Advent is a season of waiting and

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2 A WORD FROM THE RECTOR Advent is a season of waiting and watching. We don't much like to wait. But waiting can be good for you. Even as these days turn from Advent, to Christmas, to Epiphany, as we walk into a new year through the busy-ness of the holidays, I invite you to slow down, to reflect, to breathe. In the stories of Mary and Joseph hearing from the angels, they are shocked. Mary and Joseph didn t plan for this. You don t plan for unexpected pregnancies. They eventually find the blessing in the disruption, but it takes awhile. It s a long road to Bethlehem. The stories we read this time of year can feel like a cascading avalanche of dashed hopes, of ruined expectations. We re not prepared for God s entrance into our world, into our lives. We never are. That s the beauty isn t it? God isn t waiting for you to be ready. God doesn t need you to have your act together. God is showing up whether or not you have the presents wrapped and the ham out of the oven. God is always already coming to you. Our work is deceptively simple. Get quiet. Wait for the Lord. Be still, as the psalms say. Be still and know that I am God. In the midst of all the rush, can you make room for stillness? In the midst of all our cultures preparing, can you quiet yourself down? Can you wait with hope? Many of you know that I spent my first years as a priest serving with a Spanish language congregation. Advent sermons are a little easier in Spanish. Wait and hope are the same word: Esperar. And the word rhymes well with another good word for Advent: Respirar. Breathe. Slow down and breathe. God is coming, ready or not. What a gift. I hope you will join us as we wait, watch, and celebrate this joyous season. Advent Blessings, The Rev. Mike Angell Rector LAUNDRY LOVE Holy Communion s Laundry Love initiative in St. Louis seeks to build community, make a difference, and help folks get their laundry done. On the third Tuesday of each month, our volunteers take over Classic Coin Laundry in UCity. We provide the quarters, the soap, food, childcare, and conversation. You do your laundry. We hope Laundry Love will help lighten the load for neighbors giving the individual or family the option to redirect funds toward food, medical, gas or transportation costs as well as school supplies and other basic, everyday necessities. All are welcome at Laundry Love. All are invited to help any third Tuesday at 6pm. Learn more about Laundry Love at our website: laundrylovestl.org 2

3 THE REV. CHESTER AND ELIZABETH HINES RETURN HOME TO HOLY COMMUNION On Dec. 10, 2017, The Rev. Chester Hines will join the clergy team as Deacon of Holy Communion. In addition to his service in this congregation, Chester serves as the chair of the Dismantling Racism Commission for the Diocese of Missouri. Chester will participate in leading worship and will help equip the Holy Communion congregation as we seek to expand our outreach and social justice work in the region. Chester is married to Elizabeth English Hines, a retired educator. They have twin sons, Christian and Christopher, both of whom live out of state. Chester s career has been largely focused on public service, and he currently serves as an Unemployment Insurance Auditor for Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Chester discerned his call to the Vocational Diaconate at Holy Communion and was ordained a deacon in November of He served for three years as Deacon at Christ Church Cathedral before coming home. WHAT IS A DEACON? In the Episcopal Church, deacons are a distinct order of ordained ministers. In some other Protestant denominations the title deacon applies to a member selected within a congregation to serve in a particular leadership role or on a board. The Episcopal Church tradition maintains a deacon is one of three distinct orders of ordained ministers (bishops, priests, deacons). Within the Anglican Communion (as in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches) an individual becomes a deacon by being ordained by a bishop after having completed a course of study and formation. Deacons are particularly charged at their ordination: to a special ministry of servanthood directly under your bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely. Deacons call us all into the ministry of service, of advocacy, and of justice. We are grateful that Chester is coming to invite us into that work. Please join us at services on December 10, Chester's first Sunday with us. Also plan to join us at the Advent Party that evening when we we celebrate the Hines family coming home! 3

