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St Thomas

The Self Denial Fund

By Outreach

“I recently saw a post on Facebook entitled “10 Signs You Know You’re Doing Well in Life.” If you have a roof over your head, clean water to drink, ate a meal today, have breath in your lungs, clean clothes to wear, etc… you are doing well. To this list of ten signs, I am adding “knowing Jesus.” By contrast, those who are the recipients of Self Denial grants can often say these things are not true for them. Self Denial grants help fund missionaries or mission trips that serve a variety of needs. The Order’s goal is to fund thirty missions this fiscal year. Daughters have received grants for mission trips to spread the Gospel to girls, some of whom are Junior Daughters in Honduras. Daughters in Spain minister to the elderly and unemployed by delivering food supplied by the government. Others provide Vacation Bible School to young people in…

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January 21, 2021

How are you doing?

By Christian Formation

Beloved in God and Thomas the Apostle: How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing these days? In these very strange days in which all of us are experiencing levels of stress greatly increased due to the events in our country and due to the ongoing, seemingly endless pandemic which has changed all of our lives jarringly and dramatically, how are we? I ask the question of you who read this because it seems important to me for everyone of us to give careful thought to our answer. How are we doing? Part of our answer centers on what we are doing to “protect” ourselves from the onslaught of the incoming “missiles” bearing yet more and more stressful news. Because the world today is “connected” electronically, hardly anything happening anywhere in the world escapes our knowing it. I long to not know much of what the electronic connection…

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January 21, 2021

Be still and know that I am God!

By Rector's Corner

Be still and know that I am God! – Psalm 46:10, NRSV Dear Doubters of Great Faith, This is my first opportunity to say to you, in this time and space, “Happy New Year!” It may seem a bit redundant, some 14 days into the New Year, considering all that’s happened in the still so new 2021. I am imagining that most of us held, and continue to hold, the highest of hopes that this new year will be filled with the brightness of Epiphany light, in the sure knowledge that our God, Immanuel, resides among us. The turning of “new years” naturally evoke thoughts of time, evaluations of past, present, and castings of hope for the future. It is just part and parcel of who we are as humans, in our self-revelatory process as we seek God’s ongoing and ever-going revelation. And so, on Sunday, we will congregate, again…

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January 14, 2021

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

By Rector's Corner, Sermons

Christopher Thomas Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, Baptism of Our Lord, Year B – 1/10/21 Genesis 1:1-5 Psalm 29 Acts 19:1-7 Mark 1:4-11 “I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story, because I know ‘tis true; it satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.” – Katherine Hankey, William Fischer Listen…to the story. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the…

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January 10, 2021

Who shall we be?

By News

Presiding Bishop Curry’s Word to the Church: Who shall we be? And now in the name of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. In another time of national crisis, another time of danger for our nation, in 1865 on March the fourth, Abraham Lincoln concluded his second inaugural address with these words: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. Lincoln knew in that moment, in the moment of a national crisis, a moment of great danger, that…

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January 8, 2021

A Call to Prayer for our Nation

By News

On this day of the Feast of the Epiphany, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry invites Episcopalians and people of faith to turn and pray on behalf of our nation. Today is January the 6th, 2021. It is the Feast of the Epiphany. And on this particular day at this particular moment, even as our nation’s capital is being endangered and assaulted, we pray that the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that God, in his Way of Love, might prevail in all of our hearts. The events at our Capitol today are deeply disturbing. We believe the actions of armed protesters represent a coup attempt. We are a democracy, with long-standing institutional norms that must be honored, foremost among them, following the processes laid out in the Constitution and Federal statute to facilitate the peaceful and orderly transition of power. Today’s protesters pushed through police barricades and forced their way…

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January 6, 2021

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day

By Rector's Corner, Sermons

Christopher Thomas Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, Observing Epiphany, Year B – 1/3/21 Jeremiah 31:7-14 Psalm 84:1-8 Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a Matthew 2:1-12 “Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord! Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice; tender to me the promise of God’s word; in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice!” Most of you know that for many years I was the Parish Business Administrator, and many years before that, a member, of Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Houston, Texas. Christ Church Cathedral holds a lot of different, fascinating distinctions in its journey story, being the second oldest surviving congregation in Texas, and the only one of the original Houston congregations still worshiping on its original site some 180+ years. The parish currently worships in the third structure to stand at that location, a beautiful, turn-of-the-20th century Victorian-Gothic building that is loaded with signs and…

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January 3, 2021

Evangelism 101

By Christian Formation, Upcoming Events

Everyone is invited to join us for a new Wednesday Workshop Series, Evangelism 101: Learning to tell our sacred stories. Talking about our faith can be difficult. Let’s explore it together each Wednesday from Jan 13-Feb 3 at 6 pm on Zoom. Series hosted by Seminarian Allen and NO READING REQUIRED! If you have questions, email allen@thedoubter.org The season of Epiphany, also called Epiphanytide (January 6-February 16) is the season in which we celebrate the manifestation of Christ to all the peoples of the earth. In the coming weeks we will hear again of the visitation of the Magi, Jesus’ baptism by John, the wedding at Cana, the calling of the first disciples, and the Transfiguration of our Lord. All of these stories are meant to show that the significance of the Christ Child isn’t limited to Palestine, but is much greater than we could have imagined! As you heard…

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December 31, 2020

Parish Annual Meeting | Jan 17

By News, Upcoming Events

Our Parish Annual Meeting will be held via ZOOM immediately following the Sunday ZOOM service on January 17, 2021. At the meeting the annual Parish budget for 2021, as adopted by the Vestry at its December 2020 meeting will be presented. Annual reports by the Rector, Senior Warden and Junior Warden, as required by the Diocesan Canons and Parish By-laws, will also be presented. Please make plans to attend. A Meeting to elect new Vestry members was held on October 18, 2020 with Lisa Pearson, Randy Hering, and Ruth Woodward elected for three year terms.

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December 31, 2020

Happy Christmastide!

By Rector's Corner

Dear Doubters of Great Faith, Happy Christmastide! I hope this finds you basking in all of the light that Christ’s natal star has to offer to each and every one of us, particularly this Christmas. If ever we needed to celebrate Immanuel, God’s residing among us, as one of us, in human form, 2020 is most surely the year! It is with that joy that I tell you (again) of my appointment, and your Vestry’s resounding approval, along with both Bishop Sumner and Bishop Smith, of the Rev. Stephen J. Waller to the honorary position of Rector Emeritus of the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. Fr. Stephen served the St. Thomas family for well over 23 years, from 1989 thru 2012, and I know has had a profound effect on so many of your individual lives, and the collective life of this parish, having journeyed alongside you through…

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December 31, 2020