g{x XÅÅtÇâxÄ jtç A monthly publication of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia May
2014
Our mission partner:
Mountainside Senior Living Emmanuel Episcopal Church has had a relationship with Mountainside Senior Living center in Crozet for many years. Mountainside is a subsidized assisted-living facility. It relies on federal, state, and local grants; contributions from religious and social service organizations; and volunteers to help run their programs. Emmanuel has run Miss Margaret’s Tea Party for many years, with volunteers providing a social event twice a month for residents with punch and cookies, music and song, and most importantly, conversation. Emmanuel’s Endowment Board has provided financial assistance on an ongoing basis. Mountainside is highly appreciative of the assistance we have provided over the years. Susie Hodgson served on the Mountainside Board of Directors for several years. Since she is moving out of the area, Gren King now is serving out the remainder of her term on the board. Recently the operations manager of Mountainside approached Gren King with a request for help in responding to some unmet needs of the residents. Many of the residents live alone, without friends or family in the area. In short, they are lonely. There are several outreach opportunities here: visiting the residents on an occasional or ongoing basis; reading to those
Our church never looked as good as it appeared on Easter Sunday. The efforts of the Flower Committee, the Altar Guild and too many faithful members to name, all came together to welcome Easter in a most impressive way.
residents who no longer are able to read; providing interaction by being read to by residents who want to feel useful (especially children); eating lunch with the residents; assisting in the Mountainside community garden; sharing artistic time and talents with residents who paint, quilt, sew, or write or those who want to; or conversing with residents who don’t have anyone to interact with. The residents are especially starved for interaction with children and youth. Mountainside, a member of the Crozet community and in Emmanuel’s front yard, is filled with outreach opportunities. Prayerfully consider how you can be part of this ministry, and contact Gren King.
Shrine Mont Weekend Retreat requires advance planning. Put the dates of August 29 - 31 on your calendar now and plan to join your Emmanuel Family. See the details on Page 5.
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The Rev. Christopher M. Garcia Rector
Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! With this festal shout we greeted Easter once again. Our 40-day Lenten pilgrimage is over, and we now embark on the great 50 days of Eastertide. We celebrate not only
2 May, 2014 Jesus’ resurrection from the dead but also our own risen life in him (Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12). Emmanuel welcomed 549 people to three Easter services (the Great Vigil on Saturday night and our regular services at 9 and 11 on Easter morning). I hope you were present for these magnificent, joyous celebrations. If your travels took you away from us, I hope that you greeted the risen Lord in worship elsewhere on Easter Eve or Easter morning. Thank you to all those who made our Lenten, Holy Week, and Easter liturgies possible. Hundreds of people helped, some visibly and some very much behind the scenes. We had a great parish work day on Saturday, 12 May. Thank you all who came out and made our grounds and buildings fresh and ready for Holy Week and Easter. Thank you, too, to our acolytes, altar guild, those who folded bulletins, child care volunteers, the choir, those who clean the church and maintain our grounds, coffee hour hosts, Eucharistic ministers, flower volunteers, greeters, lectors, ushers, and all those others who make our powerful, Spirit-filled worship possible. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to our hardworking staff, all of whom put in extra hours to make this season of the church year especially meaningful. Thank you, too, to all of you who offer friendly, smiling hospitality to newcomers and visitors. A warm and sincere greeting in Jesus’ name is one of the most important gifts we can offer to those who come through our doors. In the weeks ahead, we will explore what it means to live as an Easter people. What does new life in Jesus look like? What is the Holy Spirit equipping us to do? We will explore these questions, and more, in our sermons throughout Eastertide and in our adult forum series, “Equipping the Saints.” The Good News of new, risen life in Jesus is too good to keep to ourselves: we have to share it. What role will you take in that? We will explore how God is equipping us, both individually and as a parish, for existing ministries and for new ministries. Your vestry is engaging
The Emmanuel Way these questions, too, but all of us have a role to play: “for just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:12-13a). What is God calling you to do? What is your role? What can you contribute? How can the Emmanuel family help you to claim your calling? Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Yours in Christ,
Fr. Christopher announced that Elizabeth Scott celebrated her th 99 birthday amid applause from her Emmanuel Family.
Fr. Don lights the fire from which all the members candles were lighted for the Saturday Vigil. 2
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The Rev. Stacy WilliamsDuncan On Maundy Thursday, Fr. Christopher, Fr. Don, and I gathered with other clergy from our region to reaffirm our ordination vows. During the homily Bishop Ted told the story of a class of seminarians who asked him to lead a retreat about the joys of ministries. In their experience, people often talk about the challenges of the priesthood, but don’t all tell stories of the joy found in parish ministry. Bishop Ted challenged us to find and talk about the joy we experience in our ministries. I have had experiences similar to these seminarians. Clergy can be bad advocates for the Church when we only talk about what needs to be improved and changed. I know I have been guilty of this too, but at this point in my priesthood it was easy to accept Bishop Ted’s challenge. My recent ministry experiences have been filled with joy. The last time I served a congregation as a parish priest was in 2005. In my years as a school chaplain and doctoral student, I attended Holy Week services and assisted when asked. During those years, there were many services in which I was a member of the congregation or only served communion. This year I was overwhelmed by the blessings found
3 May, 2014 in walking through this most sacred week with a congregation as one of your priests. There are many moments of joy that I will remember about this week: so many of the Emmanuel community, from the very young to our wise elders, who washed each other’s feet; the first alleluias of Easter at the Vigil that greeted newly baptized teenagers were like a song of angels; the glorious Easter morning when we celebrated new life with the egg hunt among the tombstones; and the acolytes who were asked to do new things and still happily served with confidence and poise. These are only a few of the joys of life at Emmanuel over the last week. Thank you for allowing me to serve with you as we each discern how to live as Christ’s disciples and share the joy of the Resurrection. It is my commitment, and one I encourage you to make too, that each time someone hears me talk about Emmanuel, it will include at least one concrete example of how the joy of living the Christian life in this parish has improved my life.
Polishing our church to make it shine for Easter is a tradition.
The Emmanuel Way
bâÜ fxÇ|ÉÜ jtÜwxÇËá exÑÉÜà By Doug Connell Who Are We? Who Are Our Neighbors? What is God Calling Us to Do? What a spectacular spiritual experience! Our Lenten and Holy week programs drew strong participation from the congregation. Many thanks to our worship committee and parish administration team, who worked many extra hours putting everything together to offer an exciting expansion of programs that brought wonderful music, preaching, sanctuary splendor, some new liturgical forms, and deeply thoughtful bible study. All this activity was wrapped in the splendor of a late but memorable Blue Ridge springtime: simply priceless! Your vestry is incorporating lessons learned from our clergy transitions and our April program innovation into the planning for the fall. Key areas include evaluation of the Emmanuel Connections opportunity (not too late to turn in your survey before May 15th), a Ledford House use study, and resumption of our Long-term Planning Committee work to prepare us for the ministry opportunities and congregational growth expected over the next 5-10 years. These efforts can only succeed with your help. Please make your inputs known to our vestry, and expect opportunities for focus group participation on the planning efforts. Expect to see a schedule of May meetings by mid May. Those interested in the Long-term Planning Committee can contact me at
[email protected] or (434) 361-0279. If you’d like to help with the Ledford effort, contact Henry Oakey at
[email protected] or 3
(434) 823-1758, or Jess Haden at (434) 823-1230 or
[email protected]. The view from the center pew is most encouraging. Please continue your prayer support for all that God is calling us to undertake. Many blessings, Doug
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The Rev. Deacon Donald Cady
Dear Friends in Christ, A little more than a week ago, we kindled the new Light that is our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. With joy and ceremony we carried that light into our sanctuary to light our Paschal candle. Our Paschal candle will burn at all services now through Pentecost. For me this past Holy Week culminating with the Easter Vigil and Sunday morning Easter services was a high point of our church year. It represented for me personally a new light in my continuing ministry at Emmanuel Church. I also see a new and growing light for all of us at Emmanuel. We are poised in the coming weeks and months to take new and bold steps we have never taken before. Let the new light of Jesus Christ guide us. We are ready to spread the good news that is the Emmanuel parish in more and greater ways serving
4 May, 2014 throughout our community. Let the new light of Jesus Christ guide us. We each in the coming weeks and months have an opportunity to dig deeper to expand our individual journey of spiritual growth and understanding. Let the new light of Jesus Christ guide us. May the new light that is Jesus Christ continue to burn with great intensity in each of our hearts this Eastertide and throughout all our lifetime. Alleluia, Alleluia, let us go forth in the name of Christ.
