The Octave of All Saints 2009

Dear Friend(s) of Grace Church:

Some say we are dying, but, look!, we are alive.

This paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 6: 8 sums up where we are at Grace Church in our 119th year. I can point to signs that our congregation is dying, but there is far more evidence that we are very much alive!

We have a core of parishioners who pray, worship, and work with great dedication to the glory of God and for the benefit of Grace Church.

Our priest is skilled at preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. We love her, and she loves us.

Our worship in enhanced by excellent music: choir, organ, and hand bells.

We hold services for the public each month: a healing service in the church and an outdoor service to which people without homes are especially invited.

Our kitchen has received high marks from the Norwalk Health Department.

Our buildings, including two houses on Berkeley Street (one of which now houses our priest), are in good repair; our church is handicapped-accessible.

We have a labyrinth for prayer and meditation.

We continue to support the FAWE girls’ school in Sierra Leone—and three of us have visited it.

We collect food and Christmas gifts and distribute them to those in need. We collect supplies for the children at Malta House; one of us tutors a young mother at Malta House.

We serve our community by opening our building to a variety of local organizations.

We are exploring the possible merger of our parish with the congregation of Iglesia Betania, and we have worshiped and socialized together.

Our new ministries were the subject of a full-page article with pictures in GOOD NEWS, the newspaper of the Diocese of Connecticut.

We all should be excited by and proud of the ministry and mission, which, with God’s help, our congregation is involved in. To accomplish all that we are doing we need the time, talent, and treasure of all of us. As a congregation we are blessed by God. As individuals and families we are blessed by God. A pledge card for 2010 is enclosed. In consideration of all that God has done for us and for you, please make your generous financial commitment to God by filling out and returning the card by November 22nd. Note that nine members of the Vestry have already made their pledges, totaling $$29,380, an average of $3164. A fine example for us all.

Your brother in Christ.

John Sutton, Senior Warden and Pledge Chairman

Okay, how about this...
How about...

On one Sunday per month, say, the first Sunday, instead of our regular worship in the church at 10:00 we have a brunch in the Memorial Room, with a Gospel reading, a simple shared meal (either we take turns as the cook or we all do the cooking together), sometime during the meal a bell rings, a simple Eucharistic prayer is said, we share the bread and wine with one another, we finish the meal, and there's a blessing and we depart.

What about that?

What about this:

Bring Your Own Brain Bible Study, Tuesday evenings? Or is there a better time FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY OF NORWALK, not before or after Sunday worship, but a Bible study that is for all comers.

And instead of weekly or whatever Adult Education/Formation, we have special education/formation events, and the priest (that's me) does not schedule or arrange them all. Anyone who has someone they want to come and do an education thingy can do so.

So, how about that?

If Grace Episcopal Church in Norwalk closed, would anyone notice?

Not to be confused with Grace Baptist Church, on West Avenue in South Norwalk, or Grace Family Church on Wall Street, we’re talking about Grace Episcopal Church at 1 Union Park.

In 1890, 31 members of Saint Paul’s-on-the-Green Episcopal Church, Norwalk, “walked down the hill” and founded Grace Episcopal Church. Originally located at Belden Avenue and Cross Street, the Great Flood of 1955 caused the church to relocate to its current address at the corner of Mott Avenue and Union Park in 1964.

Grace Church was a thriving parish, with a congregation large enough to boast over 200 children in its Sunday School. However, Episcopalians are awful at replacing themselves, and as people moved out of state or died, the congregation dwindled. Today, average Sunday attendance at Grace, for all ages, is 50 souls. The average age of membership is over 60.

Grace Church is now having to decide what its future will be, and one of the options for that future is to close the doors of Grace forever.

The question is, will anyone in Norwalk notice if Grace Episcopal Church closes?

Of course, the members of the three groups of Alcoholics Anonymous who meet at Grace on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, will notice if Grace closes. The Thursday night Manic Depressives Support Group will notice. The Literacy Volunteers and their students, who study English almost every day of the week at Grace, will notice. The Senior Services Umbrella Group will have to find a different place for their quarterly meetings. Two churches rent space for worship, prayer and study at Grace – L’Eglise Baptiste des Haitiennes, who have been at Grace for over fourteen years, and the Remnant of God Church will have to relocate. The Fairfield Symphony, who only just found Grace as a replacement for their previous home, will be looking again for a place to make music together if Grace Episcopal Church closes.

It’s hard to believe that closing might be in the offing, with so many good things happening at Grace.

Grace Episcopal Church was the first organization to catch the vision of helping to build a school for girls in Waterloo, Sierra Leone. Grace Church connected with FAWE, a pan-African organization of women dedicated to education and, through donations that involved the community outside of the congregation of Grace itself, raised the money to build a two room classroom block, the first such block.

Other organizations visited the school and, seeing the plaque on the side of the building, commemorating Grace Church Norwalk’s sponsorship, asked if they could piggy-back on Grace’s work. As a result, an organization in New Haven, Connecticut has been working to provide a library, and another in the Netherlands has contributed to a second block of classrooms and a computer lab.

Three of Grace Episcopal Church’s members visited the school and met the girls and their teachers and families. The real need, now, is scholarships so the girls can continue their education. I can guarantee that, without Grace’s leadership in raising those scholarships, the entire village of Waterloo, Sierra Leone will notice if Grace Episcopal Church closes.

