JANUARY 6, 2022 | VOLUME 34, ISSUE 1

VIEW AS WEBPAGE

1st Sunday after The Epiphany

Sunday, January 9, 2022

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Preacher: The Reverend Ryan D. Newman

Saturday, January 8th

Sisters Venue - Rosie’s Game Night

6:00PM | Zoom

Sunday, January 9th

Online Only Worship

8:00AM & 10:00AM

Attend Worship Online

Monday, January 17th

Vestry Meeting

7:00PM | Zoom

Bible and Breakfast

Tuesdays | 9:30AM

Currently on Zoom Only

Evening Prayer

Wednesday | 7:00PM

Currently on Zoom Only

Education Forum

Wednesday | 7:45PM

Currently on Zoom Only

Happy New Year Ryan!

Welcome to the 34^th volume of St. Bede’s “The Quill,” and welcome to a new epoch in St. Bede’s communications ministries. Today, we (re)launch The Quill (emphasis on the “e”) as a digital weekly publication.

A hallmark of thriving communities of faith and organizations is regular, dynamic, and transparent communication channels. Therefore, we have set our sights on reshaping how and what we communicate at St. Bede’s during the past month. This rebranding and re-envisioning process is essential to strengthening our congregation, attracting newcomers, growing the church, and expanding our impact in the greater community. In addition, our enhanced communications channels will be vital for marketing purposes and recruiting candidates interested in serving as St. Bede’s fourth rector.  

Bottom Line: A vibrant church needs a vibrant voice!

The Quill will be an evolving digital resource for our St. Bede’s community. Our goal is to highlight what is happening at St. Bede’s and celebrate what recently happened. Additionally, The Quill will connect you with news in our congregation, the local community, The Diocese of Los Angeles, and National Church. We will share highlights of worship and church life as often as possible. Frequently, we will utilize The Quill to raise awareness about social justice issues and outreach opportunities. Ultimately, we hope The Quill will be the voice of St. Bede’s between Sundays—a vibrant voice for a vibrant church.

Just before Christmas, we launched St. Bede’s new website. In future issues of “The Quill,” we will highlight many of the site’s latest and greatest features. In the meantime, we invite you to check out the new site, and as always, we welcome your feedback, insights, and questions.

Christmas Eve marked the beginning of St. Bede’s broadcasting live services on the internet through our website, Facebook Page, and YouTube Channel. The broadcast is in high-definition, and the sound is directly fed from the soundboard—nothing is worst than attending church online, and the service has inferior audio or video. Our goal is to broadcast each Sunday the 10:00 AM service. We will also broadcast the 8:00 AM service only when we offer services online. In addition, we plan to broadcast other significant services and Friends of Music concerts. Services and other events are archived on our YouTube Channel and are available on the St. Bede’s website. We also offer an audio-only version of the entire service, which can also be accessed through St. Bede’s Service Archive on the website.

Finally, in October, we launched the “Soundwaves at St. Bede’s” Podcast. Episodes are published weekly, usually by Monday evening. The Soundwaves Podcast features the sermon from Sunday’s worship services and highlights selections from the extraordinary St. Bede’s music program. In the future, we hope to utilize the podcast to update our listeners on church news and convey the stories of our faith as we live out our baptismal covenant. Like any podcast, you can subscribe to the “Soundwaves at St. Bede’s” Podcast, and episodes download automatically. We invite you to listen to the podcast while in the car, working out, and wherever you are. It is a wonderful way to get a “Reader’s Digest” version of Sunday, whether you missed church or want to relisten to the sermon and music highlights.

Justin Wise, the author of The Social Church: A Theology of Digital Communication, says, “The underlying power in social media [and other web-based technologies] is not the technology. It’s the power that comes from human beings connecting from all around the globe. If the gospel message (or any message, for that matter) is transmitted along relational lines, churches can confidently head in the direction of social because of the volume of relationships it can facilitate.”

The goal of The Quill and other communication resources is to cultivate deeper relationships—with one another and, most importantly, God. “Innovation isn’t just a virtue, it’s a requirement,” says Wise. If we want to be the church and people God calls us to be at St. Bede’s, we must lean heavily into the spirit of innovation—faithful innovation that leads to transformation and vitality.

A vibrant church needs a vibrant voice!

Faithfully in Christ,

The Reverend Ryan D. Newman

Interim Pastor

There is still space available for Rosie's Game Night!

To sign up, please email Daphne Moote or Penny Jennings.

Before each Sunday at St. Bede’s, service programs are printed. Service programs are vital as an act of hospitality, accessibility, and convenience. Without a service program, congregants would be leafing through The Book of Common Prayer, The Bible, The Hymnal, a spare leaflet with prayers, and so on. Honestly, it would be extremely frustrating and could negatively impact someone’s overall worship experience.

However, we must identify and offer ways to minimize our impact on the environment’s precious resources. St. Bede’s Digital Service Program Initiative encourages congregation members to download the Sunday service program onto their mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Kindle, etc.) to minimize our overall environmental footprint.

Our initial goal by Holy Week 2022 is to reduce our weekly printing output by 15%.

Each week in The Quill , there is a link to the Service Program page on St. Bede’s Website. Programs are uploaded by Saturday evening and often earlier. A link to the page can also be found under the “Worship and Education” tab on St. Bede’s Website.

In addition, as you enter the sanctuary, there is a QR Code. “To scan a QR code on your iPhone, all you have to do is open the Camera app and point your phone at the QR code. Make sure the QR code is inside the box on your screen, and then tap the pop-up banner or the yellow QR code icon in the bottom-right corner. If you’re running Android 8 or later, you can scan a QR code by opening the camera app, pointing your phone at the QR code, and tapping the pop-up banner. If you don’t see the pop-up banner, you can use the Google Lens app to scan the QR code instead.” (Instructions courtesy of HelloTechNow.Com)

Please help us reach our goal, and most importantly, help us be better stewards of God’s creation. Thank you!

The Friends of Music Concert on Sunday, January 16, Mariachi Arcoiris de Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles, is postponed due to the COVID-19 surge in Los Angeles.

St. Bede's will announce a new date at a later time.

CHRISTMAS EVE MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS

“Lo, How a Rose/The Rose”

Arranged by: Craig Hella Johnson

“Go tell it on the mountain”

Words: Traditional African-American Music: Traditional, arr. Philip Kern

St.Bede's Choir - Christmas Eve 2021

Archbishop Desmond Tutu mourned, beloved across diocesan community

By Bob Williams

[The Episcopal News – January 5, 2022] Whether greeting Altadena schoolchildren or addressing a Santa Ana rally, preaching in Pasadena or keynoting a clergy conference in Santa Barbara, Archbishop Desmond Tutu inspired thousands of Southern Californians to join his efforts to end South African apartheid and build a world that affirms the diverse “rainbow people of God.”

Mourned worldwide since his death Dec. 26 at age 90, Tutu visited the six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles frequently during the last four decades, creating longstanding ties with Anglican counterparts in the Church in the Province of Southern Africa.

“We Episcopalians from southern California to the central coast join the global outpouring of tribute and gratitude for this peerlessly influential Anglican leader and his example of courage, humility, and compassion,” the Rt. Rev. John Harvey Taylor said of Tutu. “My late mother Jean, a longtime member of All Saints Church in Pasadena, gave me an especially vivid sense of the parish’s international leadership role in supporting the archbishop and standing against the evil of apartheid.”

The Episcopal Church

Statement from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry on the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Living Church

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Dies at 90

Associated Press

Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s moral conscience, dies at 90

Colorado Episcopalians coordinate aid to neighbors affected by wildfire

Episcopalians in Boulder County, Colorado, are beginning the long task of recovering from a devastating wildfire that destroyed about 1,000 homes and burned over 6,000 acres in Superior and Louisville, suburbs northwest of Denver, on Dec. 30 and 31.

$2 million bequest tied up in court as growing North Texas congregation worships in former bank drive-thru

The congregation’s hoped-for future is a new church to be built on vacant land, backed by more than $2 million from a gift of the estate of a former parishioner who died in 2017. For now, however, the land remains vacant, and the bequest sits untouched in a bank account – frozen until St. Mary’s resolves its legal dispute with a breakaway group of worshippers who retained possession of the old church on Abbot Street.

12 top stories from Episcopal News Service in 2021

2021 was an extraordinarily eventful year for Episcopal News Service as we covered the impacts of societal upheaval on church life, from the pandemic to the racial justice reckoning to political disruption. We picked 12 of our favorite and most important stories from this year, especially stories you might have missed, so you can look back on 2021 during the 12 days of Christmas.

Epiphany in a Pandemic?

BY MORTEN MORLAND (THE TIMES - BRITAIN)