16 Feb 2024

Worship and weekly news for February 18, 2024

by | posted in: News, Worship | 0

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:

  • The trip to the Walthers Museum leaves from St. Thomas’s at 9:30 a.m. this Saturday, February 17, 2024, to carpool to Baltimore. Everyone is invited! Please contact Fr. Howie or the office if you have any questions. There are seats available!
  • There will be a blood drive at St. Thomas’s on March 23, 2024 from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. Please let your friends and neighbors know about this opportunity to give blood and save a life.
  • Look for an email invitation to Lenten Evening Prayer this and every Sunday in Lent. The service is online only via YouTube, beginning at 7 p.m. We are all encouraged to participate in the live chat.
  • Are you enjoying Fr Howie’s Daily Lenten podcast? How can we continue to grow the Graceful Waves podcast ministry?

Our weekly Worship schedule

First Sunday in Lent This Sunday’s Schedule

Growth and Fellowship

  • Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. – lectionary bible study in the classroom.
  • Third Sundays at 9:15 a.m. – Novel Theology
  • 3rd Monday of the month – Hope Dining Room on Feb. 19, 2024
  • Last Sunday of the month – Family Church Sunday
  • Last Sunday of the month – Coffee and Fellowship between services

Other Parish Events

  • Sun., March 10, 2024 – Annual Parish Meeting and Daylight Savings Time
  • Sat., March 23, 2024 – Blood Drive
  • March 25-30, 2024 Holy Week
  • Sun., March 31, 2024 – Easter Sunday

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

16 Feb 2024

Newark Area Welfare Committee

by | posted in: Outreach, Service | 0

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.”

12 Feb 2024

Hope Dining Room volunteers needed Monday, February 19, 2024

by | posted in: Service | 0

Dear Families of St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas,

Next Monday, February 19, 2024, is our opportunity to serve at Hope Dining Room. Hope Dining Room where we serve “a midday hot meal with dignity, to those in need in the Greater Newark Delaware area.”

Guests at Hope are “dining in”, so we have 2 different short shifts for which you can volunteer. The setup and cooking shift goes from 10 – 11:45 a.m. The serving and cleanup shift goes from 11:45 – 1:30 p.m.

If you’d like to help, please bring a ball cap and an apron. We would LOVE to see you! All of this takes place at Kingswood Methodist Church kitchen on Marrows Road in Brookside Park. It is a team effort, lots of fun and it makes you feel so good to feed people who really appreciate it.

Please volunteer for the things we need for the meal and to volunteer.

If you are donating one of those items, THANK YOU! You can bring it to St. Thomas’s, Monday – Thursday from 9 – noon, OR when you come to church on Sunday! Please put it in the kitchen and mark it for “HOPE DINING ROOM”.  If that doesn’t fit into your schedule, give me a call, text or email and I will pick it up at your house.

MANY Blessings to you ALL,
Madeline Johnson
mad1240@comcast.net

9 Feb 2024

Worship and weekly news for February 11, 2024

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Hello faith family! This is the Last Sunday after Epiphany – February 11, 2024, Year B.

This week, we celebrate Absalom Jones, who was from Delaware! He is also featured in our St Thomas Pilgrimage Windows; can you find him this Sunday? He was an African-American abolitionist and clergyman who became prominent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Disappointed at the racial discrimination he experienced in a local Methodist church, he founded the Free African Society with Richard Allen in 1787, a mutual aid society for African Americans in the city. The Free African Society included many people newly freed from slavery after the American Revolutionary War. In 1794, Jones founded the first Black Episcopal congregation, and in 1802, he was the first African American to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the United States.

Weekly News

See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter. See info on our Annual Parish Meeting.

