St. Anne's Gate November 16, 2013

Dear Friends,

Greetings from St. Anne's Episcopal Church!

I write you on the Feast of Margaret, Queen of Scotland. Exiled from England as a consequence of the Norman Invasion of 1066, she married the Scottish King Malcolm III and led a life of piety and service to the poor. If you don't mind a little wind noise, here's a video that provides a good overview of this remarkable woman. If you see Cathy Battle on Sunday, you might want to ask her about her recent visit to the Scottish island of Iona, a place with holy sites that were protected by Margaret during her reign.

WORSHIP

After a one-week sojourn at Palmetto Missionary Baptist Church we are back at Lackey Chapel at 10am this Sunday.  Looking forward, we note that Advent is coming, and we've set our Christmas Eve service for 6pm December 24th, with Lessons and Carols scheduled for December 29th at 10am.

MINISTRY

Episcopal Relief and Development has put out a special call for donations in the light of the crisis in the Philippines. Loose offerings and designed gifts from our November 17 collection will be sent to ERD.  All donations to ERD between now and December 6 will be matched by an anonymous donor, so please give what you can.  For details on the special effort ERD is making in response to Typhoon Haiyan, click here.

Thanksgiving food drive:  St.Anne's is teaming up with CAP to feed 50 needy local families for Thanksgiving.  Thanks to a generous donor, we have 50 turkeys.  We need each family to shop for the side dishes to go with the turkeys. If you didn't get one last week, please pause at the end of services this Sunday and pick up one (or two!) of the blue Walmart shopping bags, with a shopping list attached.  Please bring the bags with you to church on Nov. 24(or you can drop them off at CAP - at the foot of the Main Street bridge.  Be sure to tell them it's for the St. Anne's Thanksgiving project).

FELLOWSHIP

A special thanks to all those who made our one-year anniversary party a roaring success.  Rebecca and Richard Lovelace opened their home.  Everyone brought food and drink. Toasts were offered, backs were slapped, hugs were freely distributed. There was cake and fire and singing and priests and dogs and wine and babies. They say Disney World is the happiest place on earth.  Uncle Walt never saw St. Anne's in fellowship.

ORGANIZATION

Stewardship information packets will be available at Lackey Chapel this Sunday. Please return them to the offering basket no later than Dec. 1. Your Mission Committee has agreed that our stewardship message would emphasize time and talent in particular, so please review the stewardship materials carefully and consider how you might contribute to our lay-led parish in terms of ministry and service.

Mission Committee member Michael Roberts composed this year's stewardship message, which you can read by clicking here. He closes with a wonderful reflection on our community:

"The very existence of St. Anne’s is an outward expression of an inward grace; a grace that led us then, and leads us now, to do something different, something new.  In doing this we committed our time, talent, and treasure to our church, our community, and our God.  St. Anne’s IS stewardship.  

 

As we have been doing for the past year please continue give up a part of yourself to St. Anne’s.  By giving up, we gain.  In doing so we express our understanding that we are not merely our own, but are owned by all that touched us. Stewardship is simply an acknowledgement of this fact; that we are merely temporary stewards of the things that have been given freely to us by others, and given to us by God."

See you Sunday,

Dan Ennis

Senior Warden

St. Anne's Gate 11/1/13

Greetings from St. Anne's Episcopal Church! 

I write to you on All Saints' Day, one of the principal feasts of the church -- a great day to remember the departed, but a bad day for the apostrophe.  Tomorrow is All Souls' Day, and if you're curious about the difference between All Saints' Day and All Souls' day, here's a handy article that provides a good explanation:  Click here.

WORSHIP

At St. Anne's we will celebrate All Saints' Day this Sunday (11/3), at our regularly scheduled 10am Eucharist in Lackey Chapel. There will be cards at the entrance of the chapel. When you arrive, please take a card and write down the name of a loved one whom you wish to be remembered during the service.

