Vestry Liaison Report: Worship Team

The Worship Team gives parishioners at St. Andrew’s the opportunity to be personally involved in the conduct of our worship services.  Members of the choir, who provide music; the lectors, who read the lessons and prayers; the chalicers, who help with communion; the acolytes, who perform ceremonial duties and assist the clergy; and the liturgical dancers, who perform frequently at St. Andrew’s and other churches all participate directly in worship services.  Those who aid the clergy in the implementation of worship services include the ushers, who hand out bulletins, take up the offering, and provide assistance to the clergy as needed; and the sound techs, who maintain and control the microphone system.  The sound techs are currently implementing a hearing aid system that should benefit many parishioners in the coming months.  The altar/flower guilds prepare the church for worship by caring for and preparing all linens, hangings, communion vessels, and implements used in worship services as well as arranging flowers.

Parishioners participate in Centering Prayer on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings.  Centering Prayer is a form of mindfulness meditation which comes to us from the earliest days of Christianity.

Those of us who participate in one or more of the worship teams find that our own worship experience is made more meaningful – there is a sense of accomplishment and it is fun to be involved in a team effort.  We encourage anyone interested in any of these activities to join us.

Dick Barnwell

Some Sabbatical Thoughts

It’s been a rich time so far, as I’m doing a variety of activities during this gracious gift of a sabbatical.  I have:

• met with several people for ideas and advice on spirituality   (parishioners and others, including the Rev. Rob Marston, who recommended a monastery on the Hudson River – to visit, not take vows!) 
• visited the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia (one of the most extensive collections of French Impressionist painting anywhere)
• attended a high-quality organist convention in Richmond 
• worked on a communion anthem that embraces the idea of presenting all aspects of ourselves to God at the rail, asking for redemptive help in areas of our lives that fall short
• enjoyed books lent by parishioners (you know, those books that come along at the time your life needs them) 
• intentionally spent more time outdoors, listening, looking, appreciating visited other churches (Episcopal and others) and spent a day with the Kairos ministry at Nottoway Prison

More to come later,

Brad Norris

Vacation Bible School!

Last week (July 10-14), St. Andrew's was abuzz with Vacation Bible School. Our annual VBS takes over both St. Andrew's and Hilton Presbyterian Church across the street. We had 103 children, ages 3 through 5th grade, attend this year's "Hero Central" VBS. 

Vacation Bible School began each morning with an opening in the Presbyterian sanctuary and closed on Friday at St. Andrew’s with a rousing celebration of the week.  There were 103 children and 71 youth and adult volunteers who attended.  Everyone had the opportunity to enjoy being a part of Hero Central, and learning that God’s heroes have heart, courage, wisdom, hope, and power.  The children rotated during the morning with crafts, music, recreation, refreshments, science, and storytelling.

Special thank you to our St. Andrew’s volunteers:  Ann Turner, Cheryl Zilkie, Amy Robinson, Zoe Santos, Brad Norris, Sarah Charlock, Trinity Ellis, Karen Waddill, Grace Duregger, Rachel Klinger, Roman Klinger, Leah Klinger, Fritz Horne, Joy Johnson, Mary Poole, Jen Kimball, Anne Kirchmier, Tonia Graves, Margaret Bivins, Audréana Ellis, John Herbst, Maggie Mahloy, and Bill Wilds.

Thank you again for bringing in paper towel holders, tissue boxes, and baby food jars for VBS crafts.  Also, a big thank you for those who brought in shoes and food supplies for THRIVE Peninsula. 

Rolling River Rampage: Experience the Ride of a Lifetime with God! will be the 2018 VBS program.  Due to a number of conflicts, the new 2018 dates are July 23-27.  Please mark your calendars now – and, it’s not too early to volunteer!  

Exploring something new this summer

Dear friends,

A blessing and a challenge of liturgical worship is that the words of the service become so familiar. the blessing is that those familiar words can be a source of great comfort, and anchor in the midst of life's changes and uncertainty. The challenge is that familiar words sometimes become stale, so well known to us that we no longer truly hear what they are saying.

During worship this summer, we will be exploring some prayers and liturgies that differ from what we typically use in our worship during the "program year" (September through May). At the 8 a.m. service, we will pray Eucharistic Prayer I instead of Eucharistic Prayer II. At the 10:30 service, we will incorporate wording from an Episcopal resource called Enriching Our Worship, and toward the end of the summer we will use the service of Holy Eucharist from A New Zealand Prayer Book. If you are paying close attention (and I hope you will be!), you may notice slight differences in the wording of the Nicene Creed: the dropping of the phrase "and the Son," which invites us into a centuries-old theological debate about the nature of the Trinity.

