THE GREETERJune/July 2015

Happy Memorial Day. We remember and thank all of the veterans that have supported our nation.

FROM THE RECTOR

It’s now official, the vestry has approved and a check has been written to pay off the remaining balance of our renovation loan. This incredible good news means that it is indeed the time to turn our attention toward calling an assistant priest. At our most recent vestry meeting I went over a basic timeline and process for obtaining an assistant priest. It is my best case hope that we can have someone in place by December 1st of this year. I realize that may not be possible. The reality is that the process of calling an assistant will take a good six months. Of course, that’s a best case and I will not be discouraged if it takes longer – as it probably will. As I stated in last month’s Greeter, if everyone who has pledged toward the “destroy the debt” campaign continues giving what they pledged toward the calling of an assistant, we are well on our way to fully funding the position. And perhaps there are those of you out there who for whatever reason chose not to give to the capital campaign, but may be willing to give toward an assistant priest. I invite you to consider doing so. We have set up a special account to hold such funds. It will also be imperative that people turn in 2016 pledge cards in October/November so that the vestry has confidence that there are going to be funds available to actually pay someone! At a minimum, a total package which includes salary, pension and health insurance for a single person working full time will be at least $75,000. The good news is that there are currently funds in the account which can be used for the costs associated with a search process which may include travel, meals, hotels, etc.

It is my intention to begin this process in June. The vestry will set a budget for the search process. I will also form a small search committee comprised of vestry members and others to assist me in interviewing and selecting appropriate candidates to be considered. We will be putting together a “parish profile” to go on the Episcopal Church’s transition office database. We will also have assistance from the diocesan office in obtaining names to consider. In fact, if anyone of you know of a priest you would like us to consider, please contact me. I intend to communicate with all of you the progress of our search as it goes on, then I will be unable to share names or specifics on candidates until the end of the process. This is to protect their confidentiality as many may be currently employed and – trust me – without confidentiality word would get out and potentially harm a priest’s current situation.

Finally, I want to thank everyone again for your outstanding participation in making it possible to pay off our debt so quickly and I do hope you will join me as we redirect our efforts to call an assistant priest.

Fr. John

MINISTRY NEWS

FAITH COMMUNITIES IN DISASTERSt. Andrew's will be holding a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) event Tuesday June 30th from 8:00 am until 4:00 pm in the parish hall. The event is entitled "Faith Communities in Disaster" and is designed to educate faith communities in responding to a disaster. This event is open to the public and members of many faith communities will be present. FEMA's mission is to "foster an environment where emergency management professionals and faith-based leaders can come together to build mutual trust and understanding in preparing for and responding to disasters."  All are welcome to attend and learn about how families and worship communities can prepare for disasters and serve in Mass Care Ministries.  It is sure to be informative and offer many helpful tips. 

ST. ANDREW’S VACATION BIBLE SCHOOLPlease join us this year as we band together with St. Augustine’s church school for an exciting three days exploring Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth. We will learn what it was like to live in biblical times, what it was like for Jesus growing up, and some of the challenges that he faced.

Our dates are Sunday, June 28th, Monday, June 29th and Tuesday June 30th. We begin each evening with a supper at 5:30 and we invite families to eat with us and stay to explore our Market Place! Our children will have a chance to work with pottery, mosaics, beading, weaving, and

visiting a spices and herbs shop. We will also sing and play some arena games. Each evening will end by 8:00pm and we will have a nursery and preschool. Please sign up to attend or volunteer. Questions? Call Sarah Black at 402-660-7649 or sarah@standrewsomaha.org

ALTAR GUILDThe Altar Guild shares coffee hour with the Nearly New Shop on June 14 and again on August 16. The next Altar Guild meeting is Wednesday, September 2.

OUTREACH NEWS

DEAN FRICKE FOOD PANTRYSpring is here, and summer will be here before we know it with all of its plans and distractions.  We hope you will remember the Food Pantry when you see crackers, cookies or snacks at the store.  These are the most needed items at the present time.  We will take any non-perishable food items but these are a particular need right now.  There has been some confusion about the Food Bank and the Food Pantry that we would like to clear up for you.  When we talk about the Food Pantry, we are referring to the Dean Fricke Memorial Episcopal Food Pantry which is housed at Trinity Cathedral.  The Food Bank is actually the Food Bank for the Heartland which is located at 10525 J Street and is where the Food Pantry buys most of the food that is not donated.   Thanks for all past support and those who continue to bring food and brown paper sacks each week.  It’s hard to realize what a difference a few food items can mean to those who have little but it does make a difference.

