ST. FRANCIS EPISCOPAL CHURCH 2016 Lenten and Holy Week Offerings

Transcription

1 March 2016 ST. FRANCIS EPISCOPAL CHURCH 2016 Lenten and Holy Week Offerings Wednesday Lenten Worship 7:00pm Hymns: A Way of Meditating Through Lent As we journey through Lent, please join Sam Doyle, our choir director and Fr. Milton, Wednesday evenings in Lent, February 17th thru March 16th, 7:00pm thru 7:30pm, on an exploration of hymns as meditation for the season. Each Wednesday, a different hymn will be featured. Sam will focus on the composition of the hymn and Fr. Milton will focus on the theological significance of the hymn. The hymn studied on each Wednesday will be the hymn of the day for the following Sunday. Come, let us all sing unto the Lord! March 2nd March 9th March 16th Hymn Now quit your care Hymn To mock your reign, O dearest Lord Hymn Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended Palm Sunday: March 20th 8:00am Holy Eucharist 10:30am Procession with Palms, Holy Eucharist, nursery available Maundy Thursday: 7:00pm Holy Eucharist and Stripping of the Altar Good Friday: 7:30am Downtown Way of the Cross N. Elm Street 12:00pm Good Friday Liturgy March 24th March 25th Easter Sunday: March 27th 7:00am Holy Eucharist 9:00am Holy Eucharist with Flowering of Cross, nursery available 10:30am Easter Egg Hunt 11:00am Holy Eucharist, nursery available

2 T HE R E A C H F R O M T H E O U T R E A C H C O M M I T T E E Encore Boutique Clothing Drive Thank you, St. Francis family, for supporting our Encore Boutique clothing drive over the past five Sundays in Epiphany! With your help, we were able to take over seven and a half box loads of professional attire, as well as higher volume donations to Encore. Many of you have donated and are planning to donate clothes to Encore. The StepUp Greensboro ministry has been so appreciative of our efforts to support their Job Readiness program. Thank you for your enthusiastic support! Looking for a rewarding volunteer opportunity? You are already familiar with StepUp Greensboro through the clothing drive for their Encore Boutique, a win-win initiative for our community that grew out of StepUp s clothing closet. Here is the latest from Kerry Nance: Our Life Skills program is the follow-up program to our initial Job Readiness training. It's a 9 month long program that meets every Tuesday evening from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM. We are looking for individuals who will serve as co-partners (Mentors) for our adult participants for the entirety of the program. Co-partners will walk alongside one participant in the Life Skills program as they learn about goal setting, financial literacy, healthy relationships, future vocational and educational training. Being a co-partner is incredibly rewarding and life-changing. Please pass this on to anyone that you think would be interested in this opportunity!! Thank you so much for supporting StepUp. If you are interested in volunteering, contact: Kerry Nance, Volunteer Coordinator, StepUp Greensboro 707 N. Greene Street, Greensboro, NC (336) (ext. 310), knance@stepupgreensboro.org, Change-ing Lives Initiative The Lenten Season invites all of us to enter into a special time of prayer, reflection and spiritual discipline in preparation for the celebration of Easter. Again this year at St. Francis, in place of mite boxes, we will have the opportunity to partner with Family Service of the Piedmont and their Change-ing Lives baby bottle program. Parishioners will be able to use the bottles to collect loose change (coins, bills) or checks during the Lenten Season. The distribution of the bottles will continue throughout Lent, asking that all bottles be returned by Palm Sunday, March 20th. Checks should be made payable to Family Service of Greensboro. Family Service supports families and children in the greater Greensboro area through its services, education and advocacy. Change-ing Lives is a program that we can participate in to help change the lives of women, children and families in our community many of whom have been the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse by collecting loose change. All proceeds will go to support services including Clara House Domestic Abuse Violence Shelter, The Children s Advocacy Center and Healthy Start, a program providing counseling and education. Please consider joining the Outreach of St. Francis and adding this meaningful discipline into your Lenten preparations. This is a way we can all get involved in the life of our community and in Change-ing the lives of others. Thank you! Outreach Committee of St. Francis The Loose offering for the first Sunday of March will go to Clara House, a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. 2