My hope is that these less familiar and perhaps unexpected words will catch your attention and invite you into fresh and deeper understandings of Jesus, who is himself the Word. In the words we hear and speak in worship this summer, may we indeed hear anew what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Blessings,
Anne+

The Diaconate: Process and Formation

In 1994, at the time I went through the ordination process, we went through the same discernment process as those called to the priesthood, with the exception that those feeling called to the diaconate were required to have had a ministry in the world of some duration.

My initial meeting with my priest was followed by a year of prayer and spiritual direction. After a year, I submitted my paperwork with the encouragement of the people who had mentored me during this process.

The first step, after discerning the call with a priest,  was meeting with  the Canon to the Ordinary, followed by a meeting with the bishop and my priest. If the bishop heard your call, he encouraged you to apply to be an aspirant. This was followed by a weekend retreat with other aspirants, the bishop and the members of the Commission on Ministry. Each applicant’s spiritual autobiography was thoroughly explored by commission members in small group interviews throughout the weekend. At the end of the weekend, we were either encouraged or discouraged to continue in individual meetings with commissioners, based on the interviews, our letters of endorsement and various evaluations from our ministry sites. This was a stressful weekend. 

An aspirant is assigned to a parish for three months and also to a field placement. I was assigned to Old Donation in Virginia Beach, and Mary Immaculate Hospital, required to spend 10 hours a week at each place. In the parish, I was to meet with a lay discernment committee once a week, preach three times, teach all levels of the congregation, make pastoral calls and learn a deacon’s role in the liturgy. I was mentored by the Rev. Joy Walton and Karen Meridith at Old Donation, and the Rev. Al Wray at MIH. They were both very rich experiences.

At the end of our internships in the parish and the world, we met again with the Canon to the Ordinary, who advised of  next steps if we wanted to continue in the process and apply for Postulancy. Psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews followed that, as well as background checks. There was an interview with the full Commission on Ministry.  Granted postulancy, we then were assigned to our formation program, held at Duke University and coordinated by Dr Earl Brill, a Christian ethicist, and Dr. Fred Horton, a professor at Wake Forest. We attended this program for two years, every other weekend, with reading, and written assignments. We studied Old and New Testaments, Church History, Ethics, Homiletics, Liturgy, Ministry and History of the Diaconate, Theological Reflection, among other subjects, combined with participation in various types of worship.  We did not have to take Greek or Hebrew. This was in the early days of computers, so conveying some assignments via email made for smoother communication between the weekends we were in class, and made it possible to cover more ground. We had postulants for the diaconate from four different dioceses, with a plethora of social and institutional ministries, so this was a wonderful experience. My last year, I also did my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) residency at Riverside Regional. 

We took our General Ordination Examination via computer at the end of this time. My computer crashed more than half way through, and even Mark Winward, then an assistant at St Andrew’s and a Mac expert, could not resurrect what I had completed. I had to take two days off from work to start over. I have not had a Mac since.

There were three interviews with the commission over time (as well as a yearly retreat with everyone in the process), all stressful, as the commission has new members each year, and some of the issues raised and questions asked, were repetitive. Final psychological and psychiatric tests and interviews were repeated. At the end of it all, almost 100 people sign off on each person ordained in the church, counting parish of origin, parish of internship, and three years of commission members, and faculty in formation, CPE, and School for Deacons, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists.

Our diocese has a different process now, and a shared School for Deacons with the Diocese of Virginia, with a great deal of the work being done via computer, and only periodic retreats of those in formation. CPE is no longer required. The internship in a parish comes at a later time in the process.

While I was in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, I served on the Commission of Ministry, which had an entirely different process. We had our own School for Deacons, moderated by a priest, who called various clergy in to serve as adjunct faculty. The ministries were primarily parish-based, and they were allowed to stay in their parishes of origin, permanently. In this diocese, you do not return to the parish in which you were ordained, and deployability is a requirement, usually anywhere from every 3-4 years.

I was sent to the Diocese of Upper Michigan to observe their process in 2001. They have ministry teams in many remote locations composed of Canon 9 priests, deacons, Christian education leaders and musicians who are in formation together, usually taking Education for Ministry, and are called to the various orders by the parish. At the time I visited, they had not sent a priest to seminary in over 15 years. We visited four churches and experienced worship with them, with various levels of vitality and always faithfulness.

In dioceses with few resources, formation is tailored to the needs of the church and whatever resources are available. A diocese that has no school and cannot afford EFM for those in formation, might have reading for Holy Orders as the norm.

My own process was enriched by having taken EFM and doing all four steps of Servant Leadership Formation, as well as the Training for Trainers, prior to entering the process. I would encourage anyone who is pondering a call, to explore that call in spiritual direction initially.

The Rev. Katherine T. Gray