Cope has found it's new home and we are ready for business !  The new location is 20601 Elkhorn Drive in Old Towne Elkhorn. (one block west of Boyd and Charlies and directly behind the new 3 story condo building on the south) Stop in and see our new digs !! Our first day serving clients will be June 7. Hours are 10 -2 Tuesday through Saturday.

Would you like to volunteer or make a donation? Go to copeinfo.org and click on the link that says "get involved" from there click "volunteer" and then click "register as a cope supporter" from there you can fill out what days you would like to volunteer and what you would like to do. Maybe you just want to pick up a random shift? Then click on the "book a shift link" We need people to sort donations, stock shelves and clothing, and help clients do their shopping.

Donations will be accepted ONLY on the first Saturday of the month for now. See the web site for what kind of donations will be accepted. No furniture or large appliances at this time.

Thank you for considering this, YOU CAN make a difference in your community.  Curious? Contact Rhonda Vest or Chuck Albin for more info, AND DO stop in to see us, anyone there will be glad to show you around !

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Rector’s Book Club this Spring, especially including our May event co-led by Deacon Rebecca Smith and Kaity Reece from the Balancing the Scales of Justice DioNeb task force. We’ll be on Summer hiatus with a new set of books announced soon so people can get early reading done for the Fall! Please e-mail Father Ben if you have book suggestions or thoughts. We are tentatively planning to keep the Rector’s Book Club on 3^rd Sunday evenings from 5:30 to 6:30 (September 18^th, October 16^th, and November 20^th).

Thursday, June 30^th

They Also Serve

Yesterday involved something of a bittersweet handoff. It was the last formal day for Mark Witte to be in the office as our intern (and for a guy who really ought to have had some “senior-itis,” he got quite a bit done!). We took him out to lunch and ate on a patio as a staff – something we really ought to do more often together. It was a great chance to sit and be together, and look back over a year.

Mark talked a bit about what he felt like he’d learned over the year. One comment that got a chuckle out of us all was something to the effect that St Augustine’s is the steadiest and most stable Episcopal Church of the seven that he’s served in over the past half-dozen years. The joke of it isn’t that I think we’re particularly unstable, mind: this has just been a really disrupted year to stay organized and do ministry together, and frankly, it just NOW feels like we’re getting back into best practices for planning and organization! Still, I was proud of our church for giving Mark a model.

He also mentioned that he was really moved that so many of our people really want their church to be a place that changes how they live. Now THAT is feedback I’ll take! It was part of what drew me to St A’s in the first place, when I was looking for a place to serve in ministry, about seven years ago now. Even in this chaotic time (and perhaps, to some extent, BECAUSE of it), we’ve brought the best kind of stubbornness to refusing to give up on programs of real formation and care, worship on Sunday morning that is truly given over to honoring God, outreach ministries to our broader community, and fellowship with one another – one of the most gentle, consistent, and powerful blessings that human beings can share. Church SHOULD be a place that changes how we live. Our relationship with God SHOULD call us back into right relationship with God, neighbor, self, and creation. Well done, friends.

Beyond that, our staff goodbye was a lighthearted time, and I think we all got a bit caught up in the excitement of watching Mark launch forward: he’s on to take up several years of study, which, we hope and pray, will help him find and call forth the best gifts that God has placed within himself, to be a part of leading and guiding some future communities into how their faith can change how THEY live, as we all take up our part in that journey home to right relationship with God and one another. Mark goes with a lot of thanks, hope, and our blessings.

And in God’s funny timing, as I was driving off from lunch with Mark and on to a camp music planning meeting, I got a text from Kaity Reece, who will be our intern this coming year. She had some early planning ideas and wanted to connect around a handful of things.

I took a moment to laugh with her about the irony of the day, and I also thought for a minute about the John Milton line, “They also serve, who only stand and wait.” The sentence comes from the end of a sonnet (you can read it here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44750/sonnet-19-when-i-consider-how-my-light-is-spent), describing how we sometimes feel useless in serving God: Milton replies in the poem that God doesn’t need US to be the most amazing workers of deeds; God’s “state is Kingly” with or without us, and God has “Thousands,” who “at his bidding speed and post o’er Land and Ocean without rest” … and so it is wholly fine that “they also serve who only stand and wait.”

For my own part, I was struck that within one day, and even within a few hours, I watched the departure of one young man, who goes forth from our community after a season of ministry with our church family, and looked ahead with another young woman who is already eagerly planning how she might spend her weeks and months with us. It made me think back to the days of my own youth and formation for ministry, when I was zipping from internship to internship and parish to parish, getting ready to settle in and do the marathon ministry that I hoped would someday come in my own life.

I suppose I was thinking in part of how important it is that we have places that “stand and wait” in a steady, long-term way. It’s powerful both for the sake of those who are ready to settle in and put down deep roots in a community for decades or even generations … but it’s also important so that those who are still growing have safe places to pause in their flights from branch to branch (I guess I’m doing tree metaphors for this part) as they learn what nest they’re called to build, or what heavens they’re called to soar to, or how far they’re called to fly.

So, again, a bittersweet day for me and our staff and St A’s yesterday, because Mark really has done some great ministry here already and we’ll miss him as he goes on to what’s next in his life, and because watching Kaity get oriented towards the time she’ll spend with us is already a gift and an exciting image of what she might be called to do in her life.

And in the meanwhile, may we be a place that is standing and waiting for what it is that God calls us to do next.