The State of St. Paul's

This week, I want to highlight the letter I wrote for our 2021 Annual Report—my first as your Priest-in-Charge—and presented last week at our Annual Meeting. Click here to download the 2021 Annual Report.

Our patron saint, the apostle Paul, wrote,

“If we see what we hope for, that isn't hope. Who hopes for what they already see?” (Romans 8:24).

Hope, it seems, only counts as hope if it's for something that doesn't quite exist yet.

We've needed a lot of this faith-driven hope in our time together in 2021.

Right now, our community's narrative is being written within the margins prescribed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The instabilities continue to shape our common life; vaccines, testing, and variants are top of mind more often than I would like. And some members have drifted away—become unseen—in the tumult of abnormal worship and intermittent programming. One of my hopes-for-the-unseen is that most of them will return when they have the bandwidth to do so. In addition to changes wrought by the pandemic, we also continued to adapt to ministry with a half-time Priest-in-Charge. Happily, our lay leaders are the heart of our ministry at St. Paul's, and our intrepid Morning Prayer officiants lead worship on the two Sundays per month when I'm not here.

However, even given the rollercoaster of COVID and a changing church, we took tremendous steps this year.

The people of St. Paul's bless and commission Rev. Helena as Priest-in-Charge in September 2021.

Over the course of the year, we worshiped: in our parking lot, sitting in lawn chairs; in our cars, drive-in style; on Zoom from our living rooms; and in the pews of our beautiful sanctuary. We were leaders in Southington's first celebration of LGBTQIA+ pride. We witnessed the ordination of a priest (me!) in St. Paul's sanctuary for the first time in memory. We trained up four lay preachers for Morning Prayer Sundays, under the expert guidance of Rev. Salin Low. We welcomed new families into membership at St. Paul's and recruited two of the youngest acolytes we've ever had. We celebrated the first same-sex wedding in St. Paul's history when I married Jen and Katie this November. We watched the children perform a Christmas pageant having done absolutely no rehearsal. We found out what it's like to have a Priest-in-Charge who's also a graduate student.

A couple other highlights and details are worth mentioning for posterity:

• Monthly drive-in Eucharists from January through Easter, with Zoom Morning Prayer on the other Sundays. Easter through the fall, 8am worship indoors and 10:15am outside in the parking lot. Inside for All Saints Day to end of the year

• Ash Wednesday on Zoom, with everyone picking up their ashes and imposing them on ourselves

• We confirmed 11 youth on three different days (5/23, 9/11, 9/18), in three different places (St. Paul’s, Trinity on the Green in New Haven, St. Andrew’s in Rocky Hill), by three different bishops (Laura Ahrens, Jim Curry, Drew Smith)

• 7 youth and 4 chaperones went on pilgrimage with Wonder Voyage to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming

• Free Little Pantry installed near our driveway under the leadership of Kate

• Women’s retreat at Camp Washington in October, led by me and Rev. Mo Lederman

• Successful and joyous pledge drive, with pledges holding steady from 2020 to 2021

Thank you so much to everyone who made this year possible, especially our employees Jenn, Matthew, and Jamie.

As a community, your flexibility, creativity, and resilience were evident at every turn. Serving as your Priest-in-Charge has, so far, been one of the great blessings of my life. I can't wait to see where the Spirit leads us in 2022.

Pageant... No Rehearsal!

When Mrs. Handi first suggested that we try a no-rehearsal pageant, I was intrigued. What would that look like?

I believe my exact words were, "It sounds chaotic. I'm in."

Well, anyone who stuck around after the 10:15 service got a real treat! We had nine wonderful volunteers who showed up that morning with no idea what part they would play and no review of the script. Thanks to Mrs. Handi and our other intrepid volunteers, they quickly become angels, shepherds, a sheep, Mary and Joseph, and (of course) the star of Bethlehem.

Our two narrators kept us on track as they told the story of how God took on human flesh and came into the world one dramatic night, long ago.

As a child, I loved being a sheep in my church's Christmas pageants, mostly because I was a huge animal lover. Once I got older and was pushed into a speaking part, I insisted on being a shepherd (I think the angel dresses were unacceptably girly to me).

I cherish the memories of many years of crawling down the aisle or standing on a small stage at the front of the church, and many more years of watching my siblings do the same. And I'm so glad that we're giving similarly joyful memories to the children and youth of St. Paul's.

Last year, as you may remember, we did a digital Christmas pageant (here's where you can find that, by the way). That was an incredibly fun project to bring us together when we couldn't gather in person at all. This year, it was nice to remember that, even though we're still taking many COVID precautions, we've come a long way.

Where Does Your Pledge Go?

A budget is a moral document. Whether it's our household budget, our personal budget, or our church's budget—the way we choose to spend money reflects our priorities.

2020-2021 Confirmation Class at Church by the Pond, Hartford

As you probably know, we're in the midst of our 2022 pledge drive. The Stewardship Committee wanted to figure out a way to show where your pledge dollars go, so we decided to create a narrative budget.

In this narrative budget, we pulled the actual dollar amounts for September 1, 2020 through August 31, 2021 and categorized them into four ways we do ministry here at St. Paul's:

Worship

Serve

Grow

Connect

2021 St Pauls Narrative Budget.pdf

Download PDF • 15.24MB

Download the full report above to see how your pledge dollars go toward supporting the ministry and mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Southington.

(A big thank you is due to Neil Walker, who did the most difficult work in the above report: the numbers!)

And remember, you can pledge online here. As of today, we're nearly halfway toward our goal.