Dear Christ & St. Luke’s Family
This Sunday is our Homecoming Sunday and the official start of our program year. We’ll have special coffee hours after both the 8am and 10:15am services, and our worship will include a blessing of the backpacks/briefcases/brains for all those (teachers, students, and school workers of any age!) who are embarking upon a new school year. Please join us for a fun, festive celebration to mark the start of the fall season at Christ and St. Luke’s.
Name Tags
To help us in reconnecting we are reintroducing the parish name tags! We’d appreciate if you would pick up your name tag on the way into church and return it in one of the designated baskets before you leave. If you do not have a parish name tag, please fill out a name tag form at church this Sunday, and one will be made for you within the month.
This Year’s Theme
This year our parish theme will be “This is the Day!” a phrase taken from Psalm 118:24:
“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
This theme will serve as a touchstone for us during this pivotal year in the life of our parish. The energy and spirit of this verse grounds us in gratitude for the gift that each day is and calls forth from us a spirit of joy and gladness. We’ll be excited to share with you over the coming months the way this theme will be explored from many angles in our programming and ministries.
Music and Liturgy
As we move into the fall and welcome back our full choir after their summer hiatus, we will return to some more familiar Eucharistic and Post-Communion prayers, and shift to another set of service music and Prayers of the People. Our 8am liturgy will return to Rite I language, which was the standard until the pandemic compressed our Sunday worship offerings.
Celebration of New Ministry
As I come upon five months as your Priest-in-Charge, I want you to know how grateful I am to have been called to serve here and to be setting off on this year alongside you. I feel as though in many senses we are just getting started. We have so many great things planned for the coming year, and so much good, important work to do together. As a celebration of this still new beginning, I invite you to attend the Celebration of New Ministry on Wednesday, September 14, at 6:30pm. Bishop Susan Haynes will be the celebrant, and the guest preacher will be my friend and former colleague, The Rev. Elizabeth Marie Melchionna, Rector of The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC. A reception will follow in our Lychgate Garden. I hope this liturgy will serve as a great opportunity to celebrate the Spirit of promise and possibility that abounds in this place as well as the church community that I know stands open to that Spirit with ready hearts and hands.
This is the day!
Fr. Noah
