two about how they have been extraordinary examples of the living Christ. And then give thanks for their witness and saint-likeness.

Amen. 

From time to time, in conjunction with my ministry at Morehouse Education Resources (a division of Church Publishing Incorporated) I conduct a curriculum survey to get a pulse of what churches are using with children, youth and adults. It is helpful to see if there are any trends and to learn what kinds of resources churches are looking for. It is also an opportunity for churches to give feedback to your publisher!

Take the survey:

When he didn’t win the pumpkin contest, I felt the tears sting.

For most of Saturday, we worked on Cinderella’s coach, pulling the slime out of the pumpkin, carving windows, fashioning a door (that really opened!) and decorating the coach as befits a soon-to-be princess.   

My 6-year-old son was sure his creation would win the contest. So when it didn’t, he was crushed. And so was I. He was robbed. Hanging chads and ballot fraud.   

At home, I talked about how much fun we’d had creating the pumpkin. And I presented him with a dollar-store plastic trophy: the Bibbidi Bobbidi BOO pumpkin won first place in our house.
I think he saw through the ploy but took the trophy anyway. The next morning, I saw he’d climbed on top of a chair and on the tips of his toes, placed the trophy beside his other treasured keepsakes.   

Whenever I carve a pumpkin, I think of one of my favorite children’s sermons. The priest takes the pumpkin and carves it with the kids, talking about how God’s grace cleans – forgives – our sins. When we accept this grace, the light of Christ shines in and through us.   

It’s a simplistic metaphor. I know that. But sometimes it’s the simple things that tenderize our hearts and transform our lives.   

Hollow me out, O Lord.

The church van picked up the dozen or so students from the elementary school and brought them to our backyard, the kids starving for mid-afternoon snacks and a place to run off their energy.   

After several tries to settle the group, we started talking about the upcoming All Saints Sunday. That's the title feast of the congregation so the kids were interested.

The idea of a community of saints