Tiger Baseball Sunday 2026 - Rector's Rambling for June 21, 2026

     Another exciting Sunday at St. John’s.  This is our 26th Tiger Baseball Outing Sunday, something we started the year after Comerica Park opened next door!  My first few months here one of our then parishioners who worked in the Tigers front office suggested I should throw out a first pitch, and that we should have all the parishioners and friends come over to see it!  The next year the choir began singing the National Anthem (and I got to lead Take me out the ballgame that year) and the choir continued to do so for many years, until the Tigers (and all of Major League Baseball) converted Sunday games into Kids Day and reserved the anthem that day for kid-related groups.

Welcome to our guests who are joining us today for worship and to go over to the game .  Be sure to come downstairs for lunch after worship.  We will be cooking up hot dogs for the occasion so we can fill up beforehand.

Today of course is also the secular holiday Fathers Day, and we give thanks for all the dads in our congregation, and for our fathers absent today or who have gone on to eternal life.  Although this holiday doesn’t seem to get the traction that Mothers Day does (perhaps rightfully so) we are grateful for the gift of fatherhood.

We do have a busy next couple of weeks ahead, including an induction of Deb Bush into the Order of the Daughters of the King next week, and a celebration of our country’s 250th anniversary of declaring independence from Great Britain.  We will have some patriotic hymns to sing, and after the 10 AM Service will have Strawberry Shortcake as a treat at Coffee Hour.

The St. Michael’s Conference for Youth, Midwest begins that same afternoon, July 5th, at Manresa Retreat Center, and your prayers and financial support are greatly appreciated. 

In addition to the organizations that St. John’s supports through our Outreach Committee, the St. Catherine’s Guild reached out to our former parishioner, now a priest, Fr. Cam Walker, for a recommendation of who we could support at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.  For three years the parish, and several members of it, supported Fr. Cam as he was studying there in preparation for his ordination, and the St. Catherine’s Guild wanted to continue that support.  Father recommended Jason Flack of the Diocese of Florida. 

He graduated last month from Nashotah House,   has been ordained a transitional deacon and God willing will be ordained a priest in August.  He is serving as the curate at The Church of Our Saviour in Jacksonville, Florida. A curate is generally a new priest in his first assignment, working with a rector.