3 T HE R E A C H F R O M T H E O U T R E A C H C O M M I T T E E A Donor's Perspective: by Sandra Shields "Donating our 2000 Saturn was just the beginning of blessings for our family and Shountina." Donating our 2000 Saturn to Wheels4Hope was just the beginning of blessings for our family as well as for Shountina. You see...i was the one who had to ask my Mom to consider giving up her vehicle so she could downsize and move to a retirement community, which is something she wanted and needed to do. I asked her to trust that there would be more benefit than loss if she could do this. She obviously did end up letting it go, which enabled our son to use it for two years. When our son no longer needed it, I discussed with my husband that donating the car to Wheels4Hope would be a much richer deal for someone than us just trying to sell it. Wheels4Hope took care of the rest! After meeting you and seeing what you do, my husband, the avid car fan, became a volunteer. I had been praying for something like this for a long time. My husband told us a little about Shountina before we got to the garage for the car blessing. When I learned that she was 46 and a single Mom, I asked my mom how old she was when she divorced my dad and finished raising 5 kids. She was 46 too. My Mom had to do some tough stuff to keep the family going, just like I felt Shountina had to do for herself and her daughter. It was joy to see loss and suffering and challenge being turned into a life-changing gift, especially as my Mom was present for the car blessing while we both watched my husband humbly turn the keys over to one whose life would change for the better because of this car. Shountina received a gift that day, but so did we all. Sandra 3

4 A R O U N D S T. F R A N C I S BOOK SORTERS NEEDED Our annual BookSale is just around the corner and will be held on April 28th through April 30th. As always, we need volunteers to help with book sorting on Wednesday and Saturday mornings at 9:00am. This volunteer opportunity usually takes less than an hour of your time as many hands make light work! Just stop by on any Wednesday or Saturday morning at the Book Sorting Garage (near St. Mike s). If you have any questions, please contact Andrea Pollina at apollina@triad.rr.com. WE NEED MORE FLOWER POWER! Every Sunday after the 10:30 service, the Altar flowers are separated into smaller containers and delivered to parishioners in need of special care. It takes minutes to do this once or twice a month or you could consider delivering them if arranging is not your thing. Please prayerfully consider this special parish inreach opportunity. For more information, call Nancy Stiefel at or stop by the Sacristy on Sunday mornings. THE FRANCISCAN PIECEMAKERS The Franciscan Piecemakers have been meeting every week since We make quilts for children or infants in Guilford County who are sick in need or who have experience a traumatic event. We have made about 2500 quilts in the last 13 years, each with a Franciscan Piecemaker label. A label represents St. Francis Church. We are always looking for new members. If you love to sew, love to quilt, or want to learn to do so, please join us. We meet in St. Mike s at 1:00pm every Wednesday. Please join us. For more information contact Bernice Childers at (336) or Sharon Barnes at (336) We hope to see you soon. BOOK CART It's Back!!!! The book cart has been dusted off and moved to its new home just outside the office. Please bear with us as we work to refill it. Be sure to swing by and peruse through the new releases 4

5 A R O U N D S T. F R A N C I S ST. FRANCIS STEPHEN MINISTRY CONTINUES TO GROW! Stephen Ministry is an important way we at St. Francis continue to care for one another in a uniquely supportive role. Through one-to-one caring relationships, trained lay persons in our parish reach out to members of our congregation experiencing difficulties. On March 13th, we will be commissioning four newly trained Stephen Ministers - John Gibson, Ralph Knupp, Tami Chanas and Ken Clarke - and rededicating the 20 Stephen Ministers and Leaders who continue to faithfully provide care, support and encouragement to those who find themselves in a variety of trying circumstances. Please join us on the 13th at the 10:30 service as we grow in faith and commission our newest Stephen Ministers. COMMUNITY GARDEN It's SPRING! or almost and time to dust off the gardening boots. There are some plots left, room for more and some raised beds. If you are interested in a $15 plot, contact Linda at the Church, or lindaa@stfrancisgreensboro.org Breaking NEWS!!! New gardener, Chris Toensing has offered to till the plots, Yahoo. Please let Linda know if you need your plot tilled and give us a few days to get it done. Follow this link for a planting chart for our area: LENTEN BOOK STUDY Duana Cisney will be leading an Adult Lenten Book Study at 9:15am in the Day School Library. Please join her Sundays during the formation hour for a Lenten Book study of the book: "Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People" by Nadia Bolz-Weber. You may contact her with questions or to express interest at dcisney@gmail.com or by phone (evenings only) at Dates: 3/6: No Formation 3/13: Chapters /20: Chapters & wrap-up 5

