A Baseball Sunday Welcome - Rector's Rambling for May 11, 2014

WELCOME TO ST. JOHN’S!

There are many things that are unique about this parish church, and you are experiencing one of them today: Detroit Tigers Baseball Outing Sunday!  Obviously, no other Episcopal parish can boast that it is the Church next to Comerica Park, and with the exception of the neighboring Methodist church across the parking lot I don’t know of any other church situated so close to a Major League Baseball stadium.  Add to that Ford Field and the soon to be built (God willing) Red Wings arena across Woodward and you have quite the unique location for a parish church!

But perhaps the nicest, unique thing about today is that having sold over 260 tickets to the game (down from 350 last year due to today being Mother’s Day), this 10:00 AM service is generally the best attended single service of the year.  Christmas and Easter, having three services each, have more total attendees, but no one single service has had as many as the primary service on Tiger Baseball Outing Sunday.

This is our 14th Tiger Baseball Sunday.  The first year I threw out the first pitch.  Since the second year, the choir has sung the National Anthem at the game.  It is not often one gets to perform before upwards of 40,000 people!  They bring glory to God as they honor our country, and the fans hear that it is our wonderful choir from St. John’s across the street from the stadium.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that on the other 51 Sundays, even though we don’t eat hot dogs afterwards and go to the baseball game, St. John’s is a wonderful place to worship the Living God.  I hope that all our visitors today will consider visiting with us again on another “regular” Sunday, and even consider making St. John’s their church home.  We have worship worth attending every Sunday, with a warm fellowship in an exciting location in downtown Detroit (all by God’s grace, and all to His Glory).