
Spring Forward! The time changes to Daylight Savings this Saturday night. Please remember to set your clocks ahead one hour before you go to bed so we can see you in church on Sunday morning!
Lent is the time when most Christians want to engage in some further spiritual practice or discipline. Private Confession is a practice that is especially appropriate during the Lenten season. In the Episcopal Church there is a saying about private confession: “All may, some should, none must.” If making a private confession during Lent is part of your spiritual practice, or if you feel this would be helpful to you, please contact Mother Vicki to arrange an appointment.
Please take a look at the announcements below, especially:
- Family Promise Homeless Shelter (Helping Hands)
- Mid-Lent Simnel Cake Bake-Off (Events)
- Evening Prayer (Worship)
- Cook Book Correction (Communications)
Mid-Lent Coffee Hour Bake-Off: Simnel Cake. Attention all bakers! For our Coffee Hour on 3/26 we are holding a bake-off, using recipes for Simnel Cake, the traditional English cake for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (aka Mid-Lent, Refreshment Sunday, Laetare Sunday, Mothering Sunday). Recipes and more info are available in the Narthex, along with a sign-up sheet to let us know you will be part of the fun. The congregation will be the judges during coffee hour. Ladies and gentlemen, start your ovens!
Save the Date! Spring Fish & Chips by Argyle of Kearny, April 27 – 5:30-7:30 pm.
LENT
Last Call: Pathways of Faith Coloring Evening, Wed. 3/15 – using a Biblically-themed coloring book published by Forward Movement, we’ll spend a reflective evening in the Church – 7:30 – 9 pm.*
Pilgrim, a Course for the Christian Journey: The Commandments. Monday nights at 7 pm, six sessions,in the Rath House. This discussion group is a great way to learn about the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ teaching about them, and putting our faith into daily action.*
“The Road to Character” Book Discussion, Wed. 3/29, 4/5. Join us for this 2-part discussion of David Brooks’ important book (available through the library or Amazon). It highlights a variety of different notable people and the way they developed traits such as honesty, goodness, altruism, loyalty and faith.7:30- 9 pm in the Rath House.*
*There are sign-up sheets for these events in the Narthex.
WORSHIP
Evening Prayer, Mondays, 6 pm in the Church during Lent. Stop in on your way home from work and have a peaceful half hour with God and others.
CHRISTIAN FORMATION
Coloring Insert – in your bulletin this Sunday there will be a meditation page for you to color, and some questions for you to think and pray about. Here’s what you can do with it: take the page home; fill in the blanks/answer the questions; color it as you please; bring it back to church and drop it in the collection plate; feel free to make a copy first and put it on your bathroom mirror, fridge, bulletin board, etc. Here’s what we will do with them: when you return your colored-in page (unsigned), we’ll post a collection of them on a board in the Narthex. It’s a way to learn from each other’s thoughts, hopes, and prayers.
Bible Study – Wed. at 10:15 am, in the Rath House. We are reading through the Book of Acts; this week, 3/15, we’ll discuss Chapter 25. Newcomers welcome!
HELPING HANDS
Family Promise Homeless Shelter, Monday, March 27 is our turn to serve at the shelter program when it is here in town at Trinity House of the Shrine of St. Joseph in Stirling. We need volunteers to cook and deliver portions of the dinner, act as greeters, and sleep overnight to be on duty. There will be 15 guests in the program next week, and the menu is Ham & Macaroni and Cheese, Vegetable, Starch, Chicken Nuggets (or anything more child friendly), Salad, Dessert-- Cookies, Cupcakes or Dessert Bars, Fruit. Your efforts will help support these families as they are getting back on their feet. Questions? Speak to coordinators Afsaneh Thursfield & Kathy Pfeil, or e-mail the parish office.
Our Next Night to Make Sleeping Mats for Homeless is Wednesday, April 19 at 7:30 pm in the Parish Hall. We crochet mats out of “plarn” (plastic bag yarn). The mats are distributed in NYC and Newark through the Bridges program in Summit. Friends and neighbors are invited to be part of the effort and fellowship Questions? Speak to Susie Harris.
Winter Soup is available to take home after Church on Sundays during coffee hour ($5 quart/$3 pint – frozen). It is also available to take to sick or shut-in parishioners. If you buy soup, please write your name on the sheet posted on the Parish Hall fridge, and leave your payment into the box in the freezer. Thanks.
Twelve Baskets Food Ministry - We have received a $500 cash donation for our food ministry from Shop-Rite as part of their Partners in Caring program. This is in addition to their donation to our Community FoodBank account. Thank you, Shop-Rite for your support and recognition of our work to address hunger in our community!
COMMUNICATIONS
Cook Book Correction We’ve discovered a missing item form our parish cook book. Under the “Breads” section, Sue Traub’s recipe for Irish Soda Bread needs two (2) eggs. Please make this correction in your book. We’re sorry for any inconvenience. But even more important...try out the recipe for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s delicious!
“This Week@All Saints’” is our parish e-letter. Each Thursday a short e-mail is sent with a link to the newsletter page on our parish website. Please be sure to take a look. And if you are not already receiving our parish e-mail, please send a request to allstsmill@hotmail.com.
Connect with us on Facebook at “All Saints' Episcopal/Anglican Church, Millington.” Why have we added “Anglican” to our FB name? Bishop Beckwith is encouraging all parishes to include this so Christians from other parts of the Anglican Communion where the term Episcopal is not familiar can find us when they come to our diocese.
PARISH CALENDAR
3/13 Evening Prayer Church, 6:00 pm
Pilgrim Group Rath House, 7:00 pm
3/14 Finance Committee Rath House, 7:30 pm
3/15 Bible Study Rath House, 10:15 am
Coloring Evening Church, 7:30 pm
3/16 Holy Eucharist Church, 7:00 am
Small Saints’& Jr Choirs Choir Room, 5:15 pm
Adult Choir Choir Room, 7:30 pm
For a full schedule of our buildings check the website calendar www.allsaintsmillington.org.
CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
Confession: Public & Private “In our relationship with God we are always responding. God is wooing us, luring us, loving us into a more beloved relationship. How God will break through to us will oftentimes be through something that is broken within us. Our break will be God’s “break,” God’s breakthrough, God’s point of entry into our lives.
Any awareness of a need to confess our sin is already an act of preparation, God’s preparatory work in our souls. If you are sensing a need to make a confession of sin – and the fact that you are reading this suggests that, perhaps, you are – then trust that this is already a response to God’s initiative, and that is good news. God’s invitation is for you to be reconciled to God, to your own self, and to others. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a powerful means of grace available to you.” ~ Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE (Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal men’s order in Cambridge, MA). Here’s a link to the full article: http://ssje.org/ssje/2014/01/17/reconciliation-preparing-for-the-sacrament-br-curtis-almquist/
And a link to a setting of the Kyrie (Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy) from the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986), sung by the British chamber choir Ecclesia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHoKnEbujTc :
Blessings, Vicki+