Lent, Holy Week and Easter - Rector's Rambling for February 26, 2023

We are now in the busiest time of the year at St. John’s!  Lent brings us a variety of opportunities for additional devotions and worship, and the abundance of liturgies for Holy Week helps us to laser-focus in on the most glorious saving act of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection for us and for our Salvation.  I hope and pray that you will take advantage of this holy season to reboot your spiritual life in order to draw closer and closer to Our Lord, and allow him to help you to change more and more into His likeness!

As this edition of the Eagle is going to print we are aglow with the joy of our re-vitalized Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper.  After a few years off because of the virus restrictions, it came back with a trivia night in the place of the talent show.  As always the food was wonderful, as was the company.  The Trivia Contest was fun-filled.  Thank you to the Armitage Men’s Club members for preparing dinner and for the ladies who decorated for the festivities.  And a special thank you to Debbie Swain for being chief cheerleader for the event, making calls and taking reservations, and to Elizabeth Savage and Cam Walker who put together the Trivia Contest.

Although Lent is best known for the repenting, fasting, and giving something up (see page 5 for a guide about ‘doing’ Lent) we do also have some other special events scheduled as well.

Martina Stevenson is teaching a class on how to make Ukrainian Pysanky Easter Eggs.  The Daughters of the King are having their Diocesan Quiet Day on March 11 and in the evening the Detroit Concert Choir will be having a concert here as well.  There will be a St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef Luncheon after the 10 AM Service on March 19.  The Just Pie Sale will take place April 2nd and Jack’s Place for Autism will be hosting their Detroit Tigers Opening Day gathering on April 6th.

Holy Week Liturgies culminate in the Vigil Service of Easter on Saturday, April 8, and Easter Day on April 9.  Be sure to start praying for your friends and neighbors as you are also asking them to join us for worship that weekend (if not earlier).

We close out April with our Annual Detroit Tigers Baseball Outing on April 30 with the Choir singing the National Anthem.

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Weds and Lent - Rector's Rambling for February 19, 2023

         This week we dive right into our season of penance, fasting, and almsgiving beginning with Ash Wednesday.  We will offer three opportunities to worship together and receive ashes as an outward sing of our mortality and need for penitence - 12:15 Holy Communion, 4:00 Evening Prayer and 6:0 Holy Communion.

             In 1995 Ann Marie Shuster, the rector’s secretary at the parish where I served as curate (newly ordained assistant) put together the wonderful brochure   The Observance of an Holy Lent.  There is a copy of this enclosed in the Order of Service today.  Please take it and ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it’ as a guide for the next 7 weeks.  Let us make an extraordinary effort this year to not only ‘give something up for Lent’ (the most commonly known of the Lenten disciplines) but also to be regular about prayer, receiving Holy Communion, fasting, and the rest.  This will not only be beneficial to your spiritual growth, but also to help us corporately as a church to grow in grace and membership.

        But  before we start the fasting, we have a day of feasting together with our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner and Trivia Night. Dinner starts at 6:00 and will be served until about 7, with the trivia game starting about 6:45.  This is a fun time for all ages.

        We continue to pray for our society and especially this past week for the students at Michigan State University, their families, and all of us as concerned citizens in the wake of the shooting on campus.  Once again evil has reared his ugly head and someone hellbent on disobeying the moral and civil law injured and killed people who were going on with their daily lives. Pure evil.

        Every other week in Lent we pray in the litany to be protected “from all evil and mischief; from sin,  from the crafts and assaults of the devil” as well as to be protected “from the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil”.  May God help us in this time of grief and sorrow, and help us to recognize and name evil and sin so we can battle against it.

 

The neighborhood - Rector's Rambling for February 12, 2023

It is remarkable to think about the changes that have occurred, and are occurring in our neighborhood around St. John’s Church.  This past Wednesday we spent a good part of the day hearing the sound of a helicopter as it lifted up the new lighting fixtures for Comerica Park and placed them on the towers around the stadium.  Video of the helicopter doing this is available on our Facebook and Instagram pages. 

When St. John’s was built, this part of Detroit was mostly farmlands and ‘out of town.  Henry Porter Baldwin purchased the apple orchard across Woodward from his country house with the idea that the city would eventually grow to the north and encompass this area, making it a prime location for a new Episcopal Church.

