Update on Santa Maria

December 21st, 2009

In this post, I want to respond to a few of the questions I have had, or that Josie, Bishop Mayer and I have tried to deal with, as we begin this new relationship between Santa Maria and St. Nicholas’.

What, exactly, will happen?

Beginning in February the Mission congregation at Santa Maria will be closed, and St. Nicholas’ will add a second Sunday morning Eucharist, probably at 11:30 AM. This service will be either all Spanish or bi-lingual, as the folks at Santa Maria choose. Those people currently attending Santa Maria will be invited to St. Nicholas’, and encouraged to attend whichever service they prefer.

Also, we will over the next several months work toward consolidating all of our outreach ministries with the Jubilee Center at the current Santa Maria location. We expect that the Jubilee Center will

What’s a Jubilee Center?

Jubilee Ministry Centers are congregations, ecumenical clusters with an Episcopal presence, or agencies with connections to the Episcopal Church that are engaged in active mission and ministry among and with poor and oppressed people. They are recognized by our National Church for excellence and for innovation.

How many people are we talking about?

Currently Santa Maria has an average Sunday attendance of around 10 people, with three Hispanic families regularly attending.

What will this cost?

The desire of everyone involved is to make this change “revenue-neutral” for both parishes and for our Diocese. The anticipated Diocesan support for Hispanic ministry in our Deanery will continue, and we anticipate that pledges from Santa Maria will enable St. Nicholas’ to pay the Diocese what Santa Maria is currently contributing toward the Vicar’s stipend. Santa Maria has sufficient reserves to insure that this last obligation will be met for some time.

Also, any additional resources that Santa Maria brings to this change will be used for the Jubilee Center. To that end we will begin this by keeping separate financial records for St. Nicholas’ and Santa Maria/Jubilee Center.

What will the new service be like?

It will be an Episcopal Eucharist said either entirely in Spanish or bi-lingually. Darryl Knapp and Michael Jordan will be responsible for the music. It will be in the Church.

Can anyone come to the new service, or is it just for Santa Maria people?

It will be a service of St. Nicholas’ parish, and that means that everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. We anticipate that some former Santa parishioners will attend the 9:00, and that some St. Nicholas’ parishioners will choose the 11:30 service. It is an option for everyone.

What will happen to Josie and Roland?

Mother Josie will continue as Hispanic missioner for the Permian Basin, and most of her work during the week will be in supporting the Jubilee Center, and developing Hispanic ministry in our area. On Sunday, and when she is available during the week, she will serve as an associate Rector at St. Nicholas’ and will participate fully in the life of the parish.

The Bishop assigns Deacons to their ministries, and he has not made a formal assignment for Deacon Roland. If it is the Bishop’s will, I hope that Deacon Roland will be actively involved in the ministries of St. Nicholas’.

Does the Bishop know about this?

Yes, Bishop Mayer has been involved in these discussions since his election; and he is very supportive of these plans.

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New Directions with Santa Maria

June 18th, 2009

There are all sorts of interesting and important things in the works at St. Nick’s. In this thread I’d like to talk about the direction that a year’s conversation with Santa Maria Mission seems to be leading us.

It is beginning to look like the mission of the Episcopal Church in Midland can better be served if we make a few changes in the way some of our programs and structures are set up. We think that doing three things will help to strengthen and deepen our mission in our community:

  • First, we are talking about closing Santa Maria Mission as a congregation, and at the same time adding an extra service at St.  Nick’s. The type of service this will be (all Spanish or bi-lingual) and its time (Saturday evening or later Sunday morning) will pretty much be up to the folks at Santa Maria. St. Nick’s present service will not be changed, but the full resources of St. Nick’s will be available for the the second service.
  • All of the outreach ministries of Santa Maria and St. Nicholas’ will be joined and located in a single place–almost certainly the current Santa Maria location. This new ministry will be an incorporated, stand-alone ministry of the Episcopal Church, and will cooperate with other outreach services and ministries in town to help folks who need our help. This will include initially the Food Pantry, the Angel Threads Ministry, outreach to the schools, the developing companion program with a Diocese in the Dominican Republic, and our work with the homeless. More ministries will be developed as the need for them is identified.
  • The Rev. Josie Rose, vicar of Santa Maria will divide her time among three ministries–initial oversight of the new outreach ministries, Hispanic ministry in Midland, and pastoral work at St. Nicholas’. The possibilities that this opens for these ministries is significant, and we are very excited about them.

