STEAMING SPRING SALE

A wide assortment of both new and gently used books are now available at Cathedral Books & Gifts. Unbelievable Prices! Stock up for the Summer.

Open 10:00 till 3:00 Monday - Friday
Open between services on Sundays 

We will celebrate the end to our 2011-2012 Church School year on Pentecost Sunday (May 27). Our last official week of Church School is May 20.

Our Senior High Youth and parents are welcome to attend a special series on the Psalms throughout the summer during regular Church School hours.

Keep an eye out for a special summer children's music program beginning in June as well.

As Bishop Charleston approaches the end of his interim deanship, he instructs St. Paul's about how to welcome the new dean with a healthy church. Listen to Bishop Charleston's April 29 sermon reminding us of our obligations:

• pastoral care and lay leadership
• transparency and communication
• stewardship and commitment

St. George’s Guild reaches out to those in need in the downtown Oklahoma City area, providing over 10,000 meals a year and other goods and services.

May’s Item - canned meat and fish

St. George’s Guild always needs soap, shampoo, toothpaste and other staple items. Please place any contributions in the basket at the Reception Desk in the Education Building.

The Episcopal Church Women of St. Paul's are sending out birthday postcards to St. Paul's Cathedral parishioners. If you are unsure if the church office has your birth month and day please provide this information to the office so we do not miss wishing you a happy birthday!

Bishop Steven Charleston has written a new book called "Hope As Old As Fire". Described as a "spiritual diary", this book is a collection of the daily meditations Bishop Charleston wrote each morning throughout 2011.

In the beginning of that year he joined Facebook, the global social network online. As part of his daily devotions,
he spontaneously wrote his prayerful thoughts each morning between 4:00 and 5:00am. At first, only a handful of people read them, but as news spread about the depth and beauty of his words, hundreds more joined. Today over 1,000 people are part of this unique spiritual community.

In response to their requests for a collection of his meditations, Bishop Charleston created "Hope As Old As Fire". It will be available for the first time at the Full Circle Book Store, 50 Penn Place in Oklahoma City with a special book signing at 7:00pm on Wednesday, April 25. As of May 7, 2012, it will be available online at www.redmoonpublications.com.

New Foyer Dinner Groups are forming in April.

These are very informal groups meeting for a meal and fellowship, the groups stay together approximately six months. Each couple or person hosts one meal, furnishing the main course, while others supply the rest of the meal. You are in Foyers until you notify us that you are
dropping out.

Please contact Julie Mills at 848-4142 if you would like to join or if no longer wish to participate so we have an accurate count for forming new groups.

As many of you know, St. Paul’s has taken an increasing role in the marathon activities in recent years. As always, we need volunteers to provide fellowship to runners and to monitor the parking lots on Sunday, April 29th at 5:00 a.m.

I know it is early but people who have volunteered in the past have always enjoyed the experience. We could use 4-6 people that morning. We also need a few people to come down on Saturday to put up the chains on the parking lots.

We are adding a new role this year. St. Paul’s would like to “staff” one of the expo volunteer stations if we have enough interest. Most likely, this would be on Friday, April 27th.

If you are interested in any of these positions, please contact Amy Fischer at 210-6513 (cell), 840-9609 (home), or amyfischer@oklahomacounsel.com Thanks!

St. Paul’s Capital Campaign
88 pledges - and one grant - totalling $1,052,097.00

Do you remember the images of the old fashioned "barn raising"? It is an 18th/19th century tradition when neighbors would gather to help raise a barn in a single day: all pitching in to make the work go faster and more successfully.

That's the St. Paul's Capital Campaign in a nutshell.

This is the time when we all are neighbors. When we all are raising something to shelter our harvest. When we all are needed to make the work go faster and more successfully. We need 100% of our community to be involved. Not only to raise the money we need, but just as important, to raise the Spirit of our community.

Any level of contribution you can make is important.

Please contribute. Please pledge. You can do so easily online. And it will mean so much.

