Weekly Worship Service
Sunday, April 25, 2021
Worship via Zoom —10:00am

This will be the fourth Sunday of Easter. You’ll notice right away that there
are some things missing from this service. There isn’t a First Reading or a Second
Message…there isn’t spiritual communion…there is less music. Yes, all of this is
intentional, just for this Sunday, because it’s Annual Meeting Sunday at St. Mary’s
and there’s so much going on and so, so, so much you’ll want to hear about. The
service has been shortened to allow as much time as possible to hear from Jim
DeLuca and Caroline Kaker, our Wardens (during the sermon time), and from
others during the Annual Meeting.

• Psalm 23 (sung)—“The Lord is my shepherd…”
• Gospel: John 10:11-18—I am the Good Shepherd

For the Zoom worship service on April 25, 2021 Click HERE
If asked for a passcode, enter 657179
If asked for a meeting ID, enter 915 5954 9145

To join by cell phone only (voice only, no video),
call: 312-626-6799
Enter Meeting ID 915 5954 9145
If asked for a passcode, use 657179

For the Service Bulletin – Click HERE
For the Music Bulletin – Click HERE

Worship Team

Liturgy Matters at Saint Mary’s by the Rev. Susan M. Moss

Presiding Bishop Curry was invited to give a message to Minnesota at the ECMN Compline service on Tuesday night, April 20th.

Here’s the link to his powerful words in case you missed it.
https://www.facebook.com/healingourcity/posts/272469991193202

What’s New?

• To hear The Rev Susan Moss’ sermon from Sunday, April 18 Click HERE.
• To read the Second Message from last Sunday, Click HERE.
• If you have a hankering to put your thoughts about liturgy in the pot (on the Team, that is!), now is a good time to join the Worship Team. We’ll soon be planning Pentecost and then the long “Ordinary Times” season, running from May 30-November 21. All thoughts, all perspectives are welcome. We’re meeting about every other week. If you’re interested, Click HERE.

Feedback is welcome!
We welcome your feedback and recommendations about worship services.
Click HERE to give feedback. Thanks!

Hear Ye, hear ye…Come one, come all…Saint Mary’s Annual Meeting, April 25

What’s going on??? What’s so important?? What’s this all about?? Sunday, April 25, is Saint Mary’s Annual Meeting and this is an Annual Meeting you won’t want to miss! There is so much going on at Saint Mary’s these days that the Wardens will be using the sermon time to give the “State of the Church” message, and after the service the Annual Meeting will start. We’ll hear an up-date on the Search process, information about gathering in person, a report on Saint Mary’s finances, and elections for Vestry members and Wardens. Come at 10am for the worship service and stay for the Annual Meeting. See you Sunday!!! Oh, questions in advance are invited! What do you want to know about Saint Mary’s? About what’s going on? Submit your questions to the Wardens – Click HERE.

Join the Saint Mary’s Re-Gathering Team!

Are you looking forward to a time when we can once again gather in-person? Are you interested in being a part of a Team to help make that happen?

As we work towards approval from ECMN of our Saint Mary’s “Plan for Re-Opening for Physical Worship”, we also need to work out the internal logistics of holding in-person indoor and outdoor gatherings. We are looking to expand our Re-Gathering Team to include:

• Safety Trainer for all Volunteers and Building Users
• Volunteer coordinator(s)
• RSVP coordinator(s)
• Cleaning coordinator(s)
• Technology coordinator(s)

We are looking forward to creating a complete and vibrant Team to help make this happen. We would like to assemble this Team as soon as we can to be prepared when the time is right.

If you are interested in joining the Re-Gathering Team or have any questions, please email regathering@saintmarysepiscopal.org.

Now Easy Online Giving on Saint Mary’s Website

Now you can quickly and easily donate to Saint Mary’s online via credit or debit card, or by bank account! Our new, secure online e-giving program, established in conjunction with Vanco, is now available on the front page of the St. Mary’s website. Simply go to the website and click on “Contribute” in the heading or scroll down and click on “Give Online 2021 Stewardship” and you will be able to quickly make online donations. You can also use the following link: https://secure.myvanco.com/YNB0.

