We are a community of faith that welcomes and values all people.

We commit to follow Christ, serve others, grow in faith and

transform the world by sharing God’s love.

Dear People of St. Barnabas,

This coming Sunday is the feast day of St. Francis. On this special day, we will welcome our furry friends into worship both to bless us and to receive a blessing. Please know that we will be using a full Celtic liturgy at both the 8 and 10:30 a.m. services. There will be no Rite I this coming Sunday. Please note, also, that the same Celtic liturgy that we used last year to conclude our Season of Creation includes a Celtic Creed (instead of the Nicene Creed) as well as a Celtic Confession of Sin and Absolution. Last year, at the end of September, I met with 8 a.m. worshippers to discuss using the Celtic liturgy for the early service on one Sunday only. I received a gracious go ahead. For your willingness to flow with the liturgical changes we have experienced this past year, for the sake of strengthening our liturgical muscles in preparation for a new rector, I offer my gratitude.

For the blessing of the pets this Sunday, please be sure that your critter is on a leash or in an appropriate carrier/container. If you are unable to bring your pet, or your pal has crossed over the rainbow bridge, I am happy to bless a photo. Children are invited to bring their stitched and stuffed pets to church to be blessed.  A Prayer:

I would like to end by offering my favorite autumn word: abcission. It is a biological term referring to the shedding of various parts of an organism such as a tree dropping its fruit or leaves, or the shedding of a husk or a claw. This is a season of beauty during which we are invited to consider letting go of things whose time has come. In the cycle of the seasons, such letting go makes new life possible in the seeds that will sprout after a time of wintering in the ground, and new buds that will make their appearance after the winter’s thaw. 

I pray you a rich autumn harvest, and gentle abcissions….

Dianne+

Rev. Dianne Andrews

Interim

The Bridge at St. Barnabas is a time set apart on Sunday morning that gives attendees from both services opportunities for connection, education, and faith formation. In The Bridge, we find community that nurtures our hearts, minds, and spirits, reminding us that the road is easier when we walk it together.

October 4

Meet the Artist: Melody Maleitzke

Join us in the parlor at 9:30 to view the new art installation and meet the artist, Melody Maleitzke! More info below.

October 11
Inviting the Prophet, Supporting the Mystic:

Church Renewal, Franciscan-Style with Rev. Steve

On October 11 during The Bridge, Rev. Steve Best will lead a presentation and discussion on the importance of creation-centered spirituality for imagining and bringing forth growth and transformation in practical ways at St. Barnabas. If you are curious about what St. Francis would likely have seen and said to us if he had come to our parish for a visit during this interim period, come and see!

"And all shall be well

And all manner of thing shall be well."

Julian of Norwich (c.1343 – c. 1416) was an English anchoress, mystic, and author. Her work Shewings, also known as Revelations of Divine Love, is the first book in the English language known to have been written by a woman.

Julian wrote of God’s love and compassion during a time of great turmoil and plague.  She referred to God as “the true Mother of life and of all things.” In the smallness of a hazelnut, Julian perceived “all that was made.” 

Join us for a presentation and discussion about St. Julian on October 18 during The Bridge.

Sunday Funday: October 4

Join us this Sunday, October 4 at both services as we celebrate the Feast of St. Francis with the Blessing of the Pets! All are invited to bring their furry, fluffy, feathered friends on leashes or in carriers to receive a blessing during either the 8 or 10:30 a.m. service. Pictures of pets who are unable to attend are welcome, and children are invited to bring their favorite stuffed animals for a blessing, too! We will also hold a Celtic service on this date.

We look forward to meeting all of your furvorite family members on October 4!

Godly Play

Join us for Godly Play each Sunday at 10:15 in the Youth Room.

2026-2027 Godly Play Schedule

Godly Play is for children in grades PreK-4 through six.

Older youth are welcome to join as helpers.

Join us for our monthly Youth Group Movie Nights! Movie nights held on the second Saturday of each month and are for youth in grades 6-12. We always have pizza and sweet treats, and friends are welcome to tag along! With so many movies to choose from, we're putting two movies up for a vote each month. We'll vote when everyone arrives and YOU will decide what we watch! Fall movie options are:

October 10 | 80's Frightfest
Ghostbusters OR Little Shop of Horrors

November 14 | Cringefest

Napoleon Dynamite OR Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

December 12 | Santafest
The Santa Claus OR The Christmas Chronicles

Please RSVP so that we can have enough food and treats for everyone. If you’re not sure if you’ll be attending all of the movie nights, you can sign up for them monthly as each date nears. 

