Grace School Update

As other schools in the area were nearing their start dates, two of our teachers decided to accept other jobs.  Lauren Taylor accepted a position as Teacher's Aide at UHA, and Kay Cessna decided to return to the public school system as a Kindergarten teacher at Millbrook.  We were sad to see both of them go, but we quickly had some wonderful replacements who accepted their positions.  Robyn Duncan will be our new teacher for the 5-year-old class this year.  She is a certified elementary education teacher and became very enthusiastic about Grace when her daughter Delaney attended the 3-year-old class last year.  Delaney will be in Alita Johnson's 4-year-old class this year.  Due to the way requests have come in for this Fall, we will have a second 4-year-old three-day class, and Tara Roeder has accepted the position of teacher for that class.  Tara retired from public school teaching several years ago and has greatly missed spending much of her time with children.  She is very excited about being with us.  Alesha Hall, a parent and strong supporter of Grace School and frequent substitute teacher, will be assisting a few hours a week and also working on developing a Parent's Day Out program or something similar.  We will have four classrooms in all--one for three-year-olds, two for four-year-olds (both three days a week), and one for five-year-olds.  Registration is still open for three-year-olds, for one four-year-old class, and for five-year-olds.  We are having an Open House for the community on Thursday, August 14, at 5:00 pm.  We are also having three Wednesday mornings of "Cool Spots for Hot Tots" as a way of helping little ones get accustomed to being at Grace and to give parents an opportunity to begin to get to know each other.  Twelve children are registered for Hot Tots at this point.  Our Assistant Rector, Benjamin Hart, will be spending some of his time developing relationships with parents and families of the children at Grace School.  We are confident that this will be a great year!  

Missions Idea in the "Brewing" Phase 

During 2012, when the Vestry was participating in the church-wellness consultation with Tom Ehrich, one of the things that we were strongly advised to do was to become a more active "mission" presence within our community--to determine what might be uniquely ours to do and to avoid doing things that other churches are already doing better.  The Vestry and Missions Group and other groups and individuals within the church are beginning to work on a vision for a missions project that would start to address the most basic social problems in our community--the problems of poverty and unemployment--from a different angle.  The model that we are looking at is the Thistle Farms program in Nashville.  Please take some time to look at their great website.  The program is designed to prepare people for employment and then employ them in various aspects of the Thistle Farms business.  We might look at it as a "cottage industry" in which participants are basically self-employed--producing and selling one or more items or providing a variety of services.  We hope that many people--from inside and outside the church--artists, teachers, business people, etc.--will want to volunteer time, talent and energy.  In order to have space to begin to develop this program, our Senior Warden, Charlie Ross, and our Sexton, Phillip Merritt, and other volunteers are working on the renovation of one of the rooms in the Red House that needed some major reconstruction.  At this point we are calling our potential program "GraceWorks."  Please let Charlie or Alice know if you find this idea intriguing and if you might be interested in participating.  We will start small, but this could become a huge endeavor.      

"GraceWorks" Update    

We hope you have read the article above and may have some curiosity or interest or even ideas that you would like to contribute.  If any of these fit for you, please join us for about an hour on Tuesday, August 12, at 4:00 pm in the Gaither Room for some initial brain-storming.  We need everyone's talents--artistic, business-related, interpersonal, etc.--to work toward having a major positive impact on many lives.  Grace can make a difference in our community!

Living the Questions

Adult Forum is continuing to meet at 9:00 am on Sunday mornings.  We have had so much enthusiasm for the current program that we are doing, which is a video series entitled Living the Questions 2.0, that the Spiritual Formation Group is considering our offering it to a more public audience.  The series has been described as an introduction to "Progressive Christianity." We are certain that there are many people in the Hopkinsville area that are not attending church because they are not aware that there are a few Christian communities that welcome those who are seekers and questioners--communities that are inclusive, not only in terms of race and gender and other usual categories, but in terms of theological orientation and understanding. Episcopalians have a long history of belief that we don't have to agree with each other, even about matters of faith, in order to accept and appreciate each other and to worship together.  We would like to offer an alternative time for members and friends to become more familiar with the series before we "go public" and are scheduling a weekly time on Monday evenings during the Fall.  More information will be forthcoming.  All are welcome.  

Living the Questions Update

Our Adult Forum group continues to be enthusiastic about the material we are exploring and about the opportunity to talk with each other about what we believe--and what we don't believe.  The Monday evening series will being on September 15.  Mark your calendars!  More details soon.    

Aaron McNeil Food Drive August 31

Items especially in demand: 

Peanut Butter

Jelly

Soup

Breakfast cereal

Canned/box potatoes or stuffing

Rice

Tuna

Ravioli

Peas

Ramen