A Parish Picnic follows the service Sunday, with food, games and fun.

If you can, bring a side dish, salad, dessert or beverage to share. 

But in any case, BRING YOUR APPETITE!

 

Bible Study begins October 5 following coffee hour.  Sign up on the sheet on the piano.

 

Thanks to the generousity of an anonymous donor, the repair of the plumbing in our rest rooms has begun.  The ground floor is under way.  Once completed, we will do those on the 2nd floor.  Please use the 2nd floor rooms at this time. 

Do you remember when we had Morning Prayer most Sunday mornings and sang wonderful chants like the Venite and Jubilate Deo?  Well, we are going to do it again.  Each Sunday in October, we will have Morning Prayer as the portion of the service that precedes the Peace and the Eucharist.    And we will be learning these chants once again.  After October, we will have Morning Prayer preceding the Eucharist on the 2nd Sunday of each month.

For those of you who don't remember Episcopal worship prior to the "new" Book of Common Prayer of 1978, Morning Prayer is a worship service consisting, in its barest form, of bible readings, psalms and prayers (with no Eucharist). The service may be said or some or almost all of it may be sung.  Morning Prayer, with sung psalms and chants, was the main service on most Sundays in most Episcopal Churches prior to 1978. The sung version of Evening Prayer is called Evensong and may be heard regularly on Sunday evenings in some churches and many cathedrals. The worship service done in most protestant churches on most Sundays is a form of Morning Prayer.

The worship orders of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer were created for the English Book of Common Prayer in the mid-1500's as conflations of the many daily Latin monastic offices. They were intended to be done daily and that is still the case in some places.

From the Church's beginning, and for centuries thereafter, Eucharist was the norm for Sunday worship and the prayer services were the norm for daily worship. In the Episcopal Church, at some point, Morning Prayer replaced the traditional Sunday Eucharist on some (or many) Sundays.  Perhaps this was due to the relative scarcity of priests in the colonies (lay people may read prayer services, but clergy are required for Eucharist).  The Prayer Book revision of 1978 restored the Church's traditional practice of Eucharist every Sunday.

Your editor created the above history of Morning Prayer from memory.  If his memory needs augmenting or correcting, please let him know.

Roger Speer, who provided Grace with much-needed help when we needed it, is now resident in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands as Missioner for Children's, Youth, and Young Adult Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of the Virgin Islands. 

 You can email him at roger.speer@gmail.com or take a look at his musings at his blog here. 

Our thanks to Jim Dietz and Ken Lyon for removing all the growth from the mound behind the parking lot.  This will soon be leveled to make our ground more attractive.

And our thanks to Roger Perna who helped supervise the men on our work day Thursday, to Belinda Perna who prepared the meal for them, and to David Mukasa for his help on so many of these projects.

	July	August		Jul YTD	Aug YTD
Income
Offerings	3,333	3,300		53,783	57,194
Grants	7,083	7,083		61,083	68,166
Other income (e.g., rental)	300	4		4,380	4,386
Total	10,716	10,388		119,356	129,746
Expense
Total	13,953	11,563		117,772	129,446
Total Excess(+)/Loss(-)	-3,237	-1,175		+1,584	+300

A full statement is available in the church office.

If you love to ride bikes, sign up for the Youth-2-Mission bike ride and picnic Sunday afternoon, October 5. The goal is to raise funds for scholarships for youth from around the diocese to go on mission trips.  The entry fee is $20 per person ($50 max per family), but you can get that waived if you can collect $100 in sponsorships. 

The ride starts at 1 pm, followed by a free picnic at 3. There are two ride locations in the Cincinnati area:  Miami Whitewater bike trail, with a picnic to follow at St. James, Westwood, and the Little Miami bike trail, followed by a picnic at St. Thomas, Terrace Park.  Ride routes will be safe and offer varying distances. 

All riders will receive a Youth-2-Mission water bottle and there will be watering holes en route where you can fill up and get cheered on. To sign up for the west side ride, call the Rev. Dave Halt at St. James, 513-661-1154 or email revhalt@fuse.net.  To join the east side ride, call Paul Rank of St. Timothy's, at 513-528-0931 or email paulrank@cinci.rr.com.

Bring all your friends!  All ages welcome! Sign-up forms are available from these coordinators.