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What's Happening Around the Diocese
Reflections for Invite Welcome Connect Ministry Teams Returning to the Program Year,
a suggested reading from our Diocese
Summer is winding down. Schedules that stretched and wandered are snapping back into shape. The choir is returning, the Sunday school teachers are dusting off lesson plans, and the coffee hour volunteers are restocking the parish hall kitchen. For Invite Welcome Connect ministry teams, this is one of the most energizing moments of the entire church year—a genuine fresh start, charged with the Spirit's possibility.
And yes—it can also feel a little daunting. Maybe momentum slipped over the summer. Maybe a key team member moved away. Maybe you tried something last spring that didn't land quite the way you hoped. Maybe the team is wondering where to begin.
Here's the good news: Every one of those challenges is a doorway. In her book Invite Welcome Connect: Stories & Tools to Transform Your Church, our Founder Mary Foster Parmer writes that "often, the obstacle raises the curtain to reveal an opportunity."
That is exactly the lens through which to begin this program year—with clear eyes about what is hard, and with wide-open hope about what God is about to do.
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Save the Date: ECM’s 182nd Annual Meeting
📍 St. Andrew's Church, Framingham, MA
📅 Saturday, October 10, 2026
🕘 Program: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Join us for Episcopal City Mission’s 182nd Annual Meeting with the theme: Reckoning, Resisting, and Reimagining Together
You are invited as a member of our community existing at the intersection of faith and action. With other lay, ordained, and community leaders, join us in hearing stories of spiritual reckoning and resistance work throughout Massachusetts, and together, we can dare to build a future where all of god's children of every faith, color, and ancestry are treated with dignity, with the resources to thrive, not simply survive, and prosper in the land they call their home.
📌 More details to come. Registration will open soon—stay tuned!
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Deanery Parish Retreat
Registration is still open for the 2026 Parish Retreat, taking place from September 25th to 27th at the Prindle Pond Conference Center's Hilltop Facility. You can register until September 1st. Registration forms are available in the church.
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