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Peace,

David

I love how this small congregation has begun to care for one another. Each week one, two or three people bake some sort of tasty treat to contribute to the fellowship time after the service. Sometimes Christian hospitality is not abstract or theological. Sometimes Christian hospitality is just a home baked torte and a pot of coffee offered on a card table to friends and visitors.

At St. Dunstan’s Church we seek to offer a welcoming environment where individuals can come together… Individuals seem to come together best around good food and drink. The new coffee hour at the chapel arose from our heart as an expression of the love God has given us. It’s not a program or a committee and there was no plan or budget, just a group of people responding generously to the love flowing in our worship.

In my sermon on Sunday I talked about the small, concrete steps we can take to shift our allegiance and our trust from money to God. Jesus tells us, “No one can serve two masters.” But trusting in God takes a real commitment and concrete actions. The examples I gave were service activities such as volunteering at the food bank and acts of compassion, like our new Care Teams. The delightful coffee hour at our Chapel service is another step, a real and meaningful step, towards living in God’s love. You could even say that this coffee hour is one of the ways we “walk in Christ’s love and forgiveness”.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

Too often in this world people suffer alone. We want to know when someone needs help. We want you, if you need help, to have a way to make your needs known. We don’t want you or anyone to suffer alone. That is one of the greatest values of being a church community. We can care for one another. We can even care for people beyond our walls.

In the past, St. Dunstan’s Church had the classic phone tree to let members know of specific pastoral needs. If someone was in the hospital, or someone had a baby, or someone died, a single call to the head of the phone tree would get the news to everyone on the phone tree and people would respond as the Spirit moved them. Modern technology allows us to take the phone tree to a whole new level. We are implementing the phone tree for the Internet age and we call it Care Teams.

Here’s how Care Teams work. Rica O’Connor, Karen Tynes and I are putting this program together. Karen has volunteered to be be the Care Team Coordinator and she will maintain a list called the Care Team List. The Care Team List includes people who are dealing with cancer, people who have had new babies, people recovering from surgery, people who have lost a loved one, people looking for work, and truly any situation that calls for prayer and care. Anyone can get onto the Care Team List by simply calling the office or the Care Team Coordinator directly. We will also have a way on Sunday mornings to put yourself or anyone else on the list. The list may include people from our congregation, and people outside our congregation that we care about.

Every week the clergy and staff will review the list and add any new needs. On Wednesday each week the entire list will be emailed to everyone who has signed up to be on a Care Team. There will be somewhere between three and six teams, depending on our participation. Each team has a color: green, white, red, purple, blue and gold. The gold team is special, so I’ll explain how it works in a moment.

Each Care Team will be “on” for one week at a time, from Wednesday morning until Tuesday night. When the Care Team List comes out, the team that is on will read through the list and, if they feel moved, respond to a need. It’s as simple as that. You might send a card, arrange to visit, deliver a meal, give a ride, send an encouraging email, or just make a phone call. You don’t have to tell anyone what you did or do any formal reporting at all. If you feel moved to help, you do so.

The idea of the Care Teams is that we hear about needs, we have the ability to express needs, and we have the opportunity to care for one another. If your team is on for the week but you can’t help, then you don’t. Someone else will. Since all the teams get the Care Team List every week, you have the opportunity to respond even when your team is not on, and even if you don’t respond, you will know what’s going on.

The Gold team is a special case. If you sign up to be on a Care Team and you do not have email, you will be assigned to the Gold Team. This team will care for members who are home bound or in long term care situations. Once a month the Gold team will receive the Care Team List in the mail. The Gold List won’t tend to change as much. The Gold Team will care for these people, helping them to feel a part of our congregation, known, and loved.

It is easy to join a Care Team. There will be one training session of about an hour on a Saturday morning and then there are no meetings to attend! Care Teams will be forming in Lent. We will have signups to join the program before and after services at both the chapel and the church. This is a wonderful expression of our mission to walk in Christ’s love and forgiveness through service to the community.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

We seek to offer a welcoming environment
where individuals can come together
to walk in Christ’s love and forgiveness
through worship, prayer, and service to the community.

We ask that you prayerfully read and consider this statement of purpose. We feel that this statement reflects our history, who we are now, and who God is calling us to be. The process of discerning our mission is ongoing and we present this statement to broaden the conversation to include all the members of our congregation.

Over the next several months the mission discernment team will offer several ways to actively work with this statement. We are asking you to live with this statement for a year while we deepen and refine our understanding of our mission. At the end of this year, or early next year, we will engage in a new process to discover how our mission has grown or changed and to create a new statement that reflects our growth.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

There is new growth, new hope and new life at St. Dunstan’s Church, and it’s not just the trees. Our chapel congregation is blooming too! When I arrived two years ago, this service was consistently small and the ministers did everything. We did the readings, brought the gifts forward at the offertory, and said the prayers. Some time last year I began to ask the participants to bring forward the offering plates, bread and wine. Later, one of the members offered to pray for us. Then another volunteered to help read lessons. In the fall I asked if anyone would like to help with the Altar Guild. Three people volunteered on the spot and before I knew it (literally!) they were meeting to set up their team.

The most wonderful new development started four weeks ago. I came through the doors of the chapel before the service and saw that a table had been set up in the entry way with coffee and treats! Yes, the 8:00am Chapel Service now has a coffee hour! We have even run out of bulletins twice in the past month.

God is at work at St. Dunstan’s Church. Like the early buds on our trees, signs of new life are appearing. At the Chapel, in our Choir, in our Sunday School, and in our worship blossoms are appearing. New growth, new hope and new life are all around us. We are growing in God’s abundance.

(The 8:00 AM service uses Rite 1, with the King James language. The traditional language is perfect for the traditional charm and beauty of the Henry Memorial Chapel. We have music in the first half of the service (up to the Gospel). This service is warm and friendly and we consistently finish in 50 minutes. See the Finding Us page of our web site for driving directions.)

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

Maybe you have a reason why you don’t think Jesus could be saying that YOU are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. You may read this and think, “David is our minister. He is supposed to say things like that.” We seem to have trouble accepting that Jesus is speaking about each and every one of us in these verses.

I’ll be preaching about this reading on Sunday, but I need your help. I’d like us to try an exercise together that may help us hear Jesus’ words as personal blessing and sending. This will be sort of like the Lazarus $1.00 Project last summer in which I invited you to take $1 and find a way to make a difference in someone else’s life. This week, I invite you to share a story about a time when God worked through you to help someone else. The stories we heard from the Lazarus project are a great example of what I am looking for here. People took the $1 as a challenge to see the needs of others and then do something to help. We heard of a meal purchased for a homeless man. We heard of people who took the $1 and added money of their own because they saw a real need that they could do something about.

You have helped a friend. You have comforted someone you love that is suffering. You have helped strangers. Maybe you saw someone trying to push his car out of an intersection and you went to help. Maybe you were a reading tutor or a mentor to a young person. Maybe you did something big, like volunteering your time or contributing to a cause you believe in. Or perhaps you did something more modest, like buying a Fair Change newspaper from the lady outside the grocery store or visiting someone who is lonely.

The challenge is to come up with one story where you did something to help someone else. Then, tell me how God worked through you in that story. If you just can’t bring yourself to tell a story about God working through you, try starting with a story about God working through someone you know. You can share your stories with me by posting a comment at my blog (see link below) or you can send me an email, or you could send me a note in the mail.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

Joan Baker has been a willing and enthusiastic leader in the areas of communications, Christian Education and Community Engagement. Joan attends our weekly staff meeting as the editor of the Highlights Newsletter. We have repeatedly turned to Joan for new graphics, for posters, and for photographs for bulletins, brochures, postcards and banners. She is always learning new skills and she has been a great contributor to the work of the vestry and this congregation.

Chris Johns was the leader of our communications committee and helped to get the new web site launched. Chris shows up. He is there to help with financial decisions and he is there to help move chairs. In several situations at vestry meetings Chris has been the one to help us find the best path forward. I appreciate his kindness, insight and commitment.

Glen Pacher stepped in to fill a two-year term as Junior Warden. Little did he know that our sexton would be retiring and we would not be hiring a replacement! Glen has done a great job keeping our facilities in repair. Our buildings, their systems, and the grounds are in better shape for Glen’s careful and energetic care. In the next year we are going to replace Glen with three people. That’s what it will take.

Mary Sweeney has shown herself to be tirelessly committed to the careful oversight of the St. Dunstan’s budget. Every month she goes through the Treasurer’s report with a fine-tooth comb, making sure we have not made any errors in accounting. This has been particularly important in the first year we work with a new accounting system. Finance is one of the key responsibilities of the vestry, and I thank her for her attentiveness.

St. Dunstan’s Church is growing and thriving because of the work of these people. Their faith, vision and energy have seen us through the transition to a new rector. We have just finished our second consecutive year in the black, and the first year in which we were able to pay all our bills on time throughout the year. We are seeing more visitors to our services and we have a dozen new members in just the past year. I thank Joan, Chris, Glen, Mary, and all the members of our vestry who make this possible as members of our vestry.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

When I worked in the software field I was a part of a large team that was building a very complex product. There were over 130 people working directly on the product and even more people in other groups who were contributing in their own way. Planning work with that many people for a product as large as ours was daunting. One day, as we started a planning meeting the head of our product group said, “We can never do as much in a year as we would like, but when we look back over three or five years we are astounded at how much we have accomplished.” P.G. Wodehouse expressed a very similar idea talking about writers: Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.[1]

In a month or so we will come to another anniversary. I will have been here at St. Dunstan’s Church as your rector for two years. At this very moment we are working hard to balance the 2011 budget. Our noses are down in the details of running this congregation. I would like to invite us to take a moment to take the long view. God is at work among us and the blessings are very evident.

