A fond farewell and a welcome | |
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Sunday, Feb. 12, will be our last day with Father Ryan as our interim pastor. We are so grateful for his caring and leadership (and his attempts to bring us into the 21st century with technology)! And we hope that he might drop by once in a while just to say hello.
A week later, on Feb. 19, we will welcome Jennifer Wagner Pavia on her first Sunday as rector of St. Bede's. We have so much to look forward to on our journey to the future!
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Did you really think Legos are just for kids? (It's understandable, especially if you picked up and organized your son's Legos for 15 years, and he refused to let you give them away even after he left for college.)
Well, we're here to tell you that Legos are for people of any age and that Kathy Russell is hosting her fourth year of Lego building as a Sisters of Bede event. What's more, there are still spaces available!
Please see Kathy for more information.
(And if you discover that Legos are truly your passion, we'd like to challenge you to build a replica of St. Bede's!)
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VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED
FEBRUARY 12 | 1:30 PM & 5:00 PM
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Grass Roots Neighbors is a volunteer community organization. They meet the immediate needs of our neighbors experiencing food and housing insecurity. GRN mobilizes to fill the gaps in existing services by providing assistance with love and respect. The organization's vision is to be a community effectively involved in ending poverty.
Among their outreach programs, GNR cooks and delivers a hot meal every Sunday to various encampments on the Westside. Once a month, St. Bede's with Holy Nativity assists GNR with preparing and providing meals. There are now four different volunteer time slots:
- 2 - 4 PM (mostly chopping of fruits and veggies)
- 4 - 6 PM (mainly packaging food)
- 6 - 8:30 PM (loading and distributing the food)
- 7:30 - 10:30 PM (distributing food in Venice by bike)
GNR utilizes the kitchen facilities at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church.
GNR, Holy Nativity, and St. Bede's have created a Google Sign-Up Form to assist with monthly volunteer coordination. Please click the button below to access the volunteer sign-up form.
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ST. BEDE'S ONLINE GIVING PORTAL | |
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Are you planning to attend worship online and want an easy way to make a pledge payment? Do you want to ditch the checkbook and set up reoccurring payments? Are you looking for a convenient way to make a one-time special gift to St. Bede's?
Did you know you can make donations online to St. Bede's, securely and easily?
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Visit the St. Bede's website and at the top of every page, look for the "Donate" button. When you click on the "Donate" button, you will be transported to St. Bede's Vanco eGiving and Payment Process Site.
Vanco is an industry leader in online payments. More than 40,000 churches, faith-based groups, nonprofits, schools, and educational organizations trust Vanco to securely complete transactions every day. Vanco complies with PCI Level 1 standards, the highest security standard in the payment processing industry.
You are invited to set up one-time or recurring gifts using credit, debit, or bank transfer on Vanco's secure payment processing platform. Giving online through the Vanco site saves time and the hassle of remembering to bring your offering. In addition, you decrease the expense incurred by St. Bede’s from handling and processing checks and cash.
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FROM THE EPISCOPAL NEWS
A newsletter serving the Diocese of LA
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A new form of Episcopal mission in New Hampshire reflects new community vitality
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BY MELODIE WOERMAN
[Episcopal News Service] Franklin, New Hampshire, might seem an unlikely place for an innovative Episcopal ministry. The paper, hosiery and woolen mills that powered the local economy were gone by the 1970s, leaving behind polluted waterways, boarded-up downtown stores and a sense that the city’s best days were behind it. The Episcopal church, St. Jude’s, closed in 2002. And the state, along with its New England neighbors, consistently rates one of the least religious in the nation.
Yet New Hampshire Bishop Robert Hirschfeld saw in Franklin the possibility of something new. After he took office in 2012, he found several Episcopalians there who weren’t attending church, and he wanted to find a new path for the community. “I thought, ‘What if we just start fresh,’” he told Episcopal News Service. So, in May 2019, he asked a seminarian to lead noondays prayers in the church and see what would happen.
The result today is the Episcopal Mission of Franklin, and it along with three other new church plants in the diocese are called Gospel-oriented communities, a status conferred by action of the diocese’s convention in November 2022. The bishop oversees the new communities, but they don’t have vestries or wardens and do not pay assessments to the diocese (they do comply with all Safe Church guidelines). “These are tender shoots, and they may always be tender shoots,” Hirschfeld said. “They may grow into something more robust, or they may just be that this is what God intends them to be.”
Read more here
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How Education for Ministry changed Episcopal Church leaders begin work on creating Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice
[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church took a significant step Feb. 7 toward forming a new Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice by announcing that more than a dozen members had been named to a group that will begin work on the coalition, as mandated in July 2022 by the 80th General Convention.
Ryan Kusumoto, a lay deputy from Hawaii, was named chair of the group, which also includes a diverse mix of other Episcopal leaders, including some who previously served on the Presiding Officers’ Working Group on Truth-Telling, Reckoning and Healing, which had recommended the new coalition in its wide-ranging March 2022 report.
“This is an opportunity for our church to solidify racial justice and equity as a norm,” Kusumoto said in a church news release. “We will be holding listening sessions so the constituting group has a wide breadth of information and understanding to set up the appropriate infrastructure.”
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Churches appeal for aid as response to Turkey-Syria earthquake expands
[Episcopal News Service] Faith-based and humanitarian groups across the world were setting in motion appeals for aid and prayers as response expands in the wake of the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey on Feb. 6, according to the World Council of Churches.
Churches in Syria are cooperating with the Middle East Council of Churches, which continues to call on the international community and the international ecumenical family to provide urgent emergency aid to the region, and is also urging the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria to allow access to all materials.
Episcopal Relief & Development, the organization that coordinates The Episcopal Church’s response to human suffering in the world, is mobilizing with its long-term partners in the region to respond. For more information or to support the effort, click here.
“The reports from Turkey and Syria are heart-wrenching,” said Abagail Nelson, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Episcopal Relief & Development. “We have worked closely with ACT Alliance in our response to the crisis in Ukraine and we will continue to partner to meet the immediate needs of the affected communities in Turkey and Syria.”
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