Look forward to seeing you there! 

Movie nights for youth in grades 6-12.

Centering Prayer

Tuesdays at 9 a.m.

Centering Prayer: body prayer, chanting, twenty minutes of silence, followed by contemplation of reflections from Meister Eckhart.

Bible Study at St. Barnabas

Join us in October!

The Adult Faith Formation Ministry is excited to reignite the St. Barnabas Bible Study! The inaugural orientation meeting will be on Tuesday, October 13 in Tierney Parish Hall at 6 p.m. We will discuss logistics, form goals as a group, and set the stage for our first short study!

The current plan is to meet twice a month, every second and fourth Tuesday, with breaks around Advent, Christmas, and Holy Week. It will be a “come as you’re able” year-round group with some of us taking turns facilitating the discussion. There is a mailing list and if you’d like to be on it, please email Michael Fitzpatrick, m.c.fitzpatrick@outlook.com.

Anyone is welcome to attend our discussions. The group will announce each new topic in the newsletter under the Adult Faith Formation corner, so make sure to check regularly to see what we’re reading and discussing. Please come and join us!

Contemplative Wisdom Gatherings Resume

Our world is full of busy-ness as we are inundated each day with more stimuli than we can process with any kind of understanding and meaning, leaving us all depleted and unable to be present to the abiding love of God.

The prayer of the contemplative is, essentially, an attention to the omnipresence of the God who is Love. God/Love is omnipresent not as a theological doctrine, but as the great silence that is present in every moment—but from which we are usually distracted by an overactive mind that refuses to wait in a humble unknowing for a pure wisdom from above.

You are invited to discover this Contemplation which yields to Wisdom as we gather to read, mark and inwardly digest, Silence by Robert Sardello.

This fall, our gatherings continue monthly on Saturday mornings, beginning on October 10, 9:30 a.m. to noon in Tierney Parish Hall. All gatherings include intentional body practice, chant, silence for meditation, small group and whole group discussion.

For dates and planned readings for each gathering, please register with The Rev. Patricia Robertson, revprome@hotmail.com. Inquiries and questions are welcome.

Please join us, even if you have never done so before. You can jump in where we are in the book and savor the earlier study at your own pace. Discover the gift of wisdom and love that emerges in silence, and expand loving Presence in the world.

The St. Barnabas Book Club continues to offer opportunities to explore other places and times while diving deep into what it all means in the context of our journeys of faith. Join us in OCTOBER (we are skipping September) on Tuesday, October 20 at 1:30 p.m. in Tierney Parish Hall when we discuss Safe Passage - The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II by Evelyn Iritani.

Described as 'an amazing story....pulsing with life, unknown historical details and characters who leap from the page'. Reading this book together will be a fitting tribute to our Bainbridge Island history and the Fall opening of the new visitor center at the Japanese Exclusion Memorial. Join us!!

The Gallery at St. Barnabas

Created in the image of The Creator, what else can human beings do but create? To make sense of the world around us—the delight and the dread, the gifts and the grief, the faith and the fear—we talk, write, photograph, commune, sing, cook, dance, paint, pray…

We do what we were made to do. We create.



In partnership with Bainbridge Island Art, St. Barnabas aims to provide the space to explore the human experience and our connection with the divine, one another, and creation through the work of local artists. The first featured artist will be Melody Maleitzke, whose work will be shown in the parlor throughout October. Learn more about Melody and her art here, and meet her on Sunday, October 4 during The Bridge!

Are you an artist interested in being featured at the St. Barnabas Gallery? We’d love to hear from you! Contact the church office, 206.842.5601, info@stbbi.org.

YWCA’s Women of Achievement Gala

You may be wondering why your Outreach Committee is bringing a gala fundraiser to your attention. The YWCA of Kitsap County provides many services to all of Kitsap County (including Bainbridge Island). The one thing they may be best known for is providing shelter for people fleeing domestic violence. The YWCA also provides many other services including emergency shelter, crisis hotline and text line, supportive housing, safety planning, legal advocacy, childcare, referrals, and prevention education. Earlier this year, the YWCA had a fire in one of its emergency shelters. As you can imagine, the fire was devastating in so many ways—emotional damage to a population that was already struggling, the toll on residents and on the staff who were trying to help them, the fear of the unknown future, the physical damage to the building itself, and then of course the need for money to repair the structure and help people replace essentials. All of these things have led to an increase in the need for funding, but also to a time to celebrate a community that has stepped up to help a nonprofit in need.

