February 2013

ST. PAUL’S EPISTLE 250 Hwy 2 NE • P.O. Box 1225 • Corinth, MS 38835 • 662-286-2922

From the Rector Where will you look for connection this Lent? Lent is a season to pray, fast, study, and give alms—all in preparation for the joy of resurrection we will celebrate at Easter. Bishop’s Bible Challenge: Join Bishop Gray in an online Bible study; you read Genesis day by day, and he writes and emails devotional reflections on the passages. “I invite you to join with me in wrestling with the book of Genesis during this next Lenten season. Genesis contains some of the most familiar of biblical stories ‒ Creation, Noah’s Ark, Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors ‒ but stories which are told to elementary school children in such a way as to rarely enter the souls of adults.” Sign up at www.dioms.org.

Disciples on the Way: "In Jesus' earthly life, he taught his followers that discipleship required commit-ment, sacrifice, and a determination to turn the world toward God. Jesus' message to us is much the same, so we are called to spend this season of Lent learning how to serve Christ intentionally, faithfully, and joyfully." - the Rev. Carol Mead, chaplain at MSU, authored this devotional text. Request a copy from Ann before Ash Wednesday.

St. Paul's Fellowship: Join with your fellow St. Paul's worshipers to reflect on the Lenten journey to pre-pare for Easter. Whether it’s soup suppers with a presentation, a book discussion, or a quiet prayer group, enjoy the company of others these 40 days. Details to be announced soon. Lent is also a good time to try out the practice of Centering Prayer, which meets Wednesdays in the library.

Prepare for confession: Making a confession can be a wonderful spiritual step. You don't need to have One Horrible Sin to get off your chest; confession takes place through the Rite of Reconciliation in the prayer book, and is a brief service of worship that can be helpful in understanding the forgiveness God has for each of us. Please see me if you’d like to make a confession.

Lent Madness: “Based loosely on the NCAA basketball tournament, Lent Madness pits 32 saints against one another in public voting as they compete for the coveted Golden Halo. But it is more than that: Lent Madness is really an online devotional tool designed to help people learn about saints.” Visit www.LentMadness.org for more information, or pick up your bracket in the narthex.

Community engagement: James Meredith, the first African American student admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962, will speak Thursday, February 21, at 3 p.m. at the library. Attend First Methodist’s Lenten Lunches on Wednesdays (I’ll speak on March 6). Commit to volunteering this spring, whether as a tutor or litter picker upper. Skip a meal out, and instead make a donation to the AMEN Food Pantry. Try living on a food stamp budget for a week; allot yourself $4 per person per day, and let your fast be an act of solidarity with and prayer for the poor. Roll your neighbor’s trash bin back from the curb. Ann+

In this Issue

Church Family Life, p. 2

Happy Birthday/Anniversary! p. 2

From the archives, by Jan Grady, p. 2 ECW pre-Valentine’s bake sale on Feb. 10, p. 2 Plans for new doors, p. 2

Calendar, p. 3

Online registration for camp, p. 3

Leadership confer-ence at Gray Center, p. 2

St. Paul’s LINK vol-unteers, p.3

Treasurer’s report, p. 4

Save the date for St. Paul’s Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Join us for food, fun and fellowship! Tuesday, February 12

5:30pm

2

Church Family Life News and notes about our parish family

Please keep the family of Bill Ransom in your prayers after his death January 30. A Burial service was held on Saturday, Feb. 2, and a Committal was held on Tues-day, February 5. His ashes are interred in the St. Paul's Columbarium. Frances Ramer suffered a stroke re-cently, and is receiving therapy in Selmer at the McNairy County Health Care Center. Cards may be sent to P.O. Box 349, Selmer, TN 38375. Hal Dilworth is ex-pecting one final dose of chemotherapy, and will have scans about a month afterward to check on his pro-gress.

Happy Birthday! Dana Bullard, 2nd; Jill Martin, 12th; Barbara Barrett, 14th; Andrew Fraser, 18th; Jimma Lambert, 24th; Ronnie Highland, 24th.

