Poised and ready for take-off

Wood storks in flight

Honey Creek - February 2007

We have been waiting all these months, and now The Episcopal Church of Our Savior at Honey Creek is about ready to begin with Wednesday services. Here is the text of a newsletter that is going to all interested parties whose addresses I have:

On Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 6:15 p.m., we will hold our first mid-week service of Holy Communion at the chapel at Honey Creek. Immediately following that service, we will begin a Bible study on the Gospel of St. Mark. Our first Sunday service is scheduled for November 4 at 10:00 a.m.

New Members/Inquirers’ Class will begin on Sunday, September 9 at 3:00 p.m. in the Chapel. We will explore the church year, some church history, and generally discuss the question: "Why do Episcopalians do that?" From time to time we will have an "instructed Eucharist" which will explain a lot.

The opportunity for Charter Membership will remain open until Sunday, November 25, 2007. That is Christ the King Sunday, which will be the Feast Day of our church. Please be thinking about whether you want to be in on the ground floor of this brand new Episcopal Church. If you are interested in this or in the New Members’ class, please see Pastor McCloud after a service or call the church office at 912-267-0333.

We invite you to make your spiritual home at The Episcopal Church of Our Savior at Honey Creek. We would be delighted if you would choose to worship with us during this season after Pentecost. When we worship in an Episcopal Church, it is as though we are dropping in on a conversation already in progress – a conversation between God and human beings which began long before we were born and which will go on long after we are gone. There might be some things in the conversation that you do not at once understand. Please attend at least five services and let them wash over you. Our Episcopal tradition is a rich tradition in which many people have found the nourishment for a lifetime of Christian living.

This church has been in the dream stage for several months, and you have probably been seeing the signs along Dover Bluff Road since February of this year. We wanted to give everyone an opportunity to get accustomed to the idea that a new church is about to form, and we also wanted to give the newer residents of the Dover Bluff area a chance to get moved in.

We will begin by getting to know each other in a Wednesday night setting before we start having our Sunday services in November. In this way newcomers can try the church on for size, so to speak, and also engage in a lively Bible study. On the first Wednesday of each month we will have a fellowship meal instead of the Bible study. In this way we can get acquainted and build on each other’s enthusiasm. We can begin to look around in our home neighborhoods and invite others who might be interested in this adventure of starting a brand new Episcopal Church. Our worship style will be traditional in the best sense of that word.

We are blessed by having Katherine Adams to provide music for the worship services. Katherine is majoring in piano performance at Jacksonville University. She is a lifelong Episcopalian who is at home in The Hymnal 1982, which will be our standard hymnal for all Wednesday and Sunday services.

As we grow, it would be good for us to branch out in our worship experiences with an occasional Monday night Taize` service. This is a very quiet, prayerful service in which there is no Holy Communion. We would sing music from the ecumenical Taize` community in France. Do you play a guitar, flute, oboe, or Celtic harp? If so, we could use all those instruments at such a service.

Are you a book lover? Let’s start a Book Lovers’ Anonymous group that would meet monthly at Honey Creek. We could begin by reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.


In peace,

Linda+
The Rev. Linda McCloud
Founding Pastor
The Episcopal Church of Our Savior at Honey Creek
www.oursaviorhoneycreek.org
http://oursaviorhoneycreek.blogspot.com