Thanks to all of you who have been donating items to Blue Hen Bounty (BHB) food pantry provided by Episcopal Camus Ministry (ECM) for University of Delaware students who are food insecure and cannot provide ample nutrition for themselves. Below are Spring 2024 hours.
Hello faith family! This is the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 10, 2024, Year B.
Weekly News
See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter and info on our Annual Parish Meeting this Sunday, March 10, 2024. Other news items:
Our weekly Worship schedule
This Sunday’s Schedule
Growth and Fellowship
Other Parish Events
The church is aware that some of its members are struggling to make ends meet. If you are in this situation, please let the clergy know of your needs, pray for the church, and feel no guilt about your giving. But if you are able to give, options for giving include mailing a check to our church or online giving.
If you have anything to add to the Parish calendar or the Carpenter’s Helper newsletter, please email the office at StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com.
To see worship, events or news, see our website, FaceBook, InstaGram, YouTube, or the posted events on the board next to the name tag station. Recent Newsletters, Sermons, or Announcements are also available.
Regardless of whether we are together in-person or virtually, we are connected by the Holy Spirit: Always together; never apart…maybe in distance, but never in heart.
Kind Regards,
Cana Hartman, Parish Administrator
StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com or (302) 368-4644
Hello faith family! This is the Third Sunday in Lent – March 3, 2024, Year B. This week, we celebrate Charles Wesley, an English leader of the Methodist movement. Wesley was a prolific hymnwriter who wrote over 6,500 hymns during his lifetime. His works include “And Can It Be“, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”, the carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, and “Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending”. He is also pictured in our St Thomas’s stained glass windows. Can you find him this Sunday?
Weekly News
See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter and info on our Annual Parish Meeting on next Sunday, March 10, 2024. Other news items:
Our weekly Worship schedule
This Sunday’s Schedule
Growth and Fellowship
Other Parish Events
The church is aware that some of its members are struggling to make ends meet. If you are in this situation, please let the clergy know of your needs, pray for the church, and feel no guilt about your giving. But if you are able to give, options for giving include mailing a check to our church or online giving.
If you have anything to add to the Parish calendar or the Carpenter’s Helper newsletter, please email the office at StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com.
To see worship, events or news, see our website, FaceBook, InstaGram, YouTube, or the posted events on the board next to the name tag station. Recent Newsletters, Sermons, or Announcements are also available.
Regardless of whether we are together in-person or virtually, we are connected by the Holy Spirit: Always together; never apart…maybe in distance, but never in heart.
Kind Regards,
Cana Hartman, Parish Administrator
StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com or (302) 368-4644
St. Thomas’s Children’s Ministries are offering a Holy Week inspired event for children ages 4-11 and their families on Good Friday, March 29, 2024. This Good Friday Gathering for Children and Families will be held from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and will include a snack.
I hope that many of our families with children will include this event in their Holy Week calendar. It will be a great way to allow your children to fellowship with friends and to experience Holy Week with developmentally appropriate activities.
Please feel free to share this information with friends who do not attend St. Thomas’s and with other churches with whom you may be affiliated. We love visitors!! Anyone can RSVP online or by contacting me via email or phone.
ALSO, If you are a teen or adult who is willing to help with activities, that would be great. Please let me know that too.
Blessings,
Belinda Young-Payne (belmar43@aol.com)
Poets’ Corner Reading Series presents Marceline White on Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, 276 S College Avenue, Newark, Delaware. This event is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’s Parish and the University of Delaware Department of English.
A two-time Pushcart Prize and recent Best of the Net nominee, Marceline’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Culinary Origami, The Heartland Review, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, Little Patuxent Review, Gingerbread House, The Free State Review, and The Loch Raven Review and others. She was a recipient of an Aspen Words Fellowship in 2023. When not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats, posting too many pictures of her garden, and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the party. In her spare time, she’s an award-winning consumer advocate and has written and advocated on gender and trade. Read more at www.marcelinewhitewrites.com.
ALL ARE WELCOME. Open to the public.
Hello faith family! This is the Second Sunday in Lent – February 25, 2024, Year B. This week, we celebrate George Herbert: poet and priest. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him “a most glorious saint and seer”.
Weekly News
See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter. See info on our Annual Parish Meeting on March 10, 2024. See other news items:
Our weekly Worship schedule
This Sunday’s Schedule
Growth and Fellowship
Other Parish Events
The church is aware that some of its members are struggling to make ends meet. If you are in this situation, please let the clergy know of your needs, pray for the church, and feel no guilt about your giving. But if you are able to give, options for giving include mailing a check to our church or online giving.
If you have anything to add to the Parish calendar or the Carpenter’s Helper newsletter, please email the office at StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com.
