Worship In-Person or Online
This week we will worship in the nave (our usual indoor worship space). Following new CDC protocols (late February 2022) masking is optional in our county for vaccinated individuals. (Our full COVID protocols appear on this page.) The services will be live-streamed on our Facebook page and available later on our YouTube channel.
New COVID-19 Protocols
The Regathering Committee met earlier this week to review our COVID protocols in light of rising COVID case numbers in Hennepin County. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides guidance on prevention measures based on whether COVID levels are low, medium or high within a community. The COVID level in Hennepin County is medium. In communities where the level is medium, the CDC recommends that people who are at high risk for serious illness talk with their health care provider about whether to wear a mask or take other precautions. It also recommends that individuals stay up to date with their COVID vaccines.
Masks are welcome, but no longer required. • You will be invited to come forward for Communion, rather than receiving it in place. • You may receive from the chalice if you choose. • Please continue to stay in place for the Peace. • We ask that all who are eligible to be vaccinated be vaccinated. Stay home and watch the service on our livestream anytime you are not feeling well, have any cold, flu, or COVID symptoms, or have been exposed to COVID, please get tested and stay home until you have a negative result.
Second Saturday: June 11
What is Second Saturday? It’s a time to get together, agenda-free, planning and work-free, to get to know each other better. Join us on the front lawn at 6:00 PM on Saturday, June 11. Bring your own beverage, blanket, chair, food, and perhaps a musical instrument or other things for amusement or entertainment. We’ll have badminton and croquet. If it’s reasonably successful, we’ll do it every Second Saturday in nice weather. Maybe some people will want to plan a more organized event? Maybe we’ll move indoors during the cool months? Charades? Movies?
Haiti Partnership Pledge Drive
In May we completed our annual pledge drive to support our partnership with Bonne Nouvelle School in Bigonet, Haiti. Our support is combined with the parents’ tuition payments to help pay the teachers’ salaries and support a school lunch program. This is strong a partnership, and every pledge truly makes a difference!
Senyè, ed non fè sa ke ou bezwen. Lord, help us to be what you need produced.
| Click here to see the Partnership's Forecast Report for the 2021-22 School Year | Pledge online now | Read Fr. William's May 1 sermon |
From the Rector Search Committee
The Diocese has told us that there is a lot of interest and enthusiasm regarding our posting. The Search Committee is expecting to receive information about our candidates this week. You’ll recall that the Diocese reviews the applicant’s information first and ensures that their reputation is solid with their current Diocese. We have been told by Canon Olson that we have several strong candidates. We are looking forward to receiving the following from each candidate whose materials are forwarded: Cover letter, Resume, Their Office of Transition Ministry profiles, Other materials (sermons, references, video links, etc.) We have also received and reviewed thoughtful input from our staff about our next rector. As always, we will keep you apprised as to when the interviews will begin. Please note, this is the quiet phase of our work and we are unable to share any names or details with you at this time. Please continue to pray for us, the applicants and our church as we discern those that will go further in our process.
Live-stream Option: The worship service will be broadcast live on Sunday morning at 10AM on our Facebook page. Live-streaming is new to us, and we're still outfitting our worship space with equipment. Please be patient as we gradually develop our skills! Early in the following week we will archive the service on our YouTube channel. The YouTube services will be lightly edited to enhance the sound quality and shorten some parts of the service.
Bakers and Canners Needed
As many of you know, newcomers to Sts. Luke & James get a homemade loaf of bread, a jar of honey or jam, and a welcome note if they complete a welcoming form when they visit. The welcoming team (bread baker Rebecca Hamblin and honey-and-jam-buyer-and-delivery-driver Louis Hoffman) may need help. The immediate need is for a beekeeper who can provide honey (provided for many years by the late Roger Martin) or someone who cans and can provide jams, jellies, preserves, spreads, etc. Good honey is expensive and this isn't currently in the church budget. As more and more newcomers beat a path to our door, we'll need bakers. If you can help or have questions, please contact Louis Hoffman, Vestry Member for Parish Life, at hoffman.louis@comcast.net or 612-618-7206.