The Vanco e-giving service allows you to direct your giving to several different funds on either a one-time or recurring basis. One-time gifts involve three easy steps. If you want to establish recurring donations, such as weekly or monthly pledge donations to our general fund, you will need to set up an account through Vanco, which is also easy to do.

Credit and debit cards have a 2.75% administrative fee attached to each transaction, and payments via a bank account include a 1% fee. You can choose to cover these fees with your donation. Of course, you still have the option of mailing in your donations or setting up auto-pay through your bank, options which do not have administrative fees.

Following is a link (Click HERE) to instructions for donating through our new e-giving site, including screen shots and written instructions. Check out our giving site now on the Saint Mary’s website or at https://secure.myvanco.com/YNB0, and thanks for your donations, regardless of how you choose to give!

If you have questions or need more information, feel free to contact Rex Holzemer at rexaholzemer@gmail.com or 651-308-4895.

Pastoral Care

Pastoral Care Calendar for April 2021:

Compline (All Are Welcome)
Tuesday, April 27 and each Tuesdays following at 8:30pm, all are invited to pray Compline in our Zoom prayer room. We will use the Prayer Book. This is a brief form of the Liturgy of the Hours, prayed before bedtime. All are welcome. Contact Rev. Cindi for details / the link.
pastoralcare@saintmarysepiscopal.org

Healing Circle
Healing Circles help us step out of ordinary time into a safe and accepting environment in which each of us can explore our own healing. All are welcome; please contact Rev. Cindi for more information and to get the link.

Join our Prayer Chain:
Pray with and for your friends and family at Saint Mary’s
Please contact Rev. Cindi if you would like to be included among those praying for
the needs of St. Marians or if you have a prayer request. (No meeting required)

For confidential prayer requests or to join any of these events:
Reach out to Reverend Cindi Brickson at
pastoralcare@saintmarysepiscopal.org for a Zoom Link

Warden Candidate – Brian Nerbonne

Name: Brian Nerbonne

Position: Warden – 1 year term

My family and I have been coming to church at St. Mary’s for about 11 years. I am grateful for such a wonderful community to help raise our kids, Lucas and Clara, and for the good friends we have made here. I previously served a term on the vestry as Outreach Chair, and am now two years into a second stint on the vestry. I’ve been active in buildings and grounds, on the worship planning team, and I help with tech stuff for Sunday Zoom services. I have offered to spend my final year of my vestry term as warden, finishing Caroline Kaker’s term. I am excited about the future for St. Mary’s as we look to call our new rector and hopefully soon return to in-person worship. I look forward to being a part of shaping our bright future.

Vestry Candidate – Lisa Stratton

1. Name: Lisa Stratton

2. Which position are you interested in filling?  Vestry, 3-year term

3. Are you a member of Saint Mary’s?  Yes

4. Do you attend Saint Mary’s on a regular basis?  Yes

Why are you interested to serve our community by being elected to our warden / vestry?
I’ve been coming to St. Mary’s for about 18 years. St. Mary’s is the only church community where I’ve felt completely at home and I know we’ve been a church home for others who might not easily find such a welcoming church. I believe we have something very special that makes that true and I’d like to be part of our ongoing discernment of what that is and how we can best preserve and build upon it through another major transition.

Since December, I’ve been serving on the Worship Team that has been meeting weekly, and I’ve attended several of the monthly Vestry meetings since last fall, so I feel reasonably informed about the nature of the responsibility.

I hope to add to the mix of skills and talents on the vestry. As we go through a search process and the development of an employment contract, it could prove helpful to have someone with employment law knowledge participating. Service on several government task forces with stakeholders of divergent viewpoints that achieved consensus on policy recommendations gives me confidence that I’ll be able to work productively with the group toward shared outcomes that serve the whole church community.

When St. Mary’s was hosting three services, I attended the 9:00 service.