There are a host of details to be worked out;  and it will be a while before all of this is in place, but we are presenting this to both parishes, and our Bishop is supportive of  the basic plan. I hope this blog can be a further part of the discussion of this plan, and can help us to move forward.

Please post your reflections, ideas, and questions.

Fr. Jim

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A Fascinating Book

May 5th, 2009

I am just about finished with Phyllis Tickle’s most recent book, The Great Emergence, and I have found it fascinating. Tickle will be at St. Nick’s next Fall, and I hope we can do a Parish Study Group on at least this book and perhaps another.

The book talks about what she sees as huge changes in Christianity, analogous to those in the 5th, 10th, and 16th centuries (you see the pattern here), and connected with the huge social and intellectual challenges of the last century or so.

If she is even close to right, the implications are enormous for places like Saint Nicholas’, which is trying to find a faithful way to be the church is a world that is shifting around us in all sorts of ways. If you would like to read and discuss the book, please enter a comment below and we can begin.

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New Outreach Plans

March 27th, 2009

At its meeting on March 26th, the Vestry acted to begin a new outreach ministry for St. Nicholas’. In conjunction with Santa Maria parish in Midland, we will be entering a companion parish relationship with a congregation from the Dominican Republic. Soon, Josie Rose and I will be writing Bishop Hoilguin to begin working out the details of this relationship. I am very excited about this new venture. We will need lots of  help from St. Nick’s, and there will be something for everyone in the parish to do to help with this new ministry. Please contact Deacon Tom or me if you have questions or would like to get involved. There is a link to the Diocese of the Dominican Republic in the Episcopal Links section to the right of this post.

Fr. Jim

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Let’s Get Started

March 23rd, 2009

This blog is intended to be a place for news, discussion of topics of interests, and other communications that might matter to members and friends of St. Nicholas’ Episcopal Church in Midland. Anyone who wishes can register and post, and anyone can comment on a post by simply filling in your name and E-mail. However,  I will moderate a bit if things get inappropriate.

Now, to begin with some things the Vestry is doing:  For some time now, the first few minutes of many of our meetings have been spent in some type of teaching or learning. This year, we will be reading a book together, Christianity for the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler Bass. Bishop Mayer suggested it during our Vestry Retreat last month, and our goal is to read and discuss a chapter a month from Section II. In April we will do an overview of the book and begin looking at Part II, which talks about ten practices that Bass sees as characteristic of lively and effective mainline parishes that have something distinctive to offer in contrast to the evangelical mega-churches.

Central to her thesis is the idea that we need to look at how to be a ‘Village Church’, a place of welcoming community, searching, and wisdom in a culture that seems not to be very interested in these things.  Behind this is the obvious, if often ignored, reality that the older ways of doing church among the mainline churches is really no longer a viable way to go. We are not an extension of the establishment or an entry into social respectability. So, what are we, and where are we going. The ‘good old days’ whatever those were, are gone forever; and something different, something, perhaps, more distinctively Christian, is called for.

Bass is one of a long series of writers who are struggling with the notion of re-visioning mainline American church life given our new social and religious realities. It really began, I think, with Loren Meade’s, The Once and Future Church and Hauerwas and Willimon’s Resident Aliens, two seminal books in this genre. The fact is, the world the Church has lived in for a long, long time is changing–I suspect it’s gone most places other than the old Confederacy and the Central Time Zone, and we need to see this, pray this, and look for ways that we can find God’s hand, God’s word and call to us in all of this.

I hope to have more to say about some things the Vestry is working on after our meeting on Thursday. There are a number of interesting and exciting things in the early planning stages, and there should be a lot to talk about.

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