May Rector’s Letter
Dear Parish Family,
Today, May 1, is the Feast day of Saints Philip and James, apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Feasts of the Christian year remind us that we stand in a rich tradition. So many have gone before us and have given up so much for their faith in our Lord. We are so blessed to be "surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” (Hebrews 12:1)
Parish Energy High
God's blessings are all around. Just look at the last 2 weeks: the Prayer walk for the expansion, the 24 hours of prayer for the campaign, the Canterbury Choir received their end of year awards, 9 youth and adults were confirmed by Bishop Reed, and the Parish enjoyed a fantastic Field Day event. We are so blessed.
Expansion Update
The Expansion Committee continues to meet to button up all of the small final design details so that both the Civil Engineers and Architects can make their submittals to the City of Southlake. The civil sets have already been submitted and the architectural plans are close behind. Working with the City is a back and forth process, but we are in very good hands. We are still on track to have everything approved and a ground breaking on St. Laurence Day, Sunday, Aug. 11. Diocesan and local leaders are planning on being with us that day. Save the date now. You won’t want to miss it.
Capital Campaign
As you heard on Sunday from our campaign leaders Greg Jones, Mark Jameson, and Lisa Lapiska, we’ve held 17 different gatherings so far in our parishioners’ homes over the last 6 weeks. Hundreds of you have participated in those, which is nothing short of amazing! It was an option to have one or two meetings to disseminate the information. Instead, we are having nearly 20! When we started planning the campaign, we expanded the number of gatherings very intentionally for two reasons: 1. To facilitate participation. More dates are more opportunities to get on busy calendars! 2. Smaller size gatherings increase engagement. We wanted people to share with each other how God has blessed their lives through the St. Laurence family and we wanted our Church family to get their questions answered. Our campaign leaders have been keeping track of the many questions that have come up during the gatherings and we are currently preparing an FAQ document in order to follow up on those.
If you haven’t made it to one of the meetings that have happened thus far, please consider joining Mark Jameson and me this Sunday, May 5 at 12:15pm in the Parish Hall. If you haven’t seen what is being planned, click here to take a look. On Sunday, Mark and I will walk everyone through all of the details and hopefully give lots of color commentary on how we got to where we are today. There will be lunch too!
The Rooted and Rising Together campaign has been a huge blessing to us already and I am so excited to see what God will bring out of these efforts as we seek to build up His Church. Make sure to join us on Mother's Day, Sunday, May 12, which is also Commitment Sunday for our campaign, when we're asking everyone to return their pledge card for the expansion. It will be a day to give thanks to God for our mothers and to give Him thanks for the many blessings we experience here at St. Laurence day by day.
Rooted in Prayer
Please continue to pray for our efforts in the Rooted and Rising Together campaign. Maybe you can take a second right now while you’re reading this to stop and prayer our campaign prayer?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for blessing our St. Laurence family.
We come to you with grateful hearts asking for your guidance in all
of the details of this capital campaign.
Remind us to seek you first before every decision is made.
Give us a spirit of unity and generous hearts.
Direct us to build up your church staying rooted in the Truth.
Expand these walls so that they may honor you,
and bring others to know you and love you.
We ask these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Fr. Young Returns
Fr. Bob Young has been serving as the Interim Rector of Christ Church, Waco for the last 18 months. His time there is now finished and he will return to the clergy staff of St. Laurence this week, assuming his pastoral responsibilities with us. Welcome back Fr. Bob and Liz!
Camp Crucis
If you have children or grandchildren who are making summer plans, please consider sending them to Camp Crucis, our Diocesan Summer Camp. Camp Crucis played a critical role in my own faith formation growing up, as it has in many of the families at St. Laurence. Please click here to see their summer schedule. If you have questions about the Camp, I’d love to talk with you about it.
May God continue to richly bless you.
Fr. John Jordan
Rector