Together we celebrated St. Peter’s for the work over the last year and realized once again how we have much to be thankful for at St. Peter’s! The Parish meeting was today and it was handled in the context of Catherine’s sermon. All of the reports for the meeting can be found here.
First and foremost it’s the people. Elizabeth Heimbach, as junior warden, marshalling the Vestry to complete the earthquake repairs quickly but also realizing an opportunity to make our HVAC better and more efficient at the same time. Her report detailed nine other smaller projects So too in Mark’s gospel for today (1:14-21). Jesus took four ordinary men and and made them into extraordinary leaders. (Here are the readings for today).
And it was the Vestry to have intense struggles over these issue but yet coming together to act. They worked as a team. Jesus was not a solo act but one instilling in us as a group to help building the kingdom. So too, must we search out how we are going to contribute towards that process.
We elected Cynthia Fields and Boyd Wisdom to offer their gifts to the Church in the coming years. And they were just received into the Church in 2011! Catherine gave them a gift to start their Vestry careers – a bottle of aspirin! We also thanked Linda Beck for her leadership as Senior Warden.
One metaphor for St. Peter’s is the beating heart. The main function of the heart is to pump blood containing oxygen and nutrients to the body. We do this through our programs described today that go out to a broken world – the community dinners, the donations to groups all over the world, the evangelism that goes for new members, Samaritan’s Purse program, a new jail ministry and others. To better coordinate that effort we formed an Outreach Committee. The Gospel is not about sitting around but going out into the world to transform it.
We recognized Helmut for his role in the evangelism area. Catherine asked those who had been brought to this Church by him and it was a significant number as shown, above. And she asked those who had brought a friend to St. Peter’s to also stand, below, which was also gratifying:
In return that heart must be refreshed from oxygen from the lungs. We renewed ourself by adding a 9am service, healing services during Lent, multiple Easter services, expanded Christian education, book group as well as two new groups – the Evening ECW and the ECM. In particular, both ECW‘s contributed to the cookbook in 2011 and the ECM, the Transportation in Need List. We also thanked Cookie Davis and Nancy Long for their work in the 175th Church anniversary in 2011.
And we saluted Clarence Kunstmann for helping us fund these initiatives as our treasurer. A pencil sharpener and eraser were his gifts!
One additional celebration was for the work Helmut did on adding the belfry two years ago. We presented to him a framed list of those who contributed to the project (above). And also in the background of the picture is one of two crosses Helmut made for the church in 2011.
Despite the inclement weather (previous night snow and ice) we had 41 in the service. The interlocking ice crystals on one our bushes is a sign of nature bonded and working together. So too we must. We can change and in our changing, we are responding to God and enabling God to do new and innovating things in our lives and then into the world. This is our hope in 2012.