Our goal is in sight. Please join your neighbors in doing your part to reach that goal.

Latest news:  St. Paul's was just awarded a $50,000 grant from the Kirkpatrick Foundation for our Capital Campaign.

Thank you!!

Booklets or Prayer Books?

A message from Bishop Steven Charleston.

I know that after our Lenten experiment of using the Prayer Books in our pews to worship rather than printed booklets, many people have been asking which of these choices we will use in the days to come.

The answer is: I don't know. My plan was to give us a chance to experience the BCP as the traditional form of Episcopal worship, then let the St. Paul's community discuss this experience as part of the worship planning with the new Dean. I believe this must be a community decision. After Easter, given the positive response to our experiment, we will continue with the use of the shorter format bulletins until the end of the interim, the last Sunday of May. Then, until the new Dean arrives, we will return to the use of the booklets.

Beyond that, the final choice will be up to each of you, the people of St. Paul's, in conversation with your new Dean. As the interim, my task was not to make changes in the way our cathedral worships, but rather to help the community adapt to change.

And, if you stop to think about it, that is just what we did: we adapted to change.

For those of you who liked using the Prayer Book, you got a chance to feel what it was like to experience worship as most of your Episcopal contemporaries do. Using the traditional form of worship that has been an integral part of our Anglican identity.

For those who liked using the booklets, you had the experience of regaining your skills in handling the old fashioned BCP service and you tried on the traditions that went into the design of the booklet that you have come to expect as part of the culture of the cathedral.

There were no "winners and losers" in this experiment: just members of the same family being generous in their willingness to try something different. For many of us who live in a world of competition and passive aggressive behavior, this very common sense, adult and essentially kind style of behavior was a learning in itself.

It shows that at St. Paul's we can share in change without running to our "side" of the argument, without whispering or complaint, without rancor or division. In fact, we can enjoy the experience of change as something refreshing, enlivening, and encouraging. Our small Lenten journey into the Book of Common Prayer was not a detour into change for the sake of change, but rather a very worthwhile reminder that we are a church of open-minded and experienced Christians who do not need to make a fetish out of any preference, but are very able to allow our friends to express their opinions freely and with respect.

I think you can imagine why this kind of culture will be helpful to the new Dean. Not only when it comes to worship choices at St. Paul's, but to the one hundred and one other things that will call this community to grow during his or her tenure in our community.

So when she or he arrives, one of the first tasks that will be placed before the new Dean will be the need to decide, along with all of you, an answer to the questions about your style of worship. You may stay with only one option. You may just as easily use both. Or any combinations of them you desire. But the important thing is: you will make these changes as friends.

Which, after all, is what Jesus called us to be.

As our effort to protect St. Paul's from further water damage continues to gain strength through the generosity of our people, I think it good to celebrate one of the most important aspects of this stewardship ministry: common sense.

It makes sense to fix a leaking roof before it gets worse. It makes sense to protect such irreplaceable assets as our windows and organ. It makes sense to get out of debt so you stop paying high interest rates. All of these basic ideas are at the heart of our capital campaign.

But the common sense doesn't end there. We also have the common sense to make sure the work we are about to do is done right. Our plan calls for a checks-and-balance system between a project manager who is a trained architect/engineer, and, a contractor expert in the work of repairing roofs and walls. We know from our Lutheran neighbors down the street whose roof is the same as ours: you can get the leaks fixed once and for all. It makes sense to do it right.

Finally, we have the common sense to practice sound financial management. We are committed to a balanced budget, to fiscal responsibility. It is common sense to show people you know how to handle money if you are asking them to invest: and that is exactly what we are doing at St. Paul's. So please make your pledge to our capital campaign! We can't do it without you.

Thank you, +Steven

"lex orandi, lex credendi"

Welcome to Lent at St. Paul's!

