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.