Last Sunday after EpiphanyOur weekly Worship schedule

This Sunday’s Schedule

Growth and Fellowship

  • Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. – lectionary bible study in the classroom.
  • Third Sundays at 9:15 a.m. – Novel Theology
  • 3rd Monday of the month – Hope Dining Room on Jan. 15, 2024
  • Last Sunday of the month – Family Church Sunday
  • Last Sunday of the month – Coffee and Fellowship between services

Other Parish Events

  • Tue., Feb. 13, 2024 – Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner
  • Wed., Feb. 14, 2024 – Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday
  • Sun., March 10, 2024 – Annual Meeting and Daylight Savings Time
  • March 25-30, 2024 Holy Week
  • Sun., March 31, 2024 – Easter Sunday

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

8 Feb 2024

Graceful Waves Podcast 2024

by | posted in: Lent, News, Worship | 0

Podcasts are a multi-task friendly medium, allowing you to listen to them while doing other activities such as doing housework, driving, or taking a walk. You can pause if needed and restart when you are ready. This is also a great format for you to share messages with others, by utilizing the share button available on each episode.

You will find many of your favorite past sermons from Fr. Howie, Fr. Clay, and Deacon Sheila. Re-listening can help you to find additional meaning and understanding and pick up details that you may have missed the first time around. Coming very soon, our daily Lenten Devotionals will be available through this podcast (as well as on YouTube). What else do you think that we should add? Please share your suggestions on how we can grow this ministry.

Our exciting new podcast is available on many platforms. Please see the links below and choose your favorite
Amazon/Audible
iHeartRadio
Spotify
Podchaser

Here are PodBean step-by-step instructions to follow Graceful Waves. If you are not a regular podcast consumer, subscribe to Podbean today to follow “Graceful Waves”! It is completely free.

Kind Regards,
Cana Hartman, Parish Administrator
StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com or (302) 368-4644

Here are the daily Lenten 2024 podcasts:
Week 1: Feb. 14, Feb. 15, Feb. 16, Feb. 17,
Week 2: Feb. 18, Feb. 19, Feb. 20, Feb. 21, Feb. 22, Feb. 23, Feb. 24
Week 3: Feb. 25, Feb. 26, Feb. 27, Feb. 28, Feb. 29, March 1, March 2
Week 4: March 3, March 4, March 5, March 6, March 7, March 8, March 9
Week 5: March 10, March 11, March 12, March 13, March 14, March 15, March 16
Week 6: March 17, March 18, March 19, March 20, March 21, March 22, March 23
Week 7: March 24, March 25, March 26, March 27, March 28, March 29, March 30

5 Feb 2024

Black History Month 2024

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Each day this month, we will hear from African-American theologians (and one African!),past and contemporary. 

Which of these voices do you hear speaking about your own experience? 
Which are calling you to a new vision of God’s plan for humanity? 
And who should we hear more from? 

God’s peace to you today and always.

Feb. 1, 2024
Feb. 2, 2024
Feb. 3, 2024
Feb. 4, 2024
Feb. 5, 2024
Feb. 6, 2024
Feb. 7, 2024
Feb. 8, 2024
Feb. 9, 2024
Feb. 10, 2024
Feb. 11, 2024
Feb. 12, 2024
Feb. 13, 2024
Feb 14, 2024
Feb. 15, 2024
Feb. 16, 2024
Feb. 17, 2024
Feb. 18, 2024
Feb. 19, 2024
Feb. 20, 2024
Feb. 21, 2024
Feb. 22, 2024
Feb. 23, 2024
Feb. 24, 2024
Feb. 25, 2024
Feb. 26, 2024
Feb. 27, 2024
Feb. 28, 2024
Feb. 29, 2024

5 Feb 2024

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner February 2024

by | posted in: News | 0

Pancake DinnerPlease join us on February 13, 2024 at 5:30 p.m. for a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner preceding Ash Wednesday.

Eating starts at 5:30 p.m. But, the preliminary work starts at 4 p.m.

We need help pulling it together and here’s a Sign Up Genius for you to sign up for things we need help with. Feel free to sign up for more than one task. But, just one is just fine, too.

As always, you can call me to tell me what you would like to do to help if you are uncomfortable using the Sign Up Genius (SUG).