6 T R E A S U R E R S Y E A R - E N D R E P O R T This year-end report to the parish is to provide you with the financial results of 2015 for St. Francis Episcopal Church and an overview of our budget for For our Operating Account, we received $647,837 in Revenues, ($13,663) UNDER budget for the year. We expended $646,027 operating the church, which was below budget by $16,025. That yielded a positive margin of $1,810. As of year-end, the new Capital Account had received $736,480 representing the CAPITAL gifts that had been received in From this amount we spent $661,598 for our Capital Project, including $94,617 for Architects fees, $491,900 for construction and $75,000 to pay ourselves back for the previous years unanticipated capital problems. That left a balance of $74,008 in our Capital Account at the end of the year. At the end of the year, we received permission from the Diocese to use our real property as collateral for a Bank Loan in the amount of up to $800,000 to be a bridge loan on our Capital Project. We hope to receive $1,4M in pledges that have been made and which we have received $736,480. However we anticipate that the complete project will cost about $1.6M, leaving us with about a $200,000 shortfall. We will have to eliminate this shortfall in the near future. At year-end the Day School has completed the first 6 months of their school year and they had revenues of $78,441 and expenses of $78,408, which provided a positive margin of $34 dollars. They have 57 students. OPERATING BUDGET 2015 The following is a summary of the 2016 Operating Budget for St. Francis Church. A more detailed version of the operating budget can be found on-line through the Church Website at: Operating Budget Summary 2016 Revenue Budget is $654,000 Pledges $592, % Non-Pledge Contributions 50, % Loose Offerings 10, % Other 1, % Total $654, % 6

7 T R E A S U R E R S Y E A R - E N D R E P O R T 2016 Expense Budget is $669,927 Service (Diocesan Support) $76, % SWEEP (includes Worship, Education and Pastoral Care) 14, % Clergy Salary 114, % Contract Services 47, % Support Staff (music, admin. /program, facilities) 160, % Other Personnel Expense 98, % Occupancy (utilities, cleaning, maintenance, grounds) 86, % General Expense (insurance, audit, telephone, etc.) 57, % Totals $669, % The 2016 Operating Budget is not a breakeven budget, but anticipates that we might spend more than we receive in donations throughout the year. The expense budget is also challenged by the inability to predict some expenses during this transitional time. Therefore, this budget has a negative margin of ($15,927). Fortunately, we have a contingency fund that will make up for any deficit, should that be experienced. The above is a lot of information to consume. Therefore, if you need clarification or have questions about anything financial, I m ready to help answer them. Please call me or send me an and I promise to respond. Dennis Barry, Treasurer Barryde1@triad.rr.com

8 S T. F R A N C I S E P I S C O P A L C H U R C H A Parish of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina The Rt. Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple, Bishop Suffragan & Bishop Pro Tem The Rt. Rev. Peter Lee, Assisting Bishop P A R I S H S T A F F The Rev. Milton C. Williams, Jr., Interim Rector Amanda Harmon, Director of Children's and Y outh Ministry Sam Doyle, Choir Director Jane Woody, Junior Choir Director Pat Copley, Organist Kit Hargett, Interim Day School Director ST. FRANCIS VESTRY: Jim Cox: Senior Warden, Michelle Koehler: Junior Warden, Dennis Barry: Treasurer, Cindy Patterson: Clerk, Patrick Marshall, Brian MacKenzie, Grant Haviland, Geoff Wehe, Pat Russell, Mary Dator, Bruce Lyon, Dick Maxwell, Virginia Summerell On the web at: Phone: Fax: St. Francis Day School: Linda Allgood, Parish Administrator Bonnie Thyer, Communications Coordinator Jack Steelman & Bo Edwards: Sextons Rigoberto Bautista, Custodian 8 ST. FRANCIS EPISCOPAL CHURCH 3506 Lawndale Drive Greensboro, NC 27408