Friends,

This is one of those weeks when I feel like I have five very different announcements/devotions to write for you that are time-sensitive, so I can’t really space them out. Instead of choosing one, I am just going to throw everything at you:

Changes

· Micah Brown has been our full-time intern for the past eight weeks, and this Sunday is his last Sunday in that role! He will continue to volunteer on Sundays, and many may not realize his role has shifted. I want to take a moment to tell you that he has done an incredible amount of work during the week over the past two months. I felt like it was my duty to ensure that he was constantly interrupted whenever he would do something like read or study Greek. We strung hundreds of feet of internet cable in the dark crawl spaces of the Church. He made pastoral visits, ran a Wednesday Night Block Party, led mid-week worship services, and always said yes to any request for assistance. Micah, your ministry will go far, and thank you for your ministry to St. Luke’s!

· A year ago, we hired Ara Stephens and Laura Moss to co-lead our education program, and today is Laura’s last day in the position! Ara will take on the additional duties and will work until at least the end of the calendar year. Laura has been a rock this past year. In January, we took a step back and tried something new with the youth group. Laura’s enthusiasm and creativity led to some hilarious activities that got this ministry up and running again. Thank you, Laura; we will miss you in staff meetings!

· Soon and very soon, we will have a whole new suite of Church software! You may have the ChurchLife App on your phone, which serves as our directory. This software is so old that many phones cannot even run it! This app, along with our other scheduling and giving software, will be replaced by a single app that will handle all of these roles. It might take some getting used to, but it should make everyone’s life much easier.

Upcoming Events:

· Feast Day of St. Susanna is this Sunday! This is equal parts sincere and silly. If you didn’t already know, Susans, Sues, and Suzannes do a disproportionate amount of ministry at St. Luke’s. The sincere part is our desire to have a Sue Appreciation Day. We had the idea of finding a similarly named Saint, and only had limited success. Saint Susanna is a Roman Catholic Saint, but is not recognized by the Anglican Communion, and she is widely considered to be “ahistorical”. This means that she probably did not exist. I thought observing St. Susanna’s feast day as a way of giving thanks to our Sues was appropriately silly. I hope you join us!

· As part of the St. Susanna celebrations, we will have a potluck following the 10:00 am service. The sign-up is in the e-news, and I hope you join us even if you forget to bring a dish! There is always extra at potlucks, and there needs to be a sermon about that. This potluck is not just a neat idea. Our senior warden, Chris Hanks, has been itching to try this for a while and for good reason. This could be our best chance to help save the world. Search for “potlucks can save America,” and you will find ample articles and podcasts from a variety of sources on this subject. Let’s see how this goes, and hopefully this can be a regular thing.

· Kick Off Sunday is August 30th! Our Sunday schedule will shift to accommodate Sunday school at 9:00 am, and the 5:00 pm silly service will return. I cannot wait to tell you about all of the great offerings we will have this coming year!

Unexpected and easy way you can help

· We are pretty good at attracting new members to St. Luke’s! The most important thing is to have a genuine, loving congregation that is rooted in Jesus’s teaching. Having a robust online presence also really helps. Our AV ministry is outstanding, and we are trying to keep our website dynamic, which helps push our website higher in search ratings. One area that we need improvement in is Google reviews. We have very few reviews and one very picky and obscure bad review. If you feel compelled, I would love it if you left us an honest Google review. You can follow this link to leave a review.

Thanks

· It has been nine days since my dog Vanilla Bean died. We adopted her at the very beginning of my priestly ministry and at the beginning of our marriage. I loved incorporating her into every aspect of my life, and I will miss her very much. It is clear that many of you recognized what a big deal this has been for our family, and your letters and encouragement have meant the world. Sometime in the next week, I will remove her from the staff page of the website. I consider myself to be a fairly mediocre writer, but I laugh every time I read her staff posting, and I want it to live on somewhere, so why not here:

Vanilla Bean, Head Liturgist and Day School Chaplain

Vanilla Bean is passionate about doing Church correctly, and lacks any sense of humor when it comes to worship and religion. The Episcopal Church welcomes you, but Vanilla Bean definitely does not if you do not kneel at the right time or say “Alleluia” during Lent.

In addition to increasing everyone’s anxiety on Sunday morning, Vanilla Bean leads chapel services with the Day School twice a week, where she instills the next generation in the finer points of High Church worship in between belly rubs.

In addition to being judgmental, Vanilla Bean enjoys chasing squirrels and her own tail.

-Nick