Thank you! You are welcome to bring your friends and neighbors!

Sally Price

18 Jan 2024

Worship and weekly news for January 21, 2024

by | posted in: News, Worship | 0

Hello faith family! This is the Third Sunday after Epiphany – January 21, 2024, Year B. This week, we celebrate Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion, on 25 January 1944. In 1931, Florence Li was present at the ordination of Deaconess Lucy Vincent at St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong when the preacher had asked for women to give their lives to work for Christian ministry.

Weekly News

See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter. See info on our Annual Parish Meeting and the Adult Education Series – The Rule of Saint Benedict.

Our weekly Worship schedule

Third Sunday after EpiphanyThis Sunday’s Schedule

Growth and Fellowship

  • Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. – lectionary bible study in the classroom.
  • Third Sundays at 9:15 a.m. – Novel Theology
  • 3rd Monday of the month – Hope Dining Room on Jan. 15, 2024
  • Last Sunday of the month – Family Church Sunday
  • Last Sunday of the month – Coffee and Fellowship between services

Other Parish Events

  • Sun., Jan. 28, 2024 at 9:15 a.m. – Novel Theology
  • Wed., Feb. 14, 2024 – Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday
  • Sun., March 10, 2024 – Annual Meeting and Daylight Savings Time
  • March 25-30, 2024 Holy Week
  • Sun., March 31, 2024 – Easter Sunday

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

14 Jan 2024

Adult Education Series – The Rule of Saint Benedict

by | posted in: Adult Education | 0

The Rule of Saint Benedict series will be held on January 14, 21, 28th, and February 4, 2024 from 9-10 a.m.

In the 6th Century, Benedict of Nursia founded a religious community and wrote for it set of guidelines on how Christians (monks in his case) ought to live a godly and peaceable life together, “The Rule of St Benedict.”

It strikes a balance between the needs and goals of the individual and the community, and is known especially for its emphasis on moderation in all things. In 15 centuries since it was written, it has influenced the lives of countless Christians, those living in religious communities and those living in the secular world.

Join us as we read “Rule”, as it was at its birth and as it is lived today. For source material, we will draw on the Rule as originally written and on “St Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living,” by Jane Tomaine (an Episcopal priest).Whenever possible, we will offer all our programs in person and virtually. Please make plans to attend in whatever format best fits your circumstances.

Please email the office if you need a zoom link: StThomassOffice@googlegroups.com

See our brochure for Offerings for the 2023-2024 Christian Education Season.

12 Jan 2024

Worship and weekly news for January 14, 2024

by | posted in: News, Worship | 0

Hello faith family! This is the Second Sunday after Epiphany – January 14, 2024, Year B. This week, we celebrate Julia Chester Emery. She was the National Secretary of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Board of Missions for forty years, from 1876 to 1916. The Episcopal Church calendar honors her with a feast on January 9. During her four decades as National Secretary, a position she first held at age 24, Julia visited every diocese in the United States, coordinating and encouraging work in support of missions. During her four decades as National Secretary, a position she first held at age 24, Julia visited every diocese in the United States, coordinating and encouraging work in support of missions. The United Thank Offering continues to this day and collects and gives away over $1 million annually.

Weekly News

See our Carpenter’s Helper Weekly Newsletter. See info on our Annual Parish Meeting and the Adult Education Series – The Rule of Saint Benedict.

Our weekly Worship schedule

This Sunday’s Schedule

Growth and Fellowship

  • Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. – lectionary bible study in the classroom.
  • Third Sundays at 9:15 a.m. – Novel Theology
  • 3rd Monday of the month – Hope Dining Room on Jan. 15, 2024
  • Last Sunday of the month – Family Church Sunday
  • Last Sunday of the month – Coffee and Fellowship between services

Other Parish Events

  • Wed., Feb. 14, 2024 – Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday
  • Sun., March 10, 2024 – Annual Meeting and Daylight Savings Time
  • March 25-30, 2024 Holy Week
  • Sun., March 31, 2024 – Easter Sunday

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