2015 YOUTH DOMINICAN REPUBLIC MISSION TEAM UPDATEA huge THANK YOU goes to all who so generously supported the January DR Fundraising Dinner. Sufficient funds were raised to assure a cement block home will be built for Altagracia’s family, and an existing building on the school property will be renovated to become a Children’s Shelter and Pre-School for the community.

St. Andrews enjoys a wonderful relationship with the mountain community of El Pedregal, and especially with the School of the Mount of the Transfiguration located there. In the past, special art and religion classes have been conducted by missioners, school supplies and back packs have been presented to students and teachers, and a special 3 year scholarship will be provided to Teacher

Everly so that she may attend college and receive her teaching degree.

In 2015, the quality of education available to students has been identified as a very high priority. When we asked Padre Alvaro what supplies we could bring to help improve the quality of education, he said it is difficult to teach, and for students to learn without basic school supplies, the small library at the school has very few books, the two computers at the school are currently broken, and the dream of having a computer laboratory at the schools seems only that….a dream.

This year, the NE Youth DR Mission Team will be collecting school supplies, books and used, but operable, laptop computers to deliver to Padre Alvaro. Donated laptops will be scrubbed and set to original factory settings prior to presentation. Books suitable for younger students should be in Spanish, but books in English are also needed, as books for older students may be in either Spanish or English. A bin will be designated in the Narthex for the collection of DR school supplies, books and laptops. If you know of a company possibly replacing its laptops for tablets which might be interested in making a donation, please contact Don and Melissa Peeler at 402-572-7556, or at dpeeler@cox.net.

St. Andrews will have at least ten missioners participating in this mission to change lives. We are very proud of our youth, Kelly Dornan, Hannah Coonce, Audrey Coonce, Isabelle Adcock, and Madison Miles, and so thankful that Dan Coonce, Steve White and Lauren White are giving generously of their time to help lead this mission team. But, of course, the success of this mission lies in the hearts of the many who came together to build a home and support this important ministry.

FELLOWSHIP AND FUNDRAISING NEWSOur Cinco De Mayo celebration was a hit (literally). We had wonderful food catered by Maria Bonita’s and the youth had a great time attacking the piñata.Next fall when we start up our Wednesday nights again, we are looking for a person to be in charge of clean-up.  Many people volunteer, and we appreciate the help, but we do need one person to be the lead.  We mostly use disposable dishes and cutlery, but there are tables to be wiped down, a few serving dishes to

be washed, and the left-over food to be divided and refrigerated.  If you are looking for a ministry at St. Andrew's, but your busy schedule doesn't allow a lot of time on Sunday mornings or the weekend, this might be your place to share your talents.   Please contact Sarah Black if you are interested (cell 402-660-7649, church 402-391-1950 or email sarah@standrewsomaha.org).

ODDS & ENDS SALE -----AUGUST 6TH, 7th, & 8th 2015The Odds & Ends Sale will be Thursday August 6th, 9am- 6pm, Friday, 7th, 9am-6pm, and Saturday 8th, 9am-1pm, so start saving your items now for our annual sale. We begin collecting items July 1st. Large items will be placed in the old senior room next to the soda machine in the parish hall. Clothes and smaller items can be placed in the Godly Play Room.Important notice: We will not take any mattresses, shoes, computers, printers, television sets or junk. St. Andrews is noted for quality stuff.The money from the sale goes toward our commitment to Habitat for Humanity to build a home and to our Dominican Mission trip. More volunteers will be needed this year. We need people to price, cashiers, pickup trucks, and helpers to pick up large items. Jim Saunders, chairman, will handle scheduling the pickups. Set-up for the show and pricing will start Wednesday July 29th at 9am. We are looking for volunteers of all ages including High School students to help carry items to customer cars during the sale and for setup before the sale opens. You can earn school credits for volunteering. In addition to set-up and during the sale help, on Saturday the 8th, we need plenty of volunteers to clear out the church and load the Salvation Army truck with the left overs 1pm-2pm. Please call Joe Engle (402-551-0909), Jim Saunders (402-669-1303), Bebe Miller (402-391-6579), or David Adcock (402-350-1278) to volunteer or ask questions. Thanks.

