Trinity Stories

Dear Friends,

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones about getting more exercise, spending less time on social media, or finally getting organized. You haven’t? Me neither. It’s not because I have nothing to work on (the list is long!) It’s because I would be setting myself up to fail at keeping any of my resolutions past Groundhog Day.

The practice of making New Year’s resolutions is an ancient one. Archeologists believe that the first recorded people to make them were the Babylonians some 4,000 years ago. For them, the New Year began in March when crops were planted. Kings were crowned during the festival, or subjects renewed their loyalty to the reigning king. Commitments were made to pay any debts owed to the gods, and promises were made to returned anything that had been borrowed. Keeping promises meant that the gods would bestow favor on you. Failing to keep promises. . . well, that was no something one dared do in the ancient world where the gods could be capricious and the consequences dire.

The early Christians picked up on the religious aspect of making resolutions, and the first day of the year became a time when one thought about past mistakes and committed to doing better in the future. John Wesley, the Anglican priest (and co-founder of the Methodist Church) pioneered what we now know as “watch night” services. He intended the services to be an alternative to the boisterous celebrations. It was, he thought, much better to be singing hymns and reading scripture than to have people partake of the alcohol-soaked parties common at the time (and, of course, afterwards.)

Resolution-making these days is mostly a secular thing, with people making promises to themselves rather than to a deity. And what we typically resolve involves some kind of self-improvement. If we are honest, it’s hard for most of us to change patterns and habits even when we want to.

Here’s my alternative proposal – and quelle surprise, it is a throwback to the time when people’s resolutions were religious in nature:

Set a pattern of when you will attend church in person and follow it. (Note that I didn’t say, attend church more often – although I could get on board with that. No, what I am saying is set a pattern and stick with it.

When I was a first-year seminarian my advisor, Dick Norris, gathered his new advisees and told us to create a matrix of when we would attend services in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. If I remember correctly, there were 19 services each week while school was in session (it was seminary after all, where clergy are formed for their lives of prayer.) Dr. Norris said, pick the ones you will attend and then go to those services whether you feel like it or not. Don’t go to the services that aren’t on your matrix even if you feel like it. Sounds strange, I suspect.

His point was our prayer lives should not be dependent on our feelings – that we ought to pray because God wants to be in relationship with us no matter what’s going on with us or how we are feeling – good days and bad days, happy times and sad times, times when we weren’t “feeling it” and times when we were. The point wasn’t our feelings. The point was responding to God’s deep desire to connect with us.

You may not be preparing for ordination, but Dick Norris’ counsel still pertains. At Trinity, we don’t have 19 services a week, we have (mostly) 8 each month. Pick some and show up.

How many should I pick, you ask? To give you a baseline, the Pew Research Center reports that 62% of Christians attend church once or twice a month. You know your current pattern. Maybe you want to continue it in 2024. If you attend Trinity once a month – to put it in percentages – if you attend one service a month, you are here for 12.5% of the services offered. No matter how many services you commit to attending in a month, stick with it.

By the way, what I’ve been talking about is not some kind of self-improvement program. The resolution is about you, to be sure, but it’s about your relationship with God through Jesus Christ and your relationship with your fellow members here at Trinity.

A lot will happen at Trinity in the next twelve months, and you get to decide how much you want to be part of it – anywhere from 0% to 100%. Have fun thinking and praying about it. Whatever you decide, Happy New Year!

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

In the early 1980’s. I served on the staff of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo, NY. Priests who serve at cathedrals are called Canons, so I was known as Canon Applegate. (And yes, there were a lot of jokes made about my being a “big gun.”)

The cathedral in Buffalo had a long-standing tradition of musical excellence based on the English model of having a choir of men and boys and a separate girls choir. Both choirs toured regularly in England and the United States. In return, choirs on tour frequently made a stop at the cathedral.

One Advent, St. Paul’s hosted the famous choir of King’s College, Cambridge, the choir known for the annual broadcast of the Service of Nine Lessons & Carols. Needless to say, the event drew a huge crowd; the church was packed.

Toward the end of their program, the choristers and gentlemen of the choir sang seasonal favorites – many of them carols well-known to aficionados of the English choral tradition. As many times as I had listened to recordings or tuned in to the Service of Lessons and Carols on Christmas Day, nothing prepared me for hearing the choir sing live in a beautiful space with wonderful acoustics.