Formation Opportunities
We all look forward to the day when we will be able to gather for Godly Play for children, Youth formation, and The Forum but in the meantime we want to offer up a weekly resource to facilitate formation in your homes. Faith@Home which is curated by Forma & Forward Movement, has created in home formation for all ages with options for differing age levels in any household from small children through very experienced adults. https://www.dofaithathome.org/blog/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-week-of-
february-20-2022/
This weekly resource will complement our worship experience for everyone whether you are worshiping from home on our Facebook live-stream or our YouTube channel or in person.
Pastoral Care
We understand the importance of continuing to provide pastoral care and healing prayers for any in our community who are in need. If you have any pastoral needs, don’t hesitate to reach out to Rev Larry Bussey at 612-309-8896, or to Rev Morris Goodwin, or to Rev Gretchen Pickeral, lilmargret@gmail.com, 612-961-1154. We’ll be there for you.
Annual Meeting Report
We held our annual meeting of the parish on Sunday, January 23. If you weren't able to attend, here are some links to the materials and recordings.
2021 Written Reports and Agenda: [ PDF ]
2020 Written Reports and Agenda: [ PDF ]
Full Meeting Video: [ YouTube ]
Mailing List
During the current health emergency it will be especially important to be able to keep up on changes to activity times here at Sts. Luke & James. Please join our email list now!
First Friday Taizé: 7PM Monthly
Our Taizé service has returned to the nave (main worship space) and has also returned to its previous time, 7PM. This is a half-hour service of quiet reflection with modern chants (reiterated worship songs). Masks are welcome, but optional, for in-person worship, but you may also join the service via our live-stream on Facebook.
Compline (Evening Prayers): 7PM Daily
During our time of separation, several of us wanted to pray together "face-to-face" in the service of Daily Compline from the Book of Common Prayer. We continue to meet on-line at 7PM each night here:
All are welcome to participate in this service (you do NOT need to be a member of our congregation) from your phone, tablet, or computer. You will be given the opportunity to join with audio & video, audio only, or just observe. It's helpful to have the Compline service open in your Book of Common Prayer, or to view the service text on your computer.
Donations
During our separation we continue to maintain our building and to pay our staff. If your practice has been to make donations to Sts. Luke & James via the offering plate on Sundays, we urge you to consider making your donations online. Many of our parishioners have found it easiest to set up electronic funds transfers (EFT) by contacting our office. However, we welcome donations via credit card as well.
Photo: We encourage you to stick around after the service for a snack and conversation.
The Epistle
We publish a newsletter that will help you get to know us, our people, our passions, and our opportunities for engagement. Please take a look at one of our recent editions.
| May 2022 | April 2022 | November/December 2021 | August 2021 | July 2021 | June 2021 | May 2021 | April 2021 | March 2021 | February 2021 | January 2021 | December 2020 | November 2020 | October 2020 | September 2020 | August 2020 | July 2020 |
Vestry Corner
In our meeting on May 9, we continued to discuss the topic of family engagement, and plan for some listening sessions to help direct our next steps as we move into the summer and next fall. We expect the process of listening to be ongoing as we work with the staff to plan programming for the coming months.
We began the process of reviewing bylaws for our parish, and job descriptions for our staff. This will be a major focus of the vestry over the remainder of 2022.
In Parish Life, we’re excited about the newcomer brunch this Sunday after church. We will continue to look for new ways to spark community and relationship-building amongst us, especially welcoming newer members!
If you would you like to make a report to the Vestry, you can use this form. If you’d like your report to be seen in our upcoming wardens and vestry meetings, your submission must be received by the first of the month.