Meanwhile, the work of the Gospel continues at Grace. A service of prayers for healing and laying on of hands is offered at 10:00 a.m. on the fourth Saturday of the month. On the fourth Sunday of the month, at 8:00 a.m., people gather to perform some service to the community outside of the congregation of Grace Church. On the second Saturday of the month, The Mission Congregation of Grace Church meets at 1:00 p.m. for three hours of study, reflection and worship. On the second Sunday of each month, at 11:30 a.m. following the 10:00 service, Practicing Prayer offers support for people’s prayer lives.

This year we had three special events for children: The Real Hallowe’en! offered crafts and activities and lunch, followed by the story of The Real Hallowe’en, where Hallowe’en came from and what it means in the life of Christians. The Real Christmas! was a big party, with games, crafts and lunch, followed by the story of The Jesse Tree, Jesus’s family tree.

The Real Good Friday!: A Walk to Easter saw sixteen children gathered with adults at Grace for the noon service. With a time of meditative music and silences for adults, and activities and an egg hunt for children, the Walk to Easter concluded with all ages joining to experience the last week of Jesus’s life, and a taste of the resurrection.

Meanwhile, children’s Sunday education and adult Wednesday night studies continue. Sunday worship and Holy Days are observed, the Gospel is preached, the sick and shut-ins are visited, and the work of the church goes on.
If it weren’t for the dwindling savings and the shrinking congregation to support the work of the Gospel at Grace Episcopal Church, you wouldn’t be able to tell the church faces closure.

Almost in defiance of this threat of closing, Grace is now looking at a liturgical ministry with people who live on the streets of Norwalk. Sunday worship outside, followed by a meal, armed with spiritual support and information on resources, and maybe even a place for people without traditional homes to have a mailbox, or a place to store their belongings during the daytime – this is what may be in the near future for Grace Episcopal Church.

Grace Episcopal Church is not closing anytime soon. If indeed Grace does close, it will leave a hole in the city of Norwalk, and it will do so not with a whimper but with a bang, preaching, learning and living the gospel for all to see, here at the corner of Union Park and Mott Avenue, one way or another, every day of the week.

Coming in May

The May Mission Congregation gathering will be on the 23rd at 1:00 p.m.

Please find a copy of Garth Stein's book The Art of Racing in the Rain and read it - it's a quick read. You don't have to know anything about, or even like, race car driving to enjoy this novel with. That's all I'm going to tell you. If you can find some information on the Formula 1 driver, the late Ayrton Senna, you just may find more food for thought.

I'm away until May 13. See you soon.
Lois Keen, priest

Catching up

Oh, dear, we're behind on posting the news from the Mission Congregation of Grace Church. We met in February, but forgot to report back to you, our readers.

Monthly gatherings of the Mission Congregation allow for what does not seem possible, given time constraints, during Sunday worship. As we debrief ourselves on the chapter of Listening Hearts for the month, issues come up for which we have the luxury of time to explore more fully. In the February meeting we began to do a theological reflection, the subject of which I no longer remember, but the subject led the gathering into their feelings surrounding the ever-present possibility of Grace Church closing - honest feelings like anger and frustration. We offered all those feelings to God, to whom we pray constantly, "What are you calling us to do in this place?", in sharing the sacrament of Eucharist.

Yesterday, as we gathered, a group of 7, one shared that she looks forward to Mission Congregation's monthly gathering, for the very reasons mentioned above - time for study, for sharing, for deeper discussion. I found myself wishing that vestry meetings could be like this instead of the business meetings they are expected to be. What would a church look like whose decision-making board spent deep time in reflection?

The 7th chapter in Listening Hearts proved to be very fruitful. It offered concrete direction - listen to those you usually tune out, silence is for waiting on God, keep silence solely for the purpose of honoring and receiving the Word, which is Jesus. We reflected on what a world that listened, that allowed for deep silence, might be like, which led into reflecting on the church's purpose, which is to meet the spiritual hunger of the world.

I then proposed that the true purpose of gathering each Sunday was not only to worship and thank God, but for the people to bring with them the stories of how they had served God that week, share them with one another, the failures as well as successes, and receive support for the week to come. We wondered, then, how we might bring that into Sunday worship.

After we shared Eucharist, the group asked how things are going with the street ministry proposed by a deacon-in-training who has a ministry of companionship among those who live under various bridges in Norwalk, including one only three or four blocks from the church. I was able to report that I have this week made contact with the deacon in Boston who began this kind of ministry, Ecclesia Ministries, and with the priest in New Haven who is part of the network of congregations linked to that original Boston ministry. The support network is, thus, being developed and people in the Mission Congregation of Grace Church are looking forward to being part of that ministry.

We continue to struggle with how separate we feel from others in the congregation who do not seem to want this "more" which we share, but we realized, as we looked through the history of the church, beginning with the Gospels, that it has ever been thus. This is why it remains so important that each person who shares in Mission Congregation also continue integrally related to and involved in the everyday, everyweek life of Grace Church.

Our next gathering is Saturday, April 4. This is a week early, so as not to conflict with Holy Week.

Reflection and Prayer from Today's Gathering

The Mission Congregation spent some time reflecting on the dichotomies found in Chapter 5 of Listening Hearts ("Is It God We Are Hearing?), our culture, and in Scripture. We chose the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-25) to explore further. After our exploration and reflection we wrote the following collect:

O God, you are all encompassing and different for each of us; unfailingly gracious; constantly changing and learning; you wish abundant life and health for us; and you give us free will. We pray you will continue to grow in graciousness toward us because we can't live up to what we want to live up to; that we will be open to and willing to follow up on change; that you will be with us in the changing; and that we will live our lives to be more of a blessing to people in the circumstances we find ourselves--a light in the darkness; in order that change happens; that we come together and we come to understand your graciousness; and that we grow in grace ourselves and treat each other with grace. Amen.