The neighborhood changed soon thereafter, with posh Victorian mansions, a few of which still stand. Eventually the neighborhood became a commercial and theatre district and the remaining house nearby became boarding houses.  When I arrived in 2001 Comerica Park had just opened but most the neighborhood to the north of St. John’s was abandoned buildings and empty lots.

Fast forward 22 years and we have Ford Field, Little Caesars Arena and perhaps even more importantly, thousands of housing units in various stages of development...each one with a potential member of St. John’s living in walking distance.  In our most recent Confirmation Class every person lived in the City of Detroit, and 3/4 of them walked or rode bikes to worship! 

We continue to look for opportunities to interact with the neighborhood to attract people to join us at St. John’s, through worship, classes, social events, hosting community groups,  and outreach. Pray for more people to know Jesus!

 

Rector's Report to the Annual Parish Meeting - Rector's Rambling for February 5, 2023

A few weeks ago, with my wife and daughter out of town for the weekend, I tackled a project that I have been meaning to get to for quite a while.  I went through 22 years of vestry meeting file folders, taking one copy of the materials for each meeting (agenda, minutes, financial reports, etc) and putting them into three ring binders.  The result was that 6 file folder boxes were emptied, 12 three ring binders filled, about 200 file folders reclaimed for re-use, and 3 overflowing boxes of paper taken to a shredding/recycling place.

            The project took longer than it might have if it wasn’t also a trip down memory lane for me.  Each month and years’ file folders brought up names of members who have come and gone (through death, relocation, or transfer), situations and opportunities brought to fruition or not, and hopes achieved or dashed.   How often things that were great worries were resolved not necessarily by our efforts but always by God’s grace and time.  In hindsight many situations we were so concerned about God took care of it in his own time and manner, often beyond or comprehension.  And how often those things that were so concerning in the moment ended up not being an issue in the big picture..  It was also interesting to note that my first year here at St. John’s (2001) the annual budget was $311,000 with $60,000 in pledges.  For comparison this year we had a $736,000 budget with $205,000 in pledge/plate income.

            The other thing that stuck out to me was the pattern of the ups and downs from year to year.  There has been two major influences on the ebb and flow that became apparent.  The first was the ups and downs of the economy.  In the 22 years I have been here the economy has had times of abundance and several downturns as well.  This affects people’s ability to contribute. Thankfully since 2014 we have not used the endowment to fund the budget (other than the one fund given for the Organist Scholarship) so when the economy shrinks, the temporary drop in the value of the funds does not affect the parish budget. 

            The other thing that has become apparent by looking through the documents is that when we started focusing on the money situation and worried, then things got worse, not better.   It was then that we lost focus on the ‘first things first’ of looking to the ministry that has been entrusted to us to glorify God in worship and to equip us to become the saints that God desires us to be….and to share the Good News with others!  Each time when we found ourselves beginning to flounder we had to reboot to the system.  And that reboot has always been a deeper dedication to worship, prayer, study, and ministry to others.  When we put those things first, then amazing things happen by God’s grace and to His glory.

            2022 was a year where we began to make some advance beyond the covid shut-downs as the year went on.  A reminder that at this time last year we could not have a normal Annual Parish Meeting because we could not go down to the undercroft for a meal or to assemble. Instead we had a truncated meeting in the church sanctuary.   In 2021 the meeting was only allowed via zoom - we were in the midst of the “9 person and the priest” restrictions for worship and were doing 10 worship services a weekend! So I am grateful that we can gather here to share the joy of a meal, each other’s company, and can thank each other in person for the reports of the various guilds and ministries.

            And although this year we have had a few members depart through relocation and a few by earthly death, we have also scene an influx of new faces in the pews.  One of our Vestry candidates discovered St. John’s 15 months ago and she and her mother, father, and sister are now regular attenders at 8 AM.  And perhaps for the first time in my 22 years here all the couples that I married this year still regularly attend St. John’s after their wedding.  This is a great blessing.

            I would be remiss to not express my gratitude for all the grace-filled efforts of folks who have contributed of their time, talents, and treasure in support the parish.  We are blessed to have so many who pitch in.  But I would also be remiss if I didn’t remind everyone that regular Sunday attendance could improve which would be good for the individuals as well as good for the parish as a whole.  And I hope that we will share the Good News of Jesus Christ with others and be deliberate about inviting people to join us here at St. John’s.

            I thank God for 22 years as your Rector.  May year number 23 been another one full of blessings.