THE CURATE’S CORNER

Thinking About Reformation

I’ve had the Reformation on the brain lately, almost certainly because we’ve been discussing it in the Saturday morning Men’s Fellowship Group. The Reformation is one of those huge historical events whose dramatic consequences continue to this day, but unlike the similarly impactful career of Jesus or conversion of Constantine, the Reformation is not a case of one individual having a world-changing historical impact. Instead, the Reformation is the

confluence of a whole host of people and movements that reshaped Europe and thus helped create America as we know it today. So, it gives me a lot to think about.

We traditionally say that the Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther posted 95 Theses on a church door in Wittenberg; however, there’s a certain artificiality to that, as the Theses were not especially controversial unto themselves, and they did not mark the formal break between Luther and the Church in Rome. A host of characters before and after Luther (Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, Erasmus, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Thomas Cranmer) also identified points of Church doctrine and practice that seemed out of line with the Bible, Christian ethics, or common sense, and sought to correct the Church on those points.

As such theological disagreements devolved into wars at least partially motivated by these religious differences, the Reformation became an all-consuming series of events that touched virtually every aspect of European daily life in one way or another. Aspects of our modern life that seem entirely disconnected from religion have their roots in the Reformation. For example, the use of mass media as a propaganda tool (most commonly seen in the host of negative political campaign ads bombarding us each October) has its modern origins in the use of cheaply printed broadsides and pamphlets to campaign against the evils of demonic priests or iconoclastic reformers. One can draw a direct logical progression from Calvin’s theology of predestination to the American ideology of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.

More than once in the past few years I’ve seen articles online calling for a new reformation to revive Christianity in Europe and the United States, to address the facts that fewer and fewer people are serving Jesus in the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches (including the Episcopal Church) and that the churches that are growing tend to be theologically shallow. However, such calls often derive from an impulse to change what doesn’t seem to be working rather than an effort to understand how we came to where we are and discern where God might be calling us to proceed.

For that reason (and, confessedly, because I am a bit of a history nerd generally), I encourage all of us who struggle to live as followers of Christ today to be familiar with our Reformation history. For those not intimidated by large (but readable) historical tomes, I highly recommend Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation: A History. For a briefer treatment, Peter Marshall’s The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (a couple of copies of which are still available in the office for $10) is also quite good.

FROM THE DESKReminder, there will no July edition of the Greeter, so you have until July 21 to turn in your submissions for the next edition. As we are moving into the Spring and Summer months, I was reminded of this Apache Blessing:

May the sun bring you new energy by day, May the moon softly restore you by night,May the rain wash away your worries,May the breeze blow new strength into your being,May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.

