Our First Public Worship!

I hope that your Day of Pentecost was as beautiful as ours! We held our first public worship service on Sunday night – it was very exciting and even astonishing to many of us.

Thanks be to God! 

We had a few little rough spots but everyone graciously got through them. The beautiful and deep “Rite One” liturgy was new to many of us and fed our souls. Donna Hackler provided inspiring and uplifting prelude, offertory, and postlude music from the organ and also supported the congregational hymns and service music beautifully (the texts and music of which really drove home the messages of the day).

Our Lectors read the lessons with vigor and understanding. Our priest and preacher, Rev. Heather Ann Martinez from Chicago, served the Eucharist beautifully (and we managed to cobble together an "altar guild" at the last minute) and preached a nice pastoral sermon. Our Crucifer and Gospeler gamely led the procession, Gospel procession and recessional even though they had not done so before. Esther Cook arranged some beautiful Pentecost-red roses for in front of the pulpit and for the reception table.

I had hoped for attendance of around 30; we had 20, but that isn't bad given that we haven't yet submitted any articles to the local newspapers or done any advertising - the only advertising at this point is word-of-mouth by YOU!!! (I guess that you'd call this a "soft launch.")  We have some extra bulletins from the service, so let me know if you'd like me to set one aside for you.

We had a lovely reception with cheeses, salami, cornichon, baguette crackers, cookies and lemonaide. Given the small-ish crowd, we all had the luxury of meeting everyone else and making connections and having some good conversation!

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday (our name day!). Justin Miller is preaching and Leah Harding will be at the organ. We've selected some great hymns, and we'll be reciting the Athanasian Creed in a responsive style - that should be worth the price of admission itself! We plan to have a festive reception/fellowship time after the service again this week.

I apologize for the poor quality of these photos – my camera was on the wrong setting but I didn’t notice since my mind was a few other places. Clearly we need a photographer who can pay attention to his/her work! (Any volunteers?)

Our liturgy and music teams met last night and we decided to try Evening Prayer (with sermon and music) on June 6 and 13. We'll probably hold these in the Chapel at Aldrich (which is just down the hall from the Sanctuary). I'll post information about our preacher on the website as soon as I have it: http://www.trinityminneapolis.org/  
We'll probably have Eucharist again on June 20 and would love to hear your feedback on these various types of worship.

Hope to see you this Sunday evening! 5:30, Aldrich Church, 3501 Aldrich Avenue South. Bring your friends. And if you can't be there, THANKS for your ongoing prayers and support of this new ministry.

Website is Up!

Despite a career in the exciting world of "IT," I had never created a website until today.  So be nice to me!  It's quite basic, but it does get the major news out there.

You'll find our website at http://www.trinityminneapolis.org/

Check it out and send me your feedback.  And send the link to your pals.

I'll post a few more updates here, but from this point on, the website will be our primary e-communications vehicle.

Full Speed Ahead for a May 23 Launch!

Sorry that it’s been a week+ since my last posting – recent days have seen a flurry of activity (including at my day job!) and I have found myself a little behind schedule.

We’re still moving towards a startup of weekly worship on Pentecost, May 23, a mere 11 days from today! Various individuals and teams are getting everything in place that we’ll need to “launch.” It won’t be a noisy launch (no big ads in local periodicals, no “spot” on the TV news, no proclamation by the mayor), but we’re hoping that you’ll be able to join us on Sunday evening, May 23 at around 5:00 (the exact time to be announced next week) for a wonderful time of worship and celebration and fellowship.

As always, shoot me an email anytime to offer your input/advice or to respond to any of our requests for info and help!  The email address is:  MplsAnglican@aol.com

Our Music and Liturgy Teams are off and running – they have built a basic framework for our worship services and selected the music and the liturgical elements for the first couple weeks. These two teams will have a joint meeting this Saturday at 10:30 (after our general planning meeting). Let me know if you’d like to join either of these teams, or would just like to sit in on our meeting.

Decisions about recording our services or the sermons (for eventual podcasting or just for our archives) will be made this week. We also need to identify a rotating team of greeters and ushers for the 23rd and all future services (let me know if you’re interested personally or have recommendations). And we need “Altar Guild” help with preparation for our Eucharist (again, please speak up if you’d like to help that way).

Our Theology Team is meeting tonight to flesh-out a couple more things that we need before opening our doors.

We still have room for you on all of our focused planning teams – see the list of them in my May 3 blog posting.

We now have a checking account containing $370.00! We’ll need to spend about $100 on the license that will allow us to print copyrighted words and music in our worship bulletins for a year, but hey, it’s a start! I’m acting as Treasurer pro tem and will be posting contributions to our accounting system. Assuming that all our legal filings go as expected, all contributions made anytime this year will be tax deductible. So write a check anytime – make it payable to Anglican Church of the Trinity and bring it to a planning meeting or worship service.

Last week I was thrilled to be invited to participate in the Anglican Church in North America’s “Deanery Formation” meeting in Chicago this Thursday and Friday. I will give a full report at our planning meeting this Saturday, including (I hope) the name of the priest who will preside over our first Eucharist on the 23rd.

I plan to have a simple website up and running very soon – I know that it would be really useful to be able to refer folks to a website (rather than my blog, which is more about the planting process than about the church itself). So stay tuned.

As always, please join us this Saturday morning.

• 3501 Aldrich Ave. S., Minneapolis
• 8:30 coffee and informal conversation;
• 9:00 Morning Prayer;
• 9:15 general planning meeting;
• 10:15 Liturgy and Music Teams’ meeting (and perhaps some other team meetings).

Donations are Welcome!

Donations are now being accepted! I spoke with a “nonprofits” banker at Bremer Bank this past week and will be opening an account for us there on Tuesday. On Saturday we made a couple key decisions: all checks will require two signatures (at this point we’ve identified two folks who will be on the “signature card” for the bank and I’ll be seeking another one or two more), and I’ll serve as the pro tem Treasurer and use my home address for the account for now. So if you’d like to make a contribution, we can accept it! I’ll put out a donation plate on Saturday, or if you’d like to send me a check and you don’t have my address, just shoot me an email at MplsAnglican@aol.com

Here are a couple photos of the Aldrich Church (3501 Aldrich Ave. S., Minneapolis), where we have our Saturday Morning Worship and planning meetings and where we’ll be worshiping on Sunday evenings.

We will be able to use the whole main floor (sanctuary, commons room, chapel and gym) plus the organ and grand piano, bibles, hymnals, etc.


I have obtained an IRS Employer Identification Number (EIN) and continue to work on the Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation (I plan to have drafts for review at our meeting on 5/8). The next steps will be to file the IRS “Application for Recognition of Exemption” and the Minnesota incorporation paperwork.

We’ve identified 14 decision-making/task-doing teams – groups of people who can take responsibility for various ministry and logistical areas prior to the church having any actual paid staff. We still need additional workers for most of these teams, though, so let me know where you would like to plug in. They are:

• Liturgy
• Theology
• Vestments, Altar
• Music
• Education
• Nursery
• Fellowship
• Pastoral Care
• Missions, Outreach
• Communications, Publication, Technology
• Finance
• Administration
• Executive Committee
• Vestry

It’s thrilling to have new people find us and join the team! A few folks were out of town this past Saturday, but we had a couple new folks join us, so we had a wonderful worship time in Morning Prayer and a productive planning meeting. Please pray that God would continue to work through the wonders of interpersonal relationships and the Internet (!) to bring the people of His choosing to our planning team and to our little outpost of His kingdom. And tell your friends about it!