Over the years St. Dunstan’s Church has excelled at many things. We are particularly good at throwing a dinner party. The Shrove Tuesday dinner is always well attended and great fun. We have Oktoberfest and other meals together as well. We are a congregation that loves to show our hospitality over a great meal. At St. Dunstan’s Church we create a safe place where individuals can come together. Over a plate of spaghetti or German food we experience connection to one another in a way that embodies the Eucharist. We come together to share in communion, both formally at the altar and informally over meals. Both of these strengthen and inspire us to go into our lives and our neighborhoods to be a blessing to others.

As we work out the final draft of our budget and then gather for our annual meeting on January 30^th, I pray that we will take a moment to appreciate all that we have done as a congregation over the years and all the blessings that God has given us. St. Dunstan’s has been a blessing to so many people in our 60 plus years. May God continue to bless our worship, prayer and service to our community so that we may be the heart and hands of Christ in the world.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

When we make a budget we are trying to anticipate and plan for the expenses of the year. We make educated predictions based on our priorities and our past experience. The budget then becomes a tool to help us manage our spending to best meet our goals and priorities. We can’t always anticipate all the expenses in a year. Sometimes we are hit with unanticipated problems, like the need to replace a water heater. Other times we find that to meet our goals we need to spend more money than we planned. The budget allows us to make these decisions wisely.

For the past two years we have been working on three goals. The first is to build a vibrant Sunday School and Youth Program. The second goal is to get to know one another and our neighbors. The third goal is to improve our communications, both internally to members and externally to our neighbors and to people who may be seeking God but are not here yet.

In the two years we have worked with these goals we have learned that to achieve them we will have to grow as a congregation. Through our signs and banners, our web site and mailings we are attracting and welcoming a growing number of visitors and new members. We have learned that to grow our Sunday School we need to reach out to new families, so our communications become even more important. We have learned that our music is a strength that helps us grow. We greatly value quality music in our worship and many of the new people who have come to worship with us have come because of the quality of our music program. We are continuing to learn new ways to reach out to people who are hungry to know God.

We are seeing many signs of vitality, yet we have more work to do on all of our goals. God has given us the gifts we need to do the work God has given us to do. Finishing 2010 in the black should give us courage and confidence as we take on the new challenges God will give us in 2011. I give thanks to God for the generosity of the members of this congregation and for the leadership of our vestry and staff.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall

Now we have just finished a year in which we paid all our bills, including our diocesan assessment, on time all year long. It looks like we are going to finish the year in the black (final figures aren’t all in yet but it looks good) and we are working on producing a balanced budget for 2011. We have a wonderful and gifted new music director, Tim Drewes, who is calling forth even more beautiful music from our choir, our organs, and our congregation. We have a great new administrator in Linda. She is a life-long Episcopalian and an experienced church administrator and she is helping us get our systems and procedures into great shape. Early last year the past assessments we owed were forgiven by the diocese as an investment in the growth and vitality of St. Dunstan’s Church.

As we go into the New Year we are working on projects and supporting new programs that will build and enhance our congregation. We have been blessed with many visitors and new members. I can think of 14 people just off the top of my head who have begun attending St. Dunstan’s since last summer. Two of them have joined the choir and three of them are attending our services at the Henry Chapel. I realized just a couple of weeks ago that we now have three families with 3-and-a-half-year-old little girls. We have truly been blessed in the last year.

The energy and time that we were investing at this time last year to hire a new musician and a new Parish Administrator can, this year, be spent on programs that will further build and enrich our congregation and our worship. We are launching an exciting project to create, as a congregation, with our own hands, a stained glass window for the window over the Guild Hall. (See the article below for more about this project.) We are launching an innovative program called Care Teams that will allow us to take care of one another in new and meaningful ways. We are hoping to have an evening study program for Lent. There is so much good work ahead!

That is not to say that we don’t face challenges. As you can see from our Sr. Warden’s letter this week, we still have some work to do on the budget for 2011. Whatever happens, with God’s help and your support we will again bring another balanced budget to the congregation at our next annual meeting on January 30^th.

I am very hopeful and enthusiastic about our next year together. God is certainly working among us at St. Dunstan’s. May God bless each of you, and continue to bless our congregation in the coming year.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. David Marshall