The last piece Kings College choir sang was “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to the English tune Forest Green rather than the tune that’s more familiar to Americans, St. Louis. The words to the hymn were written by Phillips Brooks, who served as rector of another Trinity Episcopal Church – this one in Boston. The last stanza of the hymn is a prayer, and it is my prayer for all of us here at Trinity Toledo as we celebrate Christmas 2023:

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Merry Christmas on behalf of the Wardens & Vestry and Staff of Trinity!

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

Today, the Alcoholic Anonymous group that meets at Trinity celebrates its thirty-second anniversary of gathering here. This church, like many other churches, has opened its doors to A.A., recognizing that the way A.A. helps alcoholics recover – built on the simple idea of one alcoholic sharing with another – has made it possible for thousands of people to gain and maintain sobriety.

The A.A. group at Trinity meets Monday – Friday at noon. Like every other A.A. group, the one that meets here welcomes anyone who has a desire to stop drinking, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, income or profession. Participation is free.

A.A.’s program begins with the first step: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable” and continues through the twelfth step – the Twelve Steps, as they are known. Combined with the Twelve Traditions, they provide a path to personal recovery and the basis for the organization of the group.

Bill W. and Dr. Bob are recognized as A.A.’s founders. Both had initially been members of the Oxford Group, a non-denominational movement modeled after first-century Christianity. The tenets and practices of an American Oxford Group greatly influenced the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

An Episcopal priest also had a significant role in A.A.’s founding. Sam Shoemaker was rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City which was the United States headquarters of the Oxford Group. Bill W. attended Oxford Group meetings there and became close friends with Shoemaker. Shoemaker helped start other Oxford Group chapters including one in Akron, Ohio, where Dr. Bob, a surgeon, became involved. Bill W. met Dr. Bob during a business trip to Akron. He worked with Dr. Bob, who had been unable to stay sober, for 30 days – one alcoholic helping another – the model that has continued throughout the organization’s history. Dr. Bob drank his last drink on June 10, 1935, marked by A.A. as the date of its founding.

How significant was Shoemaker in A.A.’s founding? Bill W. once wrote that “Sam Shoemaker was one of A.A.’s indispensables. Had it not been for his ministry to us in our early time, our Fellowship would not be in existence today.” In another place, he wrote: “The early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else.”

For people who have a problem with alcohol, A.A. has a simple program that works. How blessed Trinity is to have them as one of our building partners! Happy 32nd anniversary.

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

Since 2003, the Applegates have lived in Granville, Ohio – a quaint college town (Denison University) that is a New England village transplanted in Central Ohio in 1805. Granville has maintained its ties to the past, preserving a historic district that boasts over 100 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. It shares with Lake Woebegon the idea that it is a town “that time forgot and decades cannot improve.”

Each year, the Chamber of Commerce sponsors a Christmas Candlelight Walk on the first Saturday in December featuring musical performances of various kinds, businesses sponsoring open houses, horse drawn carriage rides, and a visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus.

In preparation for the event, fresh cut fir trees are set up along Broadway. Children from the elementary school make ornaments and walk to the village center to decorate the trees with them – each class accepting responsibility for a tree. My wife, Terry, is in her 20th year teaching first grade in the school, and annually leads her students to take part in the tradition. This year, for the first time anyone can remember, one of the trees went missing. It was the tree her class had decorated. As the local newspaper asked, “Who in the name of Whoville would do such a thing?” Didn’t they know that little children had made the decorations?

The mystery was solved quickly when Granville police officers found the tree in the Denison University dorm of two young men, who, as the police chief put it, “imbibed a little too much and made a silly mistake while in a really good mood.” The tree was returned, the students apologized, and the matter resolved. Such is life in a quaint college town.

Unlike the Grinch, the students were not trying to stop Christmas from coming. Nor did their hearts need to grow several sizes. But we all know people whose hearts need to grow, and we certainly know from reading other news stories that Christmas won’t come this year for many people in war torn places around the world – certainly not the bucolic, pastoral Christmas so often bathed in nostalgic longing for an idyllic holiday.

As we move through the season of Advent – this season of preparation – what are we preparing for? I certainly hope it’s more than Currier & Ives – sleigh bells and tinsel – holly and ivy. I hope we are preparing for the coming of God’s light and love once again in Jesus – light that shines in the darkness and love that always wins.

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate