Laura Latham
Wow! St. Philip has been alive with ministry the first 6 weeks of 2018: Souper Bowl of Caring, Fat Tuesday Steak Dinner, ForwardingFaith, Elijah’s Backpack, St. Philip Preschool, Lenten worship services, Witnessing Paws and more! Every day there are volunteers and congregation members in the building active in inreach and outreach. As part of my new role at St. Philip, it’s my honor and pleasure to work with folks more closely to make ministry happen.
While you are in the building through the week for ministry, worship, or service to our community, please check out the screens on the wall in the gathering space and near the kitchen in the hallway. The goal is to run a slideshow on these screens daily to welcome members and guests in our building and to remind folks of upcoming events in our congregation and among the Hollins area. I’ve been putting together these slides as I finalize announcements, so if you would like to include information about your ministry, please let me know by noon on Thursdays.
If you haven’t been a part of Adult Faith Formation yet, now is a great time to start. The Adult Faith Formation class Faith in Real Life has refocused to bring in folks both from within the congregation and outside the congregation to speak on how they live out their faith “in real life.” Upcoming guests are Max Holland with Thrivent Financial; Pastor Chris Bowen, chaplain at Roanoke College, and Drs. Bruce and Cynda Johnson of Virginia Tech School of Medicine. I am coordinating guest speakers for this class and would love to hear your ideas of folks who might want to have conversation with the Adult Faith Formation.
Did you see the big tower of peanut butter in the fellowship hall? At the time I’m writing this, there have been 450 jars of peanut butter collected to feed hungry children in our area. I expect we will exceed the goal of 600 jars. This challenge by the Elijah’s Backpack coordinators was one of my first big projects in my newly ex
panded role, and I’m so excited to be reminded how generous the people of St. Philip are.
There are many things that happen behind the scenes I’ve been working on as well – coordinating with Judy Burnette, the Worship Band, and Pastor David on programming and Sunday worship preparation; working with Kelly Truax on identifying spiritual gifts of folks in the congregation; and communicating with Rod Dillman on property care.
Many thanks to all those folks who are making ministry happen!