To see worship, events or news, see our website, FaceBook, InstaGram, YouTube, or the posted events on the board next to the name tag station. Recent Newsletters, Sermons, or Announcements are also available.
Regardless of whether we are together in-person or virtually, we are connected by the Holy Spirit: Always together; never apart…maybe in distance, but never in heart.
Kind Regards,
Cana Hartman, Parish Administrator
StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com or (302) 368-4644
The 2 Saints Book Discussion Group will be reading, How To Know A Person by David Brooks. Our discussion dates are Mar 6 at 10 a.m., Mar 20 at 10 a.m. and April 3, 2024 at 10 a.m.
Two Saints Readers is the book discussion group for Sts. Thomas’s and Nicholas parishioners. Everyone is welcome to attend. This is another way the extended families of St. Nicholas and St. Thomas’s can stay in touch and get to know each other too! This is a joint book reading with discussion.
The book is divided into 3 Parts, each about 70 pages apiece, so we will do 1 part at each discussion. We do these discussions by Zoom, so if you are at St. Nicholas, please let Cana Hartman (cana.hartman@gmail.com) know and she will send you the Zoom link. It will go out to all in the St. Thomas’s Google Group as well.
Many Blessings,
Madeline Johnson
St. Thomas’s will offer Evening Prayer each Sunday in Lent 2024. Tune in at 7 p.m. on YouTube and participate in the live chat. Can’t make it at 7 p.m.; these services will be available to view at any time in the future.
Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024
Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Hello faith family! This is the First Sunday in Lent – February 18, 2024, Year B.
This week, we celebrate Frederick Douglass, who was was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He became the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.
Douglass believed in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as, after breaking with William Lloyd Garrison, in the anti-slavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto “No Union with Slaveholders”, criticized Douglass’s willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
Weekly News
See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter. See info on our Annual Parish Meeting on March 10, 2024. See other news items:
Our weekly Worship schedule
This Sunday’s Schedule
Growth and Fellowship
Other Parish Events
The church is aware that some of its members are struggling to make ends meet. If you are in this situation, please let the clergy know of your needs, pray for the church, and feel no guilt about your giving. But if you are able to give, options for giving include mailing a check to our church or online giving.
If you have anything to add to the Parish calendar or the Carpenter’s Helper newsletter, please email the office at StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com.
To see worship, events or news, see our website, FaceBook, InstaGram, YouTube, or the posted events on the board next to the name tag station. Recent Newsletters, Sermons, or Announcements are also available.
Regardless of whether we are together in-person or virtually, we are connected by the Holy Spirit: Always together; never apart…maybe in distance, but never in heart.
Kind Regards,
Cana Hartman, Parish Administrator
StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com or (302) 368-4644
There is a big new nonperishable-food collection basket in the Great Hall. To understand the importance of keeping this basket full, see if you know the answer to this question:
“Who is poor enough to qualify for food assistance in Newark, Delaware?”
St. Thomas’s “Blue Hen Bounty” food pantry, with its focus on college students, says simply that if you need food, you can come here when the pantry is open and take what you need. Likewise, Newark’s churches invite hungry people to receive, without demonstrating a government-certified need, a weekday hot meal at Hope Dining Room. People without housing can receive food from the Newark Empowerment Center.
However, most Newark families and individuals who live in poverty depend for food on SNAP (“Food Stamps”), a monthly credit used to purchase groceries. Each person’s eligibility is established by officials at the Hudson State Service Center who review the applicants’ income tax returns to see how much they are earning in proportion to their family size. If their qualify for Food Stamps, they qualify also for Food Bank pantries that are open for one day toward the end of each month, when most people’s Food Stamp money has run out. Poor people must prove their eligibility annually to continue receiving food assistance.
Now, what happens when an emergency—illness, injury, a layoff—occurs to a family provider who already depends on Food Stamps? This is when the Newark Area Welfare Committee comes in. The Hudson Center will refer you to the NAWC. To receive help from the NAWC, you must prove, through the Hudson Center, that, with an interruption to your income, you are the poorest of the City of Newark’s poor.
St. Thomas’s, along the rest of Newark’s churches, has contributed food to the NAWC for many decades—probably since 1920. Parishioners have brought nonperishables to church on Sundays and placed them in a wicker basket located in the narthex on the way into the nave of the church. Volunteers from the parish then take the weekly donation over to the NAWC food pantry, which is housed at the Methodist Church on Main Street.
In the past year, there have been almost no contributions to the old wicker basket in the narthex, which is hard to see in its old location. So, it has been replaced with a big white basket in the Great Hall. Our parish volunteers, Jack and Marge O’Donnell, are ready to deliver your donations to the NAWC each week. If you are able, please bring to the new basket extra food items you pick up when shopping for your own groceries.
“Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these . . . you have done it to me.”