The Hospitality Committee strives to make our Church a welcoming and sustaining place. It does this by offering opportunities for fellowship, entertainment, and fun. This committee is especially receptive to new ideas and interests; we offer members many opportunities for involvement and leave them free to participate in what they like.
2007 Meetings *
* You will need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® to be able to read The Witness. If you do not have Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®, click here.
This committee is the arm of the Vestry that organizes most of the social events at St. Stephen's. We coordinate Fellowship Hour after the Sunday 10:00 am. service, theatre outings, bridge groups, and the GEM (Greet, Eat and Meet) dinner pot luck groups. Last year we hosted several events, such as Twelfth Night, Movie Night, and the 'Welcome Back from Summer' Breakfast. Other annual events include a Golf Outing, and the Summer Church Picnic.
We are always looking for fresh ideas and willing hands. If you are interested in joining our group, we meet monthly, usually on Saturday mornings. For further information, please see our contact page.
St. Stephen’s, Troy: Laughing all the way to the altar
The first 50 years of St. Stephen’s has been hilarious. That is to say quite successful for a church community that includes to “burst out laughing” as a core of its mission statement. On May 5-6, the Troy church, which anchors its history on “Tradition with Humanity and Humor,” celebrated its 50th anniversary. The parish held a Saturday evening banquet followed by a festive worship service on Sunday morning that included a tip of the hat to many original founders and past and present choir members singing a special anniversary anthem written by Phil and Linda Pierce. Also featured in the celebration were the Jim Miller Ringers, the bell choir named for the renowned choir director and organist. “One of the many ironies about Christianity is that our tradition, by its very nature, is subversive, radical, and re-inventing itself,” said Rector Jon Sams. He said that St. Stephen’s strives to not only “remain faithful to our profound tradition of worship and faith inherited from our Anglican ancestors, but to remove the barriers that so often wall people off from experiencing it.” Recounting something he was told by longtime parishioner Ann Diemer, Sams said “at St. Stephen’s we have had a bond that is stronger than our opinion.” “It’s about tradition with humanity and humor,” he said. “Why humanity? It means people come first. It means that God meets us, first and foremost, in each other. And no building, no book and no belief is more sacred than the human person. There are profound implications to that in every respect.” Sams reminded the parish of its history as a people discovering the bond that love creates. “When your clergy let you down, and you had to find your way to God despite us, you were being loved,” he said. “When you were battling with each other— ‘should we build a wing for the church school? Can we afford it? No, we can’t. Yes, we can’—when you were struggling to envision the future that God was calling us into, you were being loved. “When you called the first woman in the Diocese of Michigan to be rector of a parish, and when you were known and criticized as the church committed to racial integration and Civil Rights, and when you called a Lutheran as your first full-time associate, you were being loved.” Tradition with humanity and humor, he said, is something much more profound than a one-liner to set up a sermon. “In our post-modern environment, it is not just a matter of telling a funny story to warm up the congregation before you get to the spirited part of the sermon. It is something much more profound. It is almost as if a sacred irreverence is necessary to authentic faith. “Something approaching irreverence is necessary for us to be truly reverent toward God,” Sams said. As if to prove his point—or distance himself from the responsibility of the church’s journey toward understanding God through laughter—Sams read an account, attributed to Diemer, whom the church recalled as the first woman to be on a vestry. The occasion was a stewardship campaign that led to the expansion of the building.
“Step up
your contributions,
Close out your charge accounts.
Liquidate all your assets,
Cough up those large amounts."
“St.
Stephen’s is really moving,
Already on the go.
We are the happiest family,
Parting with our dough."
“After
the ground is broken,
After the church is built,
If you have not been giving,
You will be filled with _____ .”
Sams couldn’t bring himself to close the phrase, but it didn’t matter. The congregation, all-knowing, broke into laughter. “It’s not me,” Sams closed. “It’s the tradition. The tradition of humor has been here and will be here long after we are gone. It’s part of the stone; it’s part of the floor. If you don’t have a sense of humor about this stuff, you won’t ever get St. Stephen’s.”
Excerpt from June 2007 edition of The Record by Herb Gunn
Questions
about hospitality at St. Stephen's? Email us at
hospitality@ststephenstroy.org.
This page last updated: 02/01/2008