I write with the exciting news that Paul Bowen has agreed to come onboard part-time for a while to help us continue to grow programs and to regain momentum as we come back to a more normal way of worshipping, learning, growing, and serving following the bizarre dynamics caused by COVID this past program year. Paul is one of our long-term parishioners and has many years of experience growing ministries around our Diocese and the New England area.
As you may know, there are four major areas of parish life and ministry: Worship, Pastoral Care, Formation, and Outreach. We’ve been doing a great job with Worship and Pastoral Care, but we need more energy and emphasis invested into our opportunities for Formation and Outreach. Formation and Outreach are the areas where I have asked for Paul’s help.
Our regular ongoing Christian Formation offerings at St. Paul’s have included Centering Prayer on Mondays and Thursdays, Wednesday morning Eucharist and Bible Study, our Sacred Ground program, and Children’s and Youth Ministries on Sundays. But we could do better. Paul will help us to discern, build, and grow new opportunities in the area of Formation for those who are not yet plugged into one of our ongoing offerings, and who may be looking for more. It is our fervent hope and prayer that we can offer all our parishioners more ways to grow in their faith as we all seek to “let the same mind be in us that is in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5), and to be transformed into the image and likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29).
Our Outreach ministries have included our partnership with St. Luke’s / San Lucas in Chelsea as well as various clothing, gift, and donation opportunities for a variety of good works around our area. We’ve also been tending to our garden, and offering the harvest to places that need fresh food to serve the hungry. And our knitters have been amazing in their generosity to us all and to the wider community. But we can certainly grow more ministries to include more people. For example, James Duckworth has recently gotten us back into the work of Habitat for Humanity in our area, and we hope to have more people engage in this opportunity to serve. As St. Paul says, we want to “equip the saints for ministry” (Ephesians 4:12). We can do more within our parish, within our local Greater Lynnfield church collaborative, and within our Deanery and our Diocese, and beyond.
In this new season of hope, following what has been an extraordinarily unique time of pandemic, we want to do everything in our power to serve you, and to give you all ways to grow in your faith, and to serve others in Christ’s name.