Next Sunday (11/10) we will not meet at Lackey Chapel. Instead our service of Holy Communion will be at 5:00 p.m. at Palmetto Missionary Baptist Church in Conway. To find Palmetto Missionary Baptist Church,  follow Main Street north towards Loris. Just after 16^th Avenue, be in the left lane and turn left on Oak Street (the IGA will be on your right).  The church is at 1301 Fulmer Street.  It is the first street to the right after you turn on Oak Street.  If you have questions about any of this, call Rebecca Lovelace at 248-2536. 

The following Sunday (11/17) we'll be back at Lackey Chapel at 10am.

FELLOWSHIP

We have two opportunities for fellowship coming up. Thus Sunday (11/3) instead of refreshments after the service, we will have small group lunches.   Individuals who signed up in advance have already been told the location of their lunch group, but if you've not yet signed up you can still join in.  Just come to church on Sunday and we'll add you to an existing group.  Lunch groups meet the first Sunday of every month, and each month groups are rearranged so we can all get to know each other better.

The mother of all fellowship opportunities follows on November 10th, with the St. Anne's Anniversary BBQ Supper. This event will take place at the Lovelace home (503 Lakewood Avenue ) directly after the 5pm service at Palmetto Missionary Baptist Church. For the supper, BBQ, slaw and iced tea will be provided.  Feel free to bring an adult beverage.  Names beginning with “A to E” bring an appetizer.  Names beginning with “F to R” bring a side dish – baked beans, other casseroles, vegetables (other than slaw).  Names beginning with “S to Z” bring desert. 

Supply clergy have assured us that absolution will be available at the 11/17 service if the festivities of 11/10 get too festive. 

ORGANIZATION

There is now a St. Anne’s phone, which will be answered and monitored not by St. Anne herself, but by church secretary Laura Barr.  The church phone number is 843-246-1247.  

Laura is also compiling a church directory.  If you have not filled out an information card, or if any information has changed since you filled out a card, please email Laura with an update. Eventually, the directory will include names, addresses, email,  phone numbers, names of children and partners, birth month and day of each family member, and any service interests parishioners may have may have, i.e. Greeter/Usher, Chalice/Crucifer, Lector, Refreshments, Choir, Altar Guild, etc.  Laura can be reached at  mombarr3@gmail.com. 

We're not sure how the directory will be made available to the congregation (we want to respect your privacy!), but for now if you're trying get in touch with one of your fellow parishioners contact Laura and she can give you the information you need.

VISION

Last week Rebecca Lovelace and I had the privilege of attending a meeting with Bishop  vonRosenberg, Archdeacon Walpole, and representatives of the other "Worship Groups" in our Diocese.  One of the remarkable things about that meeting was how many of those groups viewed themselves as new missions, not rejected dissidents from congregations that had taken a fundamentalist turn. There was a consensus at the meeting that worship groups had made room for people who had no place at the old table. Yet these groups, of which St. Anne's is one of many, would not exist without conflict, and they refute the view that disagreement among Christians is always a shame.  

The Reverend Lucia Lloyd, whose congregation has been so helpful to St. Anne's, preached a sermon last summer at her own church in Virginia on the the potential for good that can come from differences in the church: 

 "The presence of conflict does not necessarily mean that you're right, but Jesus assures us that the presence of conflict also does not necessarily meant that you're wrong...Jesus came and made some changes, and the religious people of his day wanted to go back to the way things used to be."  (Click here to listen to the entire sermon.)

So a year into our life together as a congregation, would any of us want to turn back the clock and go back to the way things used to be in our diocese? To the many members of St. Anne's who had no church home a year ago, or who attended a church where they were tolerated at arm's length, the reasons St. Anne's was formed don't matter at all.  It exists now.

So on behalf of the Mission Committee, I thank  all of you who put your own time, talent, and treasure into starting a new parish.  From setting up on Sunday mornings to practicing hymns on Thursday nights, from bearing the chalice to baking the cookies, from collecting food for CAP to teaching a class of confirmands, from treating your home like a social hall to treating your car like church van, there have been many strong hands a true hearts at St. Anne's.  Let's toast a year well spent, and --lest we grow self-congratulatory -- get back to our joyous work.  We're a church like no other, with those old conflicts becoming less relevant by the day.  

See you Sunday,

Dan Ennis

Senior Warden

http://stanneconway.org/