Vestry Minutes
Our Vestry meets monthly to represent the parish in matters of worship, education, service, community life, and business. Meeting minutes are posted here AFTER they have been approved at the following month's meeting.
| April 2022 | March 2022 | February 2022 | January 2022 | December 2021 | November 2021 | October 2021 | September 2021 | August 2021 | July 2021 no meeting | June 2021 | May 2021 | April 2021 | March 2021 | February 2021 |
Vestry Agenda
Shortly before each regular Vestry meeting (the second Monday of the month) we will post the agenda here.
Join Our Email List
Please consider adding yourself to our newsletter email list so we can provide you with up-to-the-minute worship opportunities and schedule changes during our stay-at-home time apart.
| Join our list |
Children
We began as an Episcopal church school over 100 years ago, several years before we became a worshiping parish. Children and youth have been a major priority for us ever since. At Sts. Luke & James, our children feel welcome as important members of the parish. They connect with the Bible stories each Sunday through active lessons, as well as participate in worship. We are a home where young people can feel safe to ask the big questions and experience wonder and joy in God’s Creation and at church.
We recently surveyed our congregation, and “Children” made the Top 4 gifts list of our community. What sets us apart is that our kids interact with everyone. During services, events or coffee hours, you will often see Sts. Luke & James' kids cheerfully helping out, and that our young people are engaged with caring “uncles, aunts, and grandparents” in this community of Christ.
Children are welcome at the table during Communion.
Loving child care is provided—birth up to age five—when families want it, and they are welcome to stay in the service. When children fidget and make noise, parents may also get distracted. However, the rest of us are smiling, knowing that children are vitally present in our community.
Sunday school lessons are based on Gospel readings that are read in the service, and families are given tools to continue to share the readings during the rest of the week.
Children—age three to ten—experience “Godly Play.” In each session, the children first get their bodies ready, then enter into the Bible story, then are given time to wonder, move and respond to the story.
Youth
We can’t guarantee that it will be easy to wake your young people up on Sundays, but we can say confidently that they will feel welcome and won’t regret having walked through the door.
Youth in middle school and high school are given leadership opportunities. They can teach lessons with adult mentors. Like all of us, when youth teach other kids, they learn it more deeply themselves. They can also help direct the pageants, serve as lectors and acolytes, sing with the choir, play instruments, direct outreach projects, plan mission trips, take photographs for communications, lead as day camp counselors, and serve on the vestry.
When meeting as a youth group, teens explore what it means to be Christian (Episcopalian in particular) in our world of many faiths and lack of faith. Activities and discussions with respectful listening give our young adults more experience, peers, mentors and tools to reach with faith beyond St. Luke’s. How does our Christian identity play out in our decisions in the real world?
Young adults who choose to become confirmed in the Episcopal Church participate in a series of classes to give them the knowledge to make a more informed decision. We encourage this at or after age 16.
Most importantly, youth at Sts. Luke & James know that they will always have a church family with caring, supportive people to whom they can turn as they take the next steps through life; that the door is always open to them, even after graduation.
Adult Faith Formation
We provide Christian education for adults as well as children. We offer reading groups, seminars, workshops and other opportunities throughout the year. Learn more about church history, about the presence of God in our lives today and in the future, and how we all grow in our faith journey, though they may be very different from each other.
After Sunday Worship
We offer a lively discussion group each Sunday after the 10:00 a.m. service. This group discusses topics related to theology, spiritual practices or the history of religion among other topics. The members of the Sunday group select the themes to be explored.
Education for Ministry (EfM)
Education for Ministry or EfM, is a theological education program for lay adults. This course of study was developed by the School of Theology of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The participants study the Bible, church history and theology, while learning to engage in theological reflection. Although the course consists of four years, participants commit to only one year at a time.
Our EfM groups meets on Tuesday nights at 7:00 p.m and Sunday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. from September through May. New members are accepted into the group each September.
Community of Hope
The Community of Hope is a 15-week class, offered by Sts. Luke & Jame and St. John’s – Linden Hills, whose goal is to broaden participants’ understanding of pastoral ministry and to cultivate a culture of pastoral care within congregations. The class runs from September through early January.