Days of endless activity

 What a great few days indeed. Since I last had opportunity to sit and write a blog, OI have had a great movie night with parish friends, officiated at a wedding, had great fellowship with a family planning a wedding here in April, enjoyed a dynamic and spirit filled intergenerational Mass on Sunday morning, at lunch we broke bread with some folks from the parish at Simply Thai, and had time last night to socialize with great friends, excellent food, and great wine! That is quite a list isn’t it?

I thought I would share my thoughts on a couple of great ministries in the parish. The first is the ministry of a new group in the parish born out of our MARKUS work this year. On Friday we enjoyed our first Movie Night here at St. Mark’s thanks to the planning of our Adult Christian Education Team (ACET). The movie chosen was Whale Rider. It is a great story that is entertaining for all ages. In fact, our youngest viewers were 2 and three years old and our most mature viewer was 93 years old! What a fantastic parish event when all of God’s Children can enjoy time together. We had great goodies thanks to the folks on the ACET. Lakeshore Cinemas generously donated the popcorn and a couple of movie passes that we gave as a door prize for attending. I thoroughly enjoyed having a night with parishioners in our parish hall seeing a movie that brought a great message. We were able to project the image onto the wall making it quite large. It is a great way to watch a movie and for sure we will do it again. There were 35-40 people in attendance and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

The other ministry that has taken off here is that of youth. On Sunday we saw that evidenced in our Intergenerational Mass. We were fortunate that we were able to have the servers induction in the service. There was a great sense of celebration on Sunday as we all were thrilled to see so many young people involved in church. Mitchell Shields and Dylan Marion offered a piece of music that was just fantastic. Dylan played while Mitchell sang.  We hope to hear more from them in the future. I am always thrilled to see young people offer their gifts in ministry. There is no doubt that the dedication and hard work of Jane Cornett (Director of Children and Youth Ministry) is having a huge impact on ministry here at St. Mark’s by-the-Lake. Again, the success of Sunday was the total involvement of the whole parish community. There were hymns from today for the younger members of the church and hymns from yesteryear that are standards for those of us who have been around church a little longer. It was all a good celebration of God’s great presence in this church.

All in all these have been great days and again – we see this place is alive and growing and it is all due to great ministry here. This week cudos go to Jane Cornett, to ACET, to the servers, and to Mitchell and Dylan for your great musical gift! Thanks be to God for all that is happening here!