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“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children,
and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Ephesians 5:1-2 Dear friends, Generosity is a journey. It’s a practice that we learn and nurture within our hearts. It isn’t so obvious to most of us to give away what we have worked hard to acquire or to donate our precious time without compensation. It takes something as radical as Love to inspire us to share our time, talent, and treasure with others. This is a journey we make together, a Walk in Love. As we have lived with the Gospel of Mark this year in church, we have been brought into a world turned radically upside down. The laws and customs that had been in place for centuries were challenged, power and dominion have been questioned, and a culture hemmed in from all sides by oppression and subjugation desperately seeks a way forward. As it turns out, it is not politics or force that cause the change in society, but the simplest concept of Love. Jesus causes a revolution of the heart by daring to reach out to the outcast and teach others to do the same. He walks in love with the marginalized, the poor, and the sick, and brings us along with him on his journey. The most miraculous gift of Love is that actually, it was there within us all along. All we had to do was find it, tap into it, and begin growing it. And look what happened? We have learned to share, to give, to volunteer, to accompany others, to feed our neighbors, to pray, to visit, to strive for change. As our 2024-25 Annual Giving Campaign at Saint George’s kicks off toward our goal of $75,000, we will be intentionally raising up stories of how we Walk in Love with each other in our congregation. I invite you to share your stories of inspiration and connection with our shared ministry in this place and with each other. I invite you to Walk in Love. Faithfully, The Rev. Spencer D. Cantrell  Dear friends,
As our summer activities draw to a close, the school year resumes, and the promise of some lovely fall weather returns, churches too have the opportunity to catch the energy and possibility which is already in the air around us. With that in mind, I write to let you know that you are warmly invited to Saint George’s Church this fall as we begin our 2024-25 Program Year. On Sunday, September 22, we return to our regular weekly schedule of worship: Sundays: Morning Prayer at 8:30am Holy Eucharist at 10am Wednesdays: Morning Prayer at 10am (via Zoom) w/ Holy Days as announced This year, we welcome a new addition to our ministry team: our Seminarian, Jordan Wesley, who is a Master of Divinity candidate at General Theological Seminary and a Postulant for the Priesthood in the Diocese of New York. We are excited to begin a community Choir this season, which will begin singing for us on feast days and other days of importance in the church calendar. If you are a singer, please don’t be shy! Beginning in mid-October, we are blessed to take part in a pilot Food Pantry project in partnership with several local community organizations, which will begin operating on Fridays in the late afternoon out of the Community Room. Volunteers are very much welcome and needed. Adult Forum series and other educational opportunities also resume in October. Be sure to stay tuned for these as they announced. Much is in store for us here in Astoria in the coming year. I hope you’ll join us! Faithfully, Spencer+ Dear friends,
It could be said, without exaggeration, that some of the most important words we say in Church are “thank you”. We should say it often, and mean it. The word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving” in Greek. Thank you, indeed, for the many gifts of time, talent, and treasure which you share with our community here at St. George’s. The generosity of our church in each of these is truly remarkable. As we begin our annual pledge campaign this year, our theme is “Rooted in Abundance”. We are reminded that as the Church, we are a mighty forest made up of both ancient trunks and sprightly saplings, each of us contributing our gifts to a world that needs us. You will have heard the familiar expression “can’t see the forest for the trees” before. We most often use it to describe that occasion in which we lose sight of the big picture while focusing on the details. From my position, I often experience the blessing of being able to see the big picture of our congregation – the ministry we bring to our neighbors in Astoria, the impact we have on the different communities in which we participate, the ways that week after week we come together to celebrate the mysteries of our faith and to give praise to God. This is the forest. And, I also get to wander amongst the trees! From the small shoot reaching out from its seed and finding the sunlight, to the mightiest tree, standing tall, showing strength, offering sheltering love to those who need it. You are those trees, each drawing strength from Christ’s sacred meal on Sunday and showering the world with the love and grace you have come to know here. I am truly blessed that here in our congregation, in this first year as your new Priest-in-Charge, I am privileged to see both the forest and the trees. We know that trees in a forest create a great and varied root system, sharing and drawing strength from one another, and also creating space for all sorts of new and diverse life to grow in the spaces between. These networks, these roots of abundance, keep trees in place just as much as they free them to grow and share. Church is a lot like that. The whole system of entangled stories and relationships, past, present, and future, sustain and inspire us in our own life of faith, and create the opportunity for even more connections to grow and to help us thrive. I pray that as you consider how you might contribute financially to the ministry of St. George’s in the coming year, your discernment will be rooted in gratitude for this same great network of faith which we share. In Christ, Fr. Spencer+ |
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November 2024
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