Happy Anniversary! Billie & Cliff Gephart, 2/12.

Is your special day missing? To add your birthday, anniversary, or news, please call or email the church office at stpaulscorinth@gmail.com.

New doors planned for sanctuary

The vestry has asked Jake Bland to pursue his inves-tigation of solid wood doors to replace the hollow core ones at the entrance to the sanctuary. Several parish-ioners have suggested that the solid doors would help decrease noise that filters in from the narthex. Funding for the new doors and installation might be defrayed by member donations which could be designated in memory or honor of loved ones. If you would like to help, designate “Doors” on your check.

ECW will hold pre-Valentine’s Bake sale on February 10

ECW (Episcopal Church Women) will kick off their 2013 fund raising efforts with a bake sale on Sunday, Febru-ary 10. Funds from the sale will go to Trinity Episcopal Church in Mobile, Alabama, which suffered major dam-

age from a tornado on Christmas day. All St. Paul’s bakers (both men and women) are encouraged to bring baked goods for the sale. You can support a good cause and buy some sweet treats for Valentines Day (or for pre-Lent indulging if you’re giving up sweets for Lent.)

From the Archives Compiled by Jan Grady

In the early 1990s, the larger Episcopal churches in the Diocese of Mississippi began bringing their personal church banners to the annual Diocesan Council meetings and displaying them proudly as they processed into the opening of the Council. Of course the smaller churches then began ef-forts to get their own banners.

In June 1997 St. Paul's estab-lished a Banner Fund begun with $150 in memorials to Liddon McPeters. Mr. McPeters, a member of the well known, esteemed Corinth family, was a long time president of Security Bank (now Regions) and also served a term as president of the American Bankers Association. The design for the banner was done by long-time former member Helen Moore (now a resident of a retirement community in Memphis); the pole was made by members Larry Hardin and Bill Ransom; the St. Paul's EYC donated the money for the brass stand. The plaque on the stand reads "In Memory Of W. Liddon McPeters 1922-1997".

Leadership Conference in March

The diocese will be offering a Leadership Conference instead of a New Vestry Member and Wardens’ Confer-ence. The Leadership Conference is intended for wardens, vestry and mission committee members, treasurers, fi-nance committee members and any one else who is inter-ested. Several people from St. Paul's have attended in the past, and have found it to be a helpful workshop. The date is March 23, 2013 at Gray Center. The morn-ing keynoter will be Donald Romanik of the Episcopal Church Foundation who has received rave reviews from his presentations around the church. In the afternoon, several tracks will be offered: war-dens, new vestry member, treasurer, leadership. Registra-tion information will be posted soon on the vestry bulletin board as well as on the diocesan website http://www.dioms.org/digital_faith/events/3153618

Communion bread bakers

Thank you to Sherry Smith who baked bread for us in January. Cynthia Harrell will be baking bread in February.

Camp Bratton Green summer registration now open online

To register go to graycenter.org and click on the reg-istration link. To finish your camper's registration you will be required to pay a $100 deposit. If you have any questions please call 601-859-1517. St. Paul's and Camp Bratton Green want to make sure your child has a chance to attend. Please let Ann know if we can help make it work with your family budget.

Bishop Gray announces retirement plans and new position on same gender unions

During his opening address to the 186th Annual Council of the Diocese of Mississippi, the Rt. Rev. Dun-can M. Gray, III, announced the beginning of a process which will lead to the election of a Bishop Coadjutor on May 3, 2014. Gray said that he plans to continue as Di-ocesan Bishop until February 2015, at which time the new bishop will succeed him.

In his address, Gray also announced a discernment process which congregations may voluntarily enter in order to gain his permission to bless same gender un-ions. While a general ban on the blessing of same gen-der unions remains in place, he will allow congrega-tions which self-select and undergo a thorough process

to move toward blessings of same gender unions. He said that the blessing liturgy provisionally ap-proved by the 2012 General Convention is “not mar-riage,” something which would not be allowed under state law and “which my own conscience would not accept. No priest, no vestry, no congregation will be asked to do anything that violates their conscience. This liturgy will only be authorized in congregations that have met” the criteria and have petitioned for per-mission. See more of the Bishop’s speech and details of the bishop search process at http://dioms.org/.