The Women of Achievement Gala

Date: Friday, October 9

Location: Kitsap Conference Center at Bremerton Harborside

Time: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Tickets

More Information

Kitsap Homes of Compassion Closes

As most of you know, St. Barnabas has supported the work of Kitsap Homes of Compassion through monetary donations that your Outreach Committee has made to them and through a personal hygiene drive that you generously supported earlier this spring. Kitsap Homes of Compassion has been providing housing to the homeless population of Kitsap County since 2017 using a rental model that involved renting rooms at a discounted rate in homes to people who have previously been homeless and also providing them with wraparound services to help them address the problems that led to their housing insecurity.

It is with great sadness and concern that your Outreach Committee would like to make you aware that Kitsap Homes of Compassion is no longer functioning and providing services to the homeless population of our county. The agency closed earlier in September. Their Board of Directors is working with other agencies and providers in the county to try to insure that the residents of the houses they were renting do not end up homeless again as a result of the the closing of KHOC. The Board and the other agencies within the county are also working with the owners of the rental properties as the KHOC closes to see if they can continue to provide housing to current residents at least on a short-term basis.

Your Outreach Committee will continue to try to find other local agencies to support that are providing services to and hopefully housing for the homeless residents of our county. If you have knowledge of other agencies who are involved in this important work, please reach out to a member of the Outreach Committee.

Vestry Meeting Highlights

September 20, 2026

The vestry held its monthly meeting on Sunday, September 20. We began our time together by expressing our thanks for the wonderful work Kathy Anderson and her team have done to develop this year’s Pledge Appeal, “Our Faith, Our Church…Grow the Mission”. After a time of reflecting on what St Barnabas means to each of us, what we are grateful for, and how that can be reflected in our personal pledges, we received our pledge envelope packets. The vestry looks forward to being the first to offer our pledges to St Barnabas at the kick-off of our Pledge Appeal at the Sunday services on October 11. Pledge packets will be available for the entire congregation on that day. 

As part of our effort to create a welcoming environment at St Barnabas, a project has been embarked upon to improve signage all around the campus. The vestry approved funding not to exceed $6500 to fund this project. Our property warden, Phil Fergusson, is spearheading this project with input from staff and others. 

St Mark’s, our diocesan cathedral, is in the last stages of a successful capital campaign called Living Stones II. The campaign will fund 3 large projects at the cathedral: replacing the old boiler with a new heating system with the goal of being carbon neutral by 2030; remodeling the entry so that it is more welcoming, and replacing the old concrete floors; and building a new, but small organ to augment the cherished music program at the cathedral. Based on the size of our parish, and in gratitude for our cathedral, the vestry authorized a gift of $20,000 to the Living Stones II campaign, to be distributed from the Hodges Endowment Fund. 

The vestry will meet again on October 18. 

Faithfully, 

Elaine Percival, Senior Warden

The St. Barnabas Prayer Chain consists of a group of pray-ers who believe in the power of prayer and who devotedly pray for others. If you would like to add someone to the prayer list, or if you would like to join those who receive information about those for whom we pray, email Prayer Chain Coordinator, Drucy Burnet Hodge, drucy15@msn.com. Parishioners remain on the prayer list for one month, non-parishioners for two weeks. The long-term prayer list is periodically reviewed and revised. 

*St. Barnabas Members

BIJAEM Visitor Center Dedication & Open House

The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Visitor center is opening soon! All are invited on Sunday, October 11 for the dedication of the new visitor center followed by a public open house. St. Barnabas and its members have supported this endeavor in many ways over the years, and we are overjoyed to see this tireless effort come to fruition.

This new Visitor Center represents more than 20 years of work to preserve this history, honor the families who experienced it, and ensure its lessons continue to reach future generations.

Dedication Ceremony: 12:30 p.m.

Public Open House: 2–4 p.m.

Parking will be available at American Legion Hall with free shuttle service. The Pritchard Park lots are reserved for Survivors and attendees requiring special accommodations.

Office Hours: Monday–Thursday | 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

Outside of office hours, contact the office at info@stbbi.org or 206/842-5601.

For pastoral care emergencies please contact Reverend Dianne Andrews, Interim, 206/817-6530, revdianne@stbbi.org.