June and July Birthdays and Anniversaries Dick Markoff 6/1 Doug LeClair 6/1

Charlotte Pratt 6/1 Aaron Sanderford 6/2

Kent Whittaker 6/3 Patty Hemphill 6/5

Sue Hillman 6/5 Lance Baker 6/5Loree MacNeill 6/6 Raymond Buhr 6/7

Melody Pugsley 6/7 Kenner Zaloudek 6/7 Mina Witherspoon 6/10 Marcus Else 6/11

David Adcock 6/12 Casey Whittaker 6/12 Nate Dodge III 6/13 Valerie Ditsch 6/13

Hugh Johnson6/15 Rob Johansen 6/16 Eileen Armstrong 6/18 Sarah Rider 6/18

Ken Cratty 6/19 Christen Stiverson 6/20 Cameron Trofholz 6/19

Lisa Hammond 6/20 Scott Zaloudek 6/21 Margo Mlady-Cole 6/22

Carole Dunic 6/23 Betty Richardson 6/25 Sydney Hawekotte 6/25

Odessa White 6/25 John Hallgren 6/27 Tara O’Shea 6/27

Liz Hudson 6/30 Aidan Kauth-Fisher 6/30 Polly Goecke 7/1

Sue Woodson 7/2 Janeen Kennedy 7/3 Nancy Kirk 7/4 Shirley Ortman 7/4

Barb Jackson 7/5 William Stiverson 7/5 Cindy Dornbush 7/6 Jonathyn Stiverson 7/7

Val West 7/7 Kaiti Hill 7/8 Ella Haakinson 7/10 Bebe Miller 7/11

Lois Westfall 7/11 Karen LeClair 7/11 Jan Buhr 7/12 Keith Ross 7/12

Kelsey Wagner 7/12 Kathryn Fisher 7/13 Sarah Frink 7/15 Anna Trofholz 7/15

Wayne Nelson 7/16 Jackie Vinci 7/17 Theodore Puls 7/17 Pat Barnes 7/18

Ken West 7/19 Grace Kircher 7/19 Judi Johnson 7/20 Eric James Rodawig 7/21

Nancy Goy 7/22 Charlotte Achelpohl 7/23 Jim Johnson 7/20

Caeli Brown 7/24 James Saunders 7/25 Kelly Caverzagie 7/25 Connor Smith 7/28

Patty Kircher 7/29 Liz Orrick 7/30 Philip Dalton 7/30 Cathy Adcock 7/30

Ginny Winsor 7/30

Dick and Sande Markoff 6/1 Rob and Cindy Hansen 6/1

Chris and Suzy Bathel 6/2 Loren and Melissa Ditsch 6/9

Eric and Sue Manley 6/13 Lee and Lisa Hammond 6/14

John and Margaret Schaefer 6/17 Harry and Gail Koch 6/19

Benjiman and Kaitlan Pettiford 6/21 Hank and Charlotte Austin 6/23

Burke and Shelly Smith 6/24 Phil and Edi Pierce 6/27

Adrian and Sarah Rider 6/27 Don and Bebe Miller 6/29

Kathryn Fischer and Tony Hunt 7/ Kelly and Liz Bourne 7/5

Philip and Suzanne Dalton 7/5 Courtney and Stephanie Bullard 7/10

Thomas and Sheryl Hill 7/11 Blake and Erin Zogleman 7/12

Tom and Michelle Stokes 7/16 Josh and Amy Urban 7/17

Andy and Kim Hawekotte 7/28 Lance and Jamie Baker 7/29

Stephen and Melanie Haakinson 7/30

Ministry ScheduleJune 7 June 14 June 21 June 28

Acolytes9:00 Audrey Coonce

Conner SmithMatt Dornan Lucian Reiter

Lauren SitzmanElla HaakinsonAnna Kay Sitzman

10:30 Josh GottschalkJames Henry

Eric Manley Laura DodgeJohn Dodge

Ken Cratty

Altar GuildS Suzanne Dalton Terrie Saunders Adah Earle Pat AddisonE Susie Trupp Karen Ekholm Ardie Vickery Terrie

SaundersL Aileen Henry Mina

WitherspoonLiz Bourne Christina

HarterHealing Prayer7:45 Lois Westfall Lois Westfall Lois Westfall Lois Westfall9:00 Andy Hawekotte

Lance BakerJamie BakerNancy Ponec

Karen EkholmAndy Hawekotte

Lance BakerNancy Ponec

10:30 TBD Dorothy Steele Anne Gambal Cricket FoleyLay Readers7:45 Ron Dunic Lois Westfall Jordan Hankins Keith Ross9:00 Sharon Kryger

Anna Kay Sitzman

Don PeelerKayleigh Baker

David AdcockCamille Culp

Dan SitzmanBeth Summers

10:30 Tara O’SheaKelly Bourne

Claire AtkinsKen West

Elizabeth Hallgren

Lee HammondAnne Gambal

Ushers7:45 John Mabry John Mabry John Mabry John Mabry9:00 Kim Johansen

Liz OrrickKaren Quintana

Don PeelerSusan MenterKeith Gourley

Steve and Lauren White

Linda Kay-EinersonBurke SmithIsabelle Adcock

10:30 Gordon FoleyKen CrattyDave Gambal

Charley and Nancy PugsleyScott Nelson

Lee HammondD.J. O’SheaRon Dunic

Gordon FoleyKen CrattyDave Gambal

Greeters7:45 Laraine Crane John Mabry Laraine Crane9:00 Barb Jackson Camille Culp Dana Coonce10:30 Anne Gambal Lisa Hammond Kelly and Liz

Bourne

ALL SUNDAY SERVICES

VestryFinanceDaughters of the King

Altar GuildNearly Near Shop

Sr. ChoirHandbells

Lay ReadersLiturgy Team

July Schedules Forthcoming