4 There s a black granite wall in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, engraved with the names of more than 30,000 people who were killed or disappeared during that country s civil war from 1980 to We quietly walked the wall s length, pausing to ponder names and sometimes trace them with our fingertips. There must be walls like this all over the world, said Scott Ferguson, senior warden of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in University City. Eleven members of Holy Communion, along with the Rev. Beth Scriven and a friend from another church, spent a week in El Salvador this summer to learn about its past and present suffering as well as a human-rights group called Cristosal that s helping to pick up the pieces after the civil war. We came to understand that El Salvador s champions of human rights have much to teach us about working for justice in the United States. Like our country, El Salvador has an intolerable gap between rich and poor, only wider, as evidenced by the mansions EL SALVADOR UPDATE and corrugated tin shacks we saw. Police sometimes summarily execute real and suspected gang members just as government death squads during the civil war gunned down communists. People of color in the United States know a similar terror. While abortion rights are under attack here, abortion there is a crime that can land a woman in prison. LGBT rights in El Salvador lag far behind those gained to the north, an animus abetted by many church leaders. No matter where we live, our problems are universal, commented Karen Payne, a Holy Communion member making the trip. Cristosal, founded by Episcopal clergy in 2000, aims to empower ordinary citizens in El Salvador and neighboring countries to be their own architects and agents of change. One guiding principle that Cristosal executive director Noah Bullock shared with us is that human rights are best seen through the eyes of the victims. We learn what human rights are when they re violated, said Bullock. The Rev. Beth Scriven, and others from the pilgrimage at the Memorial Wall in San Salvador. 4

5 5 Our group in El Salvador in June. In 2018 Holy Communion plans host a conference with Cristosal focused on Human Rights in El Salvador and St. Louis. If you'd like to help, contact the rector at mangell@holycommunion.net Some of Cristosal s labors are in the courts, seeking protection for citizens uprooted from their homes by gang violence, and prosecuting government perpetuators of a civil war-era massacre in which some 1,000 civilians perished (our country supported the El Salvador government during the conflict). Cristosal also has advised the United Nations on addressing the plight of refugees. Its prime mission is helping others to secure their own rights. We visited a village where activists coached by Cristosal have organized soccer games for young people and persuaded gang members to paint over graffiti that once stigmatized their area to the point of losing government services. We learned how activists in one San Salvador neighborhood teach youth to play musical instruments, with bands becoming an alternative to gangs. In nearby Santa Lucia, graduates of Cristosal s Citizen Formation School are part of an effort to clean up a polluted river and win other environmental victories. The Holy Communion delegation, together with El Salvadoran social workers, lawyers, and students, studied how to do community organizing in Cristosal workshops. We split up to create mock human-rights campaigns, for example. One group devised a gun buy-back program that would reward participants with scholarships and internships. Much of our time was spent honoring Christians in El Salvador whose advocacy for human rights cost them their lives. We sat in the chapel where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in 1980 while performing mass, one day after he had urged government soldiers in a radio broadcast to disobey orders to murder their countrymen. At the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, we walked through the dorm where the army killed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in WHEN THEY TALKED ABOUT THE MASSACRES, IT RANG BACK TO ME ABOUT MARTIN LUTHER KING, MALCOLM X, AND MEDGAR EVERS, SAID HOLY COMMUNION MEMBER GRETCHEN WILKES. IT WAS JUST LIKE THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. Our deeply felt experience in El Salvador convinced Holy Communion s vestry to form an official partnership with Cristosal, said our rector, the Rev. Mike Angell, another summer pilgrim. Rev. Angell said Holy Communion envisions holding an annual human rights conference with Cristosal, alternating between St. Louis and San Salvador. The first conference could take place here as early as fall Other Episcopal parishes are interested in joining us in future trips to El Salvador to learn from our brothers and sisters in Cristosal. Said Rev. Angell: It s about building a movement. -Robert Lowes Member of the El Salvador Committee article reprinted from the November 2018 "Seek" Magazine of the Diocesan of Missouri

6 Photos clockwise from top left: 1. Kitchen in the Gannon house partway through demolition. 2. Kara Cummins, project lead for the building committee, painting with Mary Bass and friend. 3. Susan Norris paints in the kitchen. 4. The finished living room. 5. The finished kitchen. 6. Scott Ferugon and Mark Willingham cleaning out basement. 6