1-3 Diocesan Council; Jackson 10 ECW Bake Sale 12 Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, 5:30pm 13 Ash Wednesday Services, 12 noon, 6:30pm 18 Vestry Meeting, 6:30pm 19 Pastoral Care Committee, 3pm 21 Mission Mississippi at Martha’s Menu, 11:30 24 AMEN Sunday

3

February Hands-on outreach making a difference

LINK, The Healthy Communities-Healthy Youth Initia-tive of Corinth-Alcorn County, has a volunteer tutor program at the Corinth Elementary School. Of the 16 LINK tutors there now, 6 are from St. Paul's. THANK YOU Ryland Bruhwiler, Jan Grady, Barbara Kachmar, Amanda Patrick and Marilyn Scheitner for saying yes when I invited St. Paul's people to join me in this project. We do hands-on outreach with kindergarten children who need a boost to become suc-cessful in school. Tutors donate one hour per week during the school day, on the day and time of our choice. We meet with two children one on one for 30 minutes each to work on skills their teachers assign. The teacher provides materials to use and describes how each child needs help. The tutor uses creativity to make the skill building enjoyable. They may work on learning sight words and sounds of letters, the al-phabet, rhyming words or counting. The program goes from early October until the end of April. There are more kindergartners who could benefit from having a tutor. Anyone, man or woman, who has an hour or more per week to spare, please consider using this time to make a difference in the life of a child. If you are in-terested in joining the men and women who tutor, please contact me.

Barbara Barrett

What’s happening in Sunday School ?

Preschool children in the classroom adjoining nursery, with Amanda Patrick.

School-aged children in classroom 46AD with Susan Ad-ams.

Adults – discussion of Richard Rohr's Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality .

Are you receiving St. Paul’s Weekly E-News? To subscribe, please email stpaulscorinth@gmail.com. If you cannot get to church and would like to receive Holy Communion or a visit at your home or the hospital, please call the church at 286-2922. Did you miss a Sunday? Sermons are posted on our website when available. Listen to the audio files at: www.stpaulscorinth.dioms.org/worship/sermons.html Do you receive The Mississippi Episcopalian? If you would like a sub-scription to the Mississippi Episcopa-lian, the monthly newspaper of the Diocese of MS, please let the church office know.

Have you liked St. Paul's on Facebook yet?

December Treasurer’s Report

Operating Fund Month YTD Budget Pledges 8,632 100,195 107,750 Plate 1,1883 19,403 14,250

Building Fund

Building Fund Balance 44,700 Mortgage Balance 47,196

St. Paul's Church P.O. Box 1225 Corinth, MS 38835

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Sunday Schedule: 9:30 Holy Eucharist Nursery available 9:15-12:00 The Rector and Vestry: The Rev. Ann Benton Fraser, Rector Susan Adams, Senior Warden Paul Smith, Junior Warden Tom Soltz, Treasurer Beth Bauer Jake Bland Dana Bullard Francis Criss Darrell Davis David Dierks Maggie Dilworth, Clerk Kari Hughes Contact Information: (662) 286-2922 (Mon-Thurs) stpaulscorinth@gmail.com www.stpaulscorinth.dioms.org Deadline: Please send your newsletter submission by the 21st of each month.

Memorials have been given to St. Paul's

in honor of Jean Taylor

by Barbara Barrett, Jo Ann Gilmore, Glennan & Jan

Grady, and Karen & Tommy Lee;

in honor of Ruth Catherine Petty,

by Barbara Barrett;

in honor of Linda Highland,

by Barbara Barrett and Glennan & Jan Grady;

in honor of Bill Ransom,

by Barbara Barrett, Glennan & Jan Grady, Dorothy Hop-

kins, Karen & Tommy Lee, & the Ransom family

in honor of Marjorie Benton,

by Barbara Barrett and Dorothy Hopkins;

and in honor of Sonny Lancaster,

by Glennan & Jan Grady