Which worship styles and liturgies nourish you and do you attend most often (please select / highlight):

– Services with much music drawn from various time-periods, cultures, and traditions.
– Modern and inclusive language.
– A balance of scripture and non-scriptural readings and inspiration.
– Liturgy reflecting the seasons and current events.
– Lay-led services with engaged discussion.
– Focus on justice and community service.
– Contemplative practices.

Vestry Candidate – Joe McManmon

1. Name:  Joe McManmon

2. Which position are you interested in filling?  Vestry, 3-year term

3. Are you a member of Saint Mary’s?  Yes and my family

4. Do you attend Saint Mary’s on a regular basis?  Yes

Why are you interested to serve our community by being elected to our warden / vestry?
In recent months, I have spent a lot of time discovering and verbalizing who we are as St Marians through the Search Committee. My perspectives are strongly influenced by my faith, my husband and our multi-racial child. I hold a strong desire to strengthen our community and help lead us through change, from Covid restrictions; online services; new priest; growing concern for equity, diversity & inclusion. I am excited for our growth while maintaining our history. I bring gifts of an open mind, analytical skills, listening, and organization.

When we were hosting three services, which service did you most frequently attend (7:45, 9:00, or 11:00)? I attended the 9AM.

Which worship styles and liturgies nourish you and do you attend most often (please select / highlight):
– Lay-led services
– Services with much music
– Contemporary

Vestry Candidate – Jennifer Wedel

‌1. Name:  Jennifer Wedel

2. Position?  Vestry, 3-year term

3. Member?  Yes

4. Attend regularly?  Yes

5. Why I am interested

I came to St. Mary’s at the invitation of Paulette Briese, who has been a family friend since forever. Paulette invited me to join the group creating the new 9am service to give the perspective of a “de-churched” person. The irony is — participating in that process “re-churched” me! I attended infrequently for a few years, and now I come almost every week (Zoom lets me come more often). I’ve run the dishwasher as part of the Newcomers group, my daughter and I have opened the door and said “hello” as folks come in, and I’ve been a verger — which I think of as operational support for a spiritual event. Most recently, I was loudly called to serve on our search committee. I live in Roseville with my elderly dad and 3rd grade daughter Caroline, who comes to church with me. She is usually rolling around on the rug with the younger kiddos. Paulette and Bruce are her godparents. A quick personal and professional bio: I grew up in the Twin Cities, then migrated to Northern California, where I spent 20 years before returning. I’m divorced, and most of my family is widely dispersed around the country. My professional path has been a winding and satisfying road: journalist, travel writer, editor, civil rights and economic justice lawyer, marketing writer, and now I am my own boss as a marketing strategist.

The gifts that I hope to bring to the vestry are:

• Via my service on the search committee, I have developed a deep and intimate understanding of our church community — as a whole.
• I am plain-spoken and I advocate for transparent communication and decision-making.
• I am a fan of the “disagree and then commit” framework for group work. This means — engage in healthy and strong debate, then make a decision, and support that decision without undercutting it.
• I believe that vision is useless without execution. I do have vision, certainly, but I’m prepared to roll up my sleeves and work.
• I’m at the expert level with regard to project planning and management.
• My friends say that I am kind, generous, and funny.
• I am vulnerable in my spirituality, and I am moved to tears even during dry committee meetings — because even dry committee work is to support our beloved community. At in-person church, I am usually the one dripping tears (literally) on the floor.
• I am loyal. The love and appreciation and protectiveness that I feel for St. Mary’s surprises me sometimes.
• My daughter and I both speak Spanish and have personal connections to Latinx immigrant communities in the North Metro

Participate in:

• Whatever needs doing, to be honest. Wherever there’s a need to fill.
• I feel an affinity with Communications and Newcomers and Families and The Future of Church

I will share perspectives from:

• the sandwich generation
• an elementary school parent
• a lifelong learner of social justice issues, especially racial justice and gender justice
• a de-churched and re-churched person, with a lot of healthy skepticism woven in with my faith
• newcomers to Minnesota

I am prepared to lead our community:

• I prefer to listen and learn and discern where I might best serve as a leader.