7 MAKING A HOUSE A HOME After over 9 months of work, we have turned the keys of our newly renovated house on Gannon over to Magdalene St. Louis, a community for women who have survived lives of sexual exploitation, violence and addiction. Graduates of Magdalene will live in the house as they transition toward independence. On October 26 our rector handed a set of keys to Brittinie Gellings Zwart, program director for Magdalene St. Louis. It was a day a long time in the making. For over nine months dozens of volunteers from Holy Communion, along with family members and friends had been showing up on weekends and weekday evenings to work. Members of the Building Committee led by Kara Cummins, the project manager and Susan Norris, Junior Warden coordinated with contractors, plumbers, and electricians. Mike, our rector spent countless hours filing permits and working with inspectors. Holy Communion purchased the house at 7400 Gannon from Mr. Floyd Marx back in 2004, along with the house next door. The homes were purchased so that Holy Communion could become more accessible to people with disabilities. We redrew the lot lines in order to make room for our ADA compliant elevator. In 2009 the vestry sold the house at 7402 Gannon, but we honored our agreement to let Mr. Marx live in the home his family built for $1 rent per year. Mr. Marx moved to an assisted living facility in 2014, while Holy Communion was in the midst of a rector search. He died later that year. The vestry decided at the time not to move forward with the sale of the property. The house stood vacant for a few years. In summer of 2016 the vestry voted not to sell the house "as-is." We realized such a sale would mean a signifcant loss on our investment on the house. More importantly, we wanted to find a way to use the house for mission and outreach. As the house was beginning to take shape, we discovered that Magadalene St. Louis, a new community for women who have survived lives of sexual exploitation, violence, and addiction was looking for housing. Magdalene was founded in 2015, a sister community to the Magdalene House of Nashville Tennessee. This year their first graduates were going to be ready to move out. Where would they live? The vestry signed an agreement to rent the house to Magdalene at a reduced rate. In early fall we held a fundraiser to support Magdalen and cover the first year's rent. We exceeded our goal of $7200. (Exact figures are still coming in after many gifts were matched by employers). The first Magdalene graduate now lives onsite, and more are scheduled to move in next year. 7 Before January 1, 2018 all gifts to Magdalene are being matched up to $50,000. Give online: or by mail Magdalene St. Louis P.O. Box 1143 St. Louis, MO 63188

8 ADVENT Waiting With Hope Follow the hashtag #adventword on social media for a digital Advent Calendar, you can even tag your own images with the daily word. The Season of Advent is a time of waiting, watching, and expectation. In counter to the cultural season of frantic preparation for Christmas by buying, shopping, and rushing, Advent invites us to slow down. This season asks us to think about our hopes and dreams for the world. ADVENT JOURNEY CLASS: SOUP SUPPER AND PRAYER Engage in this season of hope and expectation in prayer. Starting December 6th and each following Wednesday evening of Advent, you are invited to step away from the busy holiday pace for a shared meal and some quiet prayer time. We will gather at 6:00 p.m. contemplative prayer, and then those who can stay will share a simple soup supper. If you are willing to arrive early on one of the evenings to prepare dinner with a team of other parishioners, please the parish office Join us at Holy Communion this Advent. 8

9 GODLY PLAY Godly Play is off to a great start! In the Godly Play Sanctuary, children use the language of Godly Play to understand and articulate their spiritual lives. This fall our circle of friends has been listening, wondering and making meaning through the Sacred Stories. As we approach Advent, we will focus on the anticipation and waiting for the mystery of Christmas. This time of year can become very busy, the Godly Play room is a place to slow down, pay attention and get ready. The process of slowing down can translate to times at home as well. Here are a few suggestions for wondering as a family during this time of Advent: How does your family pay attention when you believe something amazing is about to happen? How does your family get ready? How does it feel to wait when you are not sure what you are waiting for? Will you do anything during Advent to pay attention in a different way? Dates to remember: We will celebrate Advent in the Godly Play room December 3rd-17th from 9:15-10:15am. The annual Advent Party is December 10th at 5:30pm. The Christmas Pageant for all children on December 24th at 5pm. Rehearsal December 23 at 10am. On January 7th, we will come together for an Inter-generational formation celebrating Epiphany from 9:15-10:15am. The celebration will continue with the Epiphany Pageant during the 10:30am service. On January 14th, we will return to the Godly Play Sanctuary. We will listen to Parables of Jesus as we approach Lent. Heidi Olliff Children's Formation Coordinator 9

