All Posts By

Laura Giffin

Mission Outreach Committee Update 7-13-2021

By Outreach

The Mission Outreach Committee met on Tuesday July 13, 2021 for their regularly scheduled meeting.  The purpose of these meetings is to receive updates on the progress of various outreach projects.  We partner with other groups and churches to support some of their ongoing projects that fulfill our mission by “serving our community with joy, without walls!” Committee member Caroline Hoffman defined bite sized projects as a one-time activity that require one or all of three things:  money, items, or time.  Collecting school supplies for Dallas Champions Academy was St Thomas’s first outreach project.  In the July 1 Doubter, Father Christopher wrote about the Dallas Champions Academy and four of the programs that help break the cycle of poverty. The picture is the trunk space in Virginia Holleman’s car with all the school supplies We had delivered to the church.  She and Stephen Toon counted what we had collected and…

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July 15, 2021

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

By Sermons

Christopher Thomas Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9, Year B – 7/4/21 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 Psalm 48 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13 Living in the Tension “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776 A bold, glorious, shining, luminous declaration! Radical, if you stop to think about it.  Seriously! What did the world look like, what was the world view, for those few, who came, and cleared, and claimed, that glorious stake in the dirt, not theirs, not ours, but God’s glorious Creation? “Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain; For purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plains America, America!  God shed God’s grace on thee! And crown thy good…

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July 8, 2021

Laying on of the Hands

By Rector's Corner

July 8, 2021 “…they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16:18b My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, It is, after all, the last thing that Jesus speaks to Jesus’ disciples, in that fateful, fearful, appearance, some days after his crucifixion and resurrection, this great command to the disciples that the signs and symbols of their belief are to save, heal, deliver, and disciple.  Is Mark’s decisive gospel finale any different for us claimants of the great good news some 2000 years later, we who claim that same path of “Christ-bearer?” And yet, thanks to COVID-19, the plague that rides on breath, we have had to all but abandon the great gift of healing that comes through the “laying on of hands,” the gift of touch.  Of all the things that we have lost over the past 17 months, the ability to connect and heal through…

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July 8, 2021

Walking along side those most in need

By Rector's Corner

July 1, 2021 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, One of the greatest joys that I am finding as we unwind from COVID-19 is being together with people, others, the things that I am sure that I took so for granted in all of my “old” ways of being.  Sharing space, sharing breath, is really the sharing of life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, in ways that I paid way too little attention in the past.  To breathe the breath of life in, to, and through others is relational gift. And so, of all the things I want to reclaim from my former life, taking that breath for granted is one thing that I simply do not, want to take for granted. As we move back into the spaces that we occupied so faithfully, it is with renewed, life-giving breath, in the spirit of new relationship, being in relationship,…

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July 2, 2021

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

By Sermons

Jennifer D. Smith Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B-6/27/2021 2 Samuel 1:1, 17 -27 Psalm 130 2 Corinthians 8:7 -15 Mark 5: 21 – 43   2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Good morning, St. Thomas the Apostle!  Thank you, Fr. Christopher, for allowing me to worship and preach at St. Thomas’ today.  I am so excited to be here with you.  It has been fun getting to know Fr. Christopher.  I’ve been following St. Thomas’ activities and hearing about some of the ways you’ve served our Dallas neighbors over the years.  Not only loving and worshiping God but also loving your neighbor as yourself.  And I am heartened to see St. Thomas dedicating time to fighting racism.  Because I only recently realized racism still impacts life in the US. I spent junior and senior high school growing up in small town in East Texas called Crockett in the 80s. …

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July 2, 2021