Dear St. Philip’s Family, During this time of isolation, the members of the clergy and staff want to stay connected with you and continue to meet your spiritual needs. We realize there is a great deal of anxiety and fear, and being separated from your church family can be particularly painful. In an effort to best serve you, we have compiled a questionnaire that we hope you will take the time to complete. Rather than speculate as to what you need at this time, we are eager to hear from you! ...
If there was ever a time to pray, it's NOW. There are so many things that need prayer coverage that it's hard to know where to start. First of all, it's vital that you start by enriching your own prayer life. During this time when we are quarantined at home, perhaps you can increase your dedicated time with Him in prayer....
In the midst of this time of uncertainty, I hope you are well. May you find safe shelter not only in “social distancing,” but especially in drawing close to Him who is our true Dwelling Place...
St. Philippians and Friends, Even though we "broke the Internet" last Sunday when we, along with members of other churches across the country, went online in droves to worship, we are going to give the same streaming platform another shot this Sunday, the Fifth Sunday in Lent! Here is a link to the stream, which will begin a few minutes before 10:30 a.m. with the prelude....
Click the link below to read the St. Philip's eSPIRE, the email version of our weekly inSPIRE newsletter, which is packed with information about all that's going on in the life of our parish....
Dear Saint Philippians, Many of you have written and emailed to thank us for last Sunday’s online service; we are delighted that it was a blessing. As we move forward, still uncertain as to how long we will be prevented from worshipping together in the church, I want to provide you with some sense of what you may expect in the weeks to come. Because the situation is fluid, these plans are subject to change, but for now they represent the thinking of the clergy and lay leadership. ...
St. Philip’s is assembling a response team for our church members while we are all experiencing the challenges of COVID-19. This is a united effort of the Compassion Committee, the Home Missions Team, the Disaster Relief Committee, and our clergy. We are here to help each other!...
Dear St. Philip’s family, This past week of social distancing has been a surreal and difficult experience for the majority of Americans. Many are beginning to think that if the coronavirus doesn’t get them, “Cabin Fever” will. Not since World War II or the polio epidemic of the 1940s and 50s have the American people been so inconvenienced or threatened with long-term confinement and financial ruin. It reminds me of the following story shared by the Very Reverend Laurie Thompson, Dean of Trinity Seminary. ...
We celebrated Mission Sunday last week and had the opportunity to highlight the many ways that we as a congregation at St. Philip's are “doing mission,” or reaching out to others with the love of God in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mission is an integral part of what God calls us to do as Christ-followers. While the Great Commission is commonly thought to be the Bible’s one mandate to mission, if we read scripture carefully, we will hear God’s heart for the world woven powerfully throughout all of the Bible. Jesus’ command that we take the Gospel to those who have not yet heard it was not simply an afterthought at the end of his earthly ministry. It was a continuation of the message we find consistently throughout Scripture: God loves us. Despite our rebellion, He went to unfathomable lengths to make it possible for us to know Him and His great love for us and for us to be with Him for all eternity. ...
We dotted all our I's and crossed all our T's; we had every hair in place and all our ducks in a row, but we weren't prepared ... for breaking the Internet! Thanks to everyone who joined us for worship on Sunday! Even though the service didn't come to your living room in quite the mode we were expecting, you were unfazed, and most of us were able to worship together just as we'd planned. Praise God!! Here's a note we received from our streaming platform on Sunday afternoon: Church Online Platform When the Church broke the Internet. This is an unprecedented time for the global Church and for online ministry. For most churches running the Church Online Platform, services went smoothly, and we praise Jesus for the lives that were forever changed! For some churches, though, services went out around 9:15 a.m. CDT/10:15 EDT. In anticipation of the highest-traffic weekend in history, the team had done in-depth load testing and purchased additional server and database capacity to meet the projected demand. But, with today’s traffic, an unanticipated variable arose that caused some issues with chat and with pages loading....
I am proud to be a member of the St Philip’s family of volunteers that took part in preparing and serving lunch at Tricounty Family Ministries last Wednesday. Marc Boutan, Ben Hagood, and Andrew O’Dell provided beautiful praise music along with a rendition of “Happy Birthday” to Ryan Streett. The diners enjoyed the music as well as a fabulous barbecue meal donated ...
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Sunday, May 19, was a gorgeous day and our last high school youth group of the season. What was different about this when compared to other senior high send-offs? The McAdams family hosted our youth group at their home on Shem Creek. Allison (Mrs. McAdams) had been asking me for a while to please take her up on her offer to host us during a high tide. She twisted my arm so...
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O Eternal God, bless all schools, colleges, and universities, that they may be lively centers for sound learning, new discovery, and the pursuit of wisdom; and grant that those who teach and those who learn may find you to be the source of all truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen....
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I am grateful to several St. Philippians who have prayed for my little sparrow in Rwanda. Fraterine is a ten-year-old boy who, until the last year, has led a solitary life, away from school and simply drifting during the days because so many children made fun of his discomfiting, facial skin condition. Since discovering God’s little sparrow last summer, we from the Dufat...
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What a privilege and blessing it is to live in a country where we have the freedom to participate in a National Day of Prayer. Created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress and signed by President Harry S. Truman, the National Day of Prayer is significant because it prompts us to remember how our founding fathers sought the wisdom of God when making d...
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On behalf of my co-chair, Amanda Steinhardt, and the entire Tea Room Committee, I would like to thank you so very much for all of the hard work and effort that each and every one of you put into last week! The weather was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the crowds were steady and strong. I personally enjoyed meeting so many new people and getting to know fellow chur...
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Dear St. Philippians, On behalf of the clergy, staff, and Vestry of St. Philip’s, we wanted to provide a quick snapshot of our debt retirement campaign launched on April 1. To briefly review, our goal is to raise $113,000 in additional giving above and beyond normal giving before the end of May so that we may fully retire the approximately $197,000 in debt currently on ...
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This past February, I returned to Rwanda for three weeks. For almost six years, I lived in Rwanda’s Northern Province, an area nestled in a chain of eight imposing volcanoes. Their towering spires appear to direct the earth’s timid gaze to heaven’s sublime and regal dominion. When they quake, fire and brimstone slide from their lips, demonstrating God’s almighty, o...
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This Saturday was my second time handing out the St. Philip’s Tea Room flyers. Like last year, I had a lot of fun. We started off by getting some doughnuts at Glazed, our youth minister David Gilbert’s special treat....
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In his Easter sermon, the Rev. Jeff Miller illustrated Jesus’ gift to us with a story he’d read by Harry Allen Ironside, former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago. In the story, a young man, the son of a friend of Czar Nicholas of Russia, had been given a post as paymaster in a border fortress. A gambling problem, though, soon led him to begin taking a few rubles here a...
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