10 PAGE 8 Advent Party and Welcome Home to Chester and Elizabeth Hines December 10 5:00pm-8:00pm HARK! ADVENT REVELRY! Food, fun, and entertainment for all ages. All Are Welcome! Bring your family and friends. Please sign up on the Bulletin Board in the Entrance to the Church or online. Holiday music sing-along. presented by the Holy Communion Choir Shopping for handmade gifts made by the Parish Guild. Nursery Care will be available from 4:45 p.m. until 8:15 p.m No charge, but please consider making a donation of socks, hats, or gloves for Trinity Food Ministry or making a gift to the youth supported by Episcopal City Mission. We will also celebrate the homecoming of Deacon Chester Hines and Elizabeth Hines. Festival of Lessons and Carols December 17 10:30am WE JOIN ANGLICANS ACROSS THE WORLD TO WAIT, HEAR SCRIPTURE, AND SING GREAT CAROLS We join Anglicans around the globe in marking the season with Lessons and Carols The tradition of the service of Lessons and Carols comes from the Chapel of King s College,, Cambridge, where it was first observed on Christmas Eve, Since 1919 the service has begun with the hymn Once in royal David s city. Beginning in 1928 the service was broadcast by the BBC, and except in 1930, it has been heard annually. This simple service of Biblical Readings and Carols helps mark the season for millions across the globe, and so our choir and readers help mark the season with Lessons and Carols at Holy Communion. You don t want to miss this Music Festival. Blue Christmas December 24 10:30am service JOIN US FOR A SINGLE SERVICE FEATURING BLUES MUSIC AND PRAYERS. OR THOSE WHO GRIEVE Christmas is not a joy-filled season for everyone. For those who have experiences loss, particularly of a close family member, the holidays can be a difficult time. On the morning of Christmas Eve (a Sunday this year) we will have one single morning service at 10:30am. We will have special guest musicians to bring some beautiful blues music alongside prayers for those who struggle with the holidays. 10

11 Christmas Eve: Family Service December 24 5:00pm service A FAMILY FRIENDLY SERVICE WITH CAROLS AND CHRISTMAS PAGEANT. PAGE 9 All children are invited to help tell the Christmas story at this family service with great music. Midnight Mass: Mozart December 24 10:00pm service OUR LATE SERVICE FEATURES THE MISSA BREVIS IN D WITH STRING QUARTET AND TRADITIONAL CAROLS TO WELCOME CHRIST We welcome Emmanuel, God with us, with carols, candlelight, and beautiful music. Christmas Morning December 25 10:30am ON CHRISTMAS MORNING OUR SIMPLIST CHRISTMAS SERVICE A single, simple, spoken service of Holy Communion for Christmas morning. Epiphany January 7 10:30 am WELCOME THE MAGI THEN BUST OPEN THE PIÑATA FOLLOW THE STAR. We welcome the Magi! Join us for an intergenerational Sunday morning teaching at 9:30am, with crafts, followed by a pageant and visit of the magi during the 10:30am service. After the service, children are invited to help break open the star piñata. We Remember Dr. King January 14 10:30am A GOSPEL AND SOUL MUSIC FESTIVAL REMEMBERING DR. KING AND SINGING SONGS OF PROTEST AND RESISTANCE AJ Dickerson and the IBC singers are back to help us celebrate Dr. King's holiday with soul. Join us for this music festival service as we lift our voices to remember Martin. 11

12 A huge thank you to all who have made pledges as part of our 2018 annual campaign for Holy Communion "All Things Come of Thee O Lord and of Thine Own Have We Given Thee." We have already reached a record year of pledged giving at Holy Communion. A growing church means we need resources to continue to grow the program. If you have not yet pledged, we ask you to prayerfully consider doing so at or by mail. STAFF The Rev. Mike Angell, Rector mangell@holycommunion.net The Rev. Marc Smith, Priest Associate msmith@holycommunion.net Cheyanne Lovelette, Office Staff office@holycommunion.net Mary Chapman, Director of Music mchapman@holycommunion.net Jim Kern, Financial Administrator jkern@holycommunion.net Connor Scott, Organist cscott@holycommunion.net Heidi Oliff, Children s Ministries hmoliff@holycommunion.net Brooklyn Payne, Youth Director youth@holycommunion.net Jerome Harris, Sexton VESTRY Scott Ferguson, Sr. Warden Susan Norris, Jr. Warden Brian Barnhart, Treasurer Angela Burroughs-Kelly, Secretary Earl Bonds, Mary Haggerty, Shirley Mensah, Pat Redington, Rebecca Rugen, Alisa Williams 12