6. Services and worship styles

Before COVID, I attended the 9am service. In spirit, I attended the contemplative service, but the timing never worked. 🙂
Which worship styles and liturgies nourish you and do you attend
most often (please select / highlight):
– Morning prayer / noonday prayer / evening prayer / compline
– Contemplative
– Lay-led services
– Services without music
– Services with much music
– Smaller-group chapel, without music, with engaged discussion
– Contemporary
– Traditional, Rite I
– Traditional, Rite II
– High church with smells and bells
– Anything that provides eucharist
– Interfaith worship, or being a guest in another faith’s house of worship

Outreach Opportunity: The Performance Collective

www.cfpampls.com/collective

Bookkeeper needed (volunteer) for an emerging group of local artists who are reimagining sustainable art practice. There are deep, systemic inequities in how and for whom performance is made in our local community. The Collective is an inclusive group of Twin Cities artist-activists, longtime leaders of the local arts community who are connected to each other through an urgent desire to advance our capability to change the world. We hold decades of producing experience, with the artistry, the curiosity, and the commitment to justice that will shape a new creative ecosystem: that sustainably supports artists and their work; where artists share investment, resources, risk, and reward; while dismantling racist, patriarchal, oppressive structures that prevent all artists from exercising full agency. We strive to open any barriers to entry for audiences, so that all can experience new voices, new stories, and build new capacities for understanding and taking action in the world. A more equitable system of performance-making can lead our communities toward equity and justice for all.

In order to take our next steps, we need someone with basic bookkeeping skills to maintain a monthly balance sheet for us and make a brief monthly report. 3-5 hours/month. For more details Click HERE or email jennieward2@gmail.com.

Mission Area Gatherings

You (yes, you) are enthusiastically invited and encouraged to attend your upcoming Mission Area Gathering. One of the recurring themes that came out of the discernment committees is that mission areas are crucial are for conducting experiments in discipleship, innovation, vitality, and story-sharing. We are called to be Christians together, and that means getting outside our faith community’s walls and finding out what our nearest Episcopalian neighbors are up to.

East Metro: Saturday, May 8 at 1pm – Register Click HERE

Healing Our City

Every morning, 8:00am

A diverse group of faith leaders from across Minneapolis have created Healing Our City, a virtual prayer tent. You are invited to join the Zoom call each day at 8am for a 20-minute prayer for healing and reflection. Click HERE to learn more and join people of all faiths, across Minneapolis and beyond, in prayer for healing and solidarity.

Relationships & Common Good

As we move through this Eastertide season of reflection and preparation, the vestry wanted to share with you, our beloved community, that we are preparing to partner with you on answering the following question: What would church look like that serves the common good for our Saint Mary’s community and strengthens our relationships? Come Easter, the season of rebirth and new growth, we will bring suggestions on how we might start to engage in community conversations around this question. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or reflections, please share them with any member of the vestry, or email our wardens HERE.

Upcoming Events at Saint Mary’s
Opportunities for Worship, Education, Choir, & Meet Ups
for the week of 4/23 – 4/29

Sunday, April 25, 2021
Worship
10:00am
Link

Sunday, April 25, 2021
Saint Mary’s Annual Meeting following Church

Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Vestry Meeting
7:00pm
Contact Wardens for meeting link Click HERE

Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Compline
8:30pm
Contact Rev. Cindi for details and link Click HERE

Thursday, April 29, 2021
Saint Mary’s Dinner Group
Contact Julie Thomas for more information. Click HERE.

Thursday, April 29, 2021
Thursday Evening Contemplative Service Via Zoom
Led by Erika Scheurer and Anna Clark
7:00pm
Link

Sunday School Online:
MiaLisa McFarland Millares will send out an email with readings, activities,
and links for videos and discussions to all on our Constant Contact list.
If you receive this email, you are on the list.

Visit the Saint Mary’s Calendars page for more information on what is happening.