The Emmanuel Way Lectionary and presents one lesson, usually the Gospel, in two lines, and other readings as single vignettes. We will offer copies of The Sunday Paper in the narthex in hopes that they will help foster conversations about the readings between parents and children. To read more about The Sunday Paper and Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, please consult the following web pages: The Sunday Paper: http://the-sundaypaper.com/index.html Gretchen Wolff Pritchard’s bio: http://www.edu/divinity/convocation/2 004/bds.htm
Faithfully, Don+
Christian Education News By Cathy Boyd Director of Christian Education The job of making liturgy a living reality for children is, it seems to me, the very first task of Christian education. ~Gretchen Wolff Pritchard Alleluia! Christ is risen!!! Easter is the perfect time to introduce a new resource for Emmanuel families. During Lent, we offered The Sunday Paper, a weekly “newspaper” based on the Gospel lesson, at our Sunday services. I want to bring it to your attention and provide you with more information about it and the author, Gretchen Wolff Pritchard. Gretchen had three curious, squirmy toddlers. She also has amazing artistic abilities. Combine these with her devotion to the Christian formation of young people, and you get The Sunday Paper, and many other innovative publications, that tell the stories of our faith and foster children’s love of a “lively Gospel.” Characterized by a comic strip layout, with very huggablelooking, robed characters, and Gretchen’s own handwriting, The Sunday Paper, available in an original edition (grades 4-middle school), and a junior edition (preschool-3rd grade), follows the Revised Common
The Emmanuel Way Published on or before the first day of each month, with the single exception of the month of July, The deadline is the 20th of the month preceding the month of issue.
7599 Rockfish Gap Turnpike Post Office Box 38 Greenwood, Virginia 22943 Email:
[email protected] Website: emmanuelgreenwood.org Phone: 540-456-6334 James E. Crosby………….. Editor Email:
[email protected]
The Palm Sunday processional.
The Emmanuel Easter Egg Hunt is an event that generates a lot of excitement among the young members. 4
The Emmanuel Way
5 May, 2014
Emmanuel at Shrine Mont - August 29-31, 2014 Mark your calendars now and plan to spend the weekend of August 29-31 in the beautiful mountains of western Virginia! Our annual Parish Weekend at Shrine Mont will start Friday evening with supper and wrap up Sunday after the traditional fried chicken lunch. In between we will laugh and play and sit and talk and worship and bike and walk and… well, you fill in the blank! All ages are welcome! Families and singles; kids, youth and adults; hipsters, youngsters and oldsters… there is something for everyone! We are putting together a group of folks right now to help with the weekend - please consider if you would be able to assist in the planning and/or prep for the event. We need people to assist with fundraising, to plan activities, to share ideas and to generally support our Shrine Mont weekend! We would love your ideas and energy whether you have been to the program every year or have never been at all. If you are interested in helping, please send an email to Anne and Donovan Dagner at
[email protected]. Or give a call to the church office and leave your name.
g{x XÅÅtÇâxÄ jtç May
First Class Mail
2014
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