Trinity Stories

Dear Friends,

We are firmly planted in the dog days of summer and nearly nothing signifies a hot summer day quite like a lemonade stand with eager young sellers situated behind a dressed-up card table in the blaring hot sun. Well, we can spare you the blaring hot sun this Sunday. Our own Melanie Schell will have a lemonade stand during coffee hour to support the fundraising efforts of Isaiah 117 House in Lucas County. As their website states, Isaiah 117 is reshaping the way foster care begins.

When children are removed from their homes out of concern for their safety, they are usually brought to a child welfare services office to await placement. This wait can be a few hours to several days. These children often have nothing with them and are
scared, lonely, hungry, and in dirty clothing.

Isaiah 117 provides a comforting home where these children instead can be brought to wait – a place that is safe with friendly and loving volunteers who provide clean clothes, smiles, toys, and snuggly blankets. This space allows children to receive the comfort and care they need while child welfare staff can do the necessary paperwork and identify a good placement.

What a powerful mission! In a few weeks, George Benson and I will attend an Isaiah 117 ‘church connections’ breakfast with other houses of worship in Lucas County to learn how we Trinity folks can be a support as this unfolds in our area. Come thirsty this Sunday. Let’s draw the circle wide, friends!

Big love,

Heather Meyer

Director of Operations

Dear friends,

We are currently four months into Breakfast @ Trinity, and I thought it would be a good time for an update. For a little recap, last September, vestry member Karen Keune submitted a grant to the Diocese of Ohio requesting $5,000 to relaunch and restart our community breakfast as well as beefing up our coffee hour. Our goal budget for the first year knowing we’d have to purchase new equipment, update old, and pay for food was $10,000. If we received the grant, we’d start a grass roots effort to match the other $5,000. Before we received news on the grant, we had the matching funds, and then a few short months later we received the monies from the diocese. It was then a small group of people started meeting to cast this dream for being a safe space for great music and quality food in a food desert on Sunday mornings.

Four months in, we have started our volunteer pods, as well as regular volunteers who decide to show up accumulating in 30-35 people over the course of the month. That is an incredible feat that deserves a lot of recognition. Every week, at least 5-8 volunteers show up between 7:30-8am on Sundays to cook, wash dishes, set tables, serve food, make friends, and be the hands and feet of God. As of this past Sunday, we have served 866 meals. Currently, we are averaging 54 people a week, which means, the likelihood of us having served over 1,000 meals by the end of July is very real. Every week, we see new faces and regulars, the vast majority of which do not worship at Trinity.

I share all of this because, I am so proud of the work y’all are doing here. This community shows up when called, and our downtown community sees it. What we are doing on Sunday mornings in our little corner of the Kindom isn’t happening like anywhere else around this city, and people know it. So, if you’re interested, come on down and check it out. Doors open and music starts at 8:30, coffee, cereal, oatmeal, and juice ready to go; eggs, and the rest of the good stuff is served at 8:45.

Grace and peace,

George

Dear Friends,

At the end of this month, I will have been serving Trinity Toledo for nine months – the halfway point of my agreement as Interim Rector with your Vestry. “Time flies when you’re having fun” – so goes the old saying. And it has been fun to be with you! The parish accurately reflects the four words often used to describe it: progressive, inclusive, creative, downtown.

Let me add one more word (although I’m not proposing we add it to our communications.) The word is “involved.” At the Vestry retreat this past February, we decided that one of the things we could do to strengthen Trinity before your next rector comes was to expand the involvement of parishioners in the life and leadership of the parish. This is happening! And it’s happening more quickly than I ever imagined. Let me share the evidence with you.

More than 35 people serve in one of the pods that make Trinity’s weekly community breakfast possible. In addition to those helping through the pods, several other parishioners are present every week to pitch in – welcoming everyone to My Brother’s Place, joining with our neighbors in table fellowship, and washing dishes (we see you, Sean Patrick!). A similar number of members and friends of all ages have helped bring the restored Plaza to life, hauling bags of dirt, topsoil, and mulch from the street to the upper level, planting native species, vegetables, pumpkins, and sunflowers. Someone came to stake the tomatoes this week; another person regularly checks the moisture level in the soil and opens the drip irrigation system to keep the garden watered.

The newly-formed Parish Life Committee has many new participants who have sponsored or will sponsor activities that help build community – events like “Baseball with the Bishop” on Father’s Day, the Mac & Cheese Bakeoff last weekend that welcomed over 60 people to the Parish House, and the upcoming Fourth of July celebration on the Plaza – one of the best places to view Toledo’s Fireworks display. A subgroup is beginning to look at how we can better care for each other when the delivery of a meal, or a ride to an appointment, or being a helpful presence when a death occurs in a family.