This year, in keeping with our year-long theme of "Back To Basics", we will be offering an immersion in the very ground of what it means to be an Episcopalian: The Book of Common Prayer. Through worship, study and fellowship, we will explore the rich history, theology and resources of this definitive work of Anglican genius.

If your Latin is a little rusty, "lex orandi. lex credendi" is a phrase from a 5th century theologian, Prosper of Aquitaine, that means "the law of prayer establishes the law of belief". In other words, what and how we pray defines what and how we believe.

That is Anglicanism in a nutshell. Or, to describe it more fully, consider these words by the Rev. Jeffrey Lee in his work, Opening The Prayer Book:

The prayer book does not offer precise doctrinal formulations that must be adhered to; rather, it provides the forms that outline our practice of the Christian faith, shaped principally by worship. If you ask an Anglican what it means to belong to the church, the answer might well be, "Come and worship with us." Being an Anglican means doing what the church does – and what the church does, first and foremost, is worship the living God. It is out of our common worship that our understanding of God proceeds and our ethical and moral decision-making takes shape.

To renew our awareness of ourselves as Anglicans, we will renew our familiarity with the Book of Common Prayer. We will study it, use it, and reflect on it as our shared Lenten discipline. We will rejoice in its ancient heritage, while enjoying how it speaks to us today with language of grace and words of meaning.

So get out your Prayer Book! Start carrying it to church! A journey is about to begin and you will need your guide book to find your way through its landscape of faith and wonders!

The Guild of St. George needs plastic grocery bags.

Recycling at its finest! Please save your plastic grocery bags for our clients in the Food Pantry. You may place them in the basket at the Reception Desk in the Education Building.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

St. Paul’s Cathedral is having a mug drive!

Please donate unwanted mugs that are in good shape for use during coffee hour. You will not get your mugs back so make sure it is not one of your special mugs. If you have been bringing your mug on Sundays, you can take it home and leave it there.

Through the mug drive, we hope to have enough mugs for everyone. And you can still order fair trade and organic coffee.

If you have any questions please call Ferrella March at 405-314-3757 or catch her at church.

The results of the elections at St. Paul's Annual Meeting on January 29, 2012, are as follows.

Vestry - 4 positions (all are 3-year terms)

• Lauren Bass
• Don Resler
• Sharon Rysted
• Evan Walter

Convention Delegates - 9 positions:

• Marshall Binns
• Ann Bonsteel
• Hank Bowen
• Gary Derrick
• Dian Everett
• Mary Lu Jarvis
• Larry Joplin
• John Koons
• Steve Parker
• First Alternate:  Ferrella March
• Second Alternate:  Ann Murray

 

St. Paul's Annual Report for 2011 will be presented at the annual meeting.  Click here to read your advance copy.

Please Print the Pledge Year

If you are still paying your 2011 pledge, please mark the memo section "2011"; likewise if you are paying your 2012 pledge, please mark accordingly. This helps the bookkeeper greatly during this busy time.

Please read about our impressive slate of Vestry Nominees for this year.  Each nominee has written about his or her Qualities and Experiences as well as what he or she sees as the Needs and Concerns of our cathedral parish. We will be voting on them at the annual meeting on January 29.

Our Confirmation/Reception Class 2012 will begin January 15, 2012. Click here to view the syllabus, including class schedule, required reading list, and other information is available online.

We are publishing an updated St. Paul's Directory and need your help! It is time for us to update our database with any changes, additions or deletions that may have occurred in your family.

• Have you changed your phone number? Cancelled your home phone?
• E-mail address?
• Have you recently moved or are you planning to move soon?
• Are all of your children still at home and are they all included in your membership record?
• Is your other household information correct?

If you have not already informed the church office about changes to your record, please let us know now so that the information is in the 2011 St. Paul's Directory is correct.

There is a proofing copy of the directory at the front desk in the reception area, so you can see if your records are up-to-date and write in whatever changes are necessary.  You may also call the office at 235-3436 or email spcoffice@stpaulsokc.org to make changes.