The Adult Spiritual Formation Committee has planned two activities this summer and will offer Sunday classes in the fall in preparation for the November elections – everything from the mechanics of voting (voter registration, IDs needed to vote) to how we can disagree with our families and friends without being disagreeable. And this coming Sunday, June 30, we’ve invited parents to gather for a “lunch and learn” about hopes for Christian formation programming this fall for children and youth.

The committee planning for our celebration of Pride in late August has organized itself and meets regularly.

Behind the scenes, members of the Finance Committee monitor cash flow, budgets, and investments. A Property Task Force recently studied and prioritized what work needs to be done to ensure that our buildings are in good shape and are safe and secure.

The eight-member Search Committee recently completed a significant phase of its work and hopes to release the Parish Profile and the Office of Transition Ministry portfolio to the wider church at the beginning of August.

Last but definitely not least, attendance at Sunday services this summer – even with the choir on hiatus – keeps growing! So Trinity is progressive, inclusive, creative, downtown and involved.

Have you found your ministry at Trinity? St. Paul used a metaphor to remind one of the churches he planted that the Body of Christ needs eyes and ears and hands and feet – that it needs all the parts – to function effectively. If anything I’ve mentioned in this letter appeals to you enough that you want to be part of it, contact the Parish Office – (419) 243-1231 or trinity@trinitytoledo.org. And if you have a burning desire to start a new ministry, let us know that, too. There are many ways to discover a ministry that brings you a sense of joy and fulfillment!

I can’t wait to see what happens in the second half of my time as your Interim Rector.

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

The 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church begins this coming Sunday, June 23, in Louisville, Kentucky. The General Convention is the triennial churchwide gathering where leaders are elected to important positions in The Episcopal Church, legislation is considered and acted upon, networking and fellowship connect people from over 100 different dioceses, and celebratory worship takes place.

An advance team, members of the Episcopal Church staff, have been in Louisville for several days preparing for legislative committee meetings and other pre-Convention events. One of the most anticipated of the pre-Convention events will take place today (June 21) at 7:00 pm, when Presiding Bishop Michael Curry headlines a revival at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center. You can find out more about the revival here.

This General Convention marks the last one for Curry as Presiding Bishop. His successor will be elected by the House of Bishops in a closed meeting of the bishops on June 26 and installed as the next Presiding Bishop during a service to be held on November 1 in Washington National Cathedral.

Five bishops are standing for election as the 28th presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church. They are Nebraska Bishop J. Scott Barker, Central New York Bishop DeDe Duncan-Probe, Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel G.P. Gutiérrez, Atlanta Bishop Robert Wright and Northwestern Pennsylvania Bishop Sean Rowe, who also serves as bishop provisional of the Diocese of Western New York.

To give you some sense of the size and scope of the General Convention, Episcopal News Service reports that more that 10,000 people are expected to gather in Louisville. Deputations from 108 dioceses, along with the Episcopal Church in Navajoland and the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, were invited to attend.

Registered attendees include 167 bishops, two bishop-elects, 829 deputies and 239 alternate deputies. All the hotel rooms reserved for the convention are booked, and General Convention even had to increase its blocks of reservations – about 21,000 “room nights” – because of the high demand.

The General Convention, like the United States Congress, is a bicameral body. As the church’s primary governing body, it splits its authority between the House of Bishops, comprised of all bishops (both active and retired), and the House of Deputies, comprised of clergy and lay deputies elected by their respective dioceses.

In addition to the election of the next Presiding Bishop, who will serve for a term of nine (9) years, the House of Deputies will elect its President and Vice President. Julia Ayala Harris, as the incumbent House of Deputies president, is running for re-election against two challengers, Zena Link and the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, who is the sitting vice president.

Three people have declared candidacies for the House of Deputies’ vice president: the Rev. Charles Graves IV of the Diocese of Texas, the Rev. Ruth Meyers of the Diocese of California, and the Rev. Steve Pankey of the Diocese of Kentucky. Episcopal Church Canons require that the positions of President and Vice President be held by leaders from different orders, clergy and lay, so the outcome of the presidential election will determine who, if anyone, will be eligible on the ballot for vice president.

If you’d like to know more about the worship services a General Convention click on this link. And, more than you could ever want to know about the Convention can be found at The Episcopal Church’s Media Hub.

Following the June 23-28 General Convention will help you learn more about the wider Episcopal Church.

I ask you to join me in praying for those who are traveling to Louisville, those who are casting ballots, and those who are giving of their time to serve the Episcopal Church as faithful disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

Finally, please join me in giving thanks for Presiding Bishop Curry’s faithful and exuberant ministry. Through his preaching and presence, he has represented The Episcopal Church in remarkable ways – preaching at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, appearing frequently with Hoda and Jenna on The Today Show, and thrilling participants during one of his 27 different revivals since he became Presiding Bishop in November 2015.

May God bless the work of the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church!

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate