The theme for this year’s Rally Day is Replenish Your Heart.
Remember our common mission:
To love and serve Christ
To love and serve one another in Christ
To love and serve the world for Christ
Our shared purpose at St. Mark’s is to pour out our hearts in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But we cannot pour out what is empty. If we are to pour out the love of Christ in return to Christ himself, to one another, and to the world, then we must regularly replenish our hearts with his saving love.
On Rally Day we commit to the worship, the learning, and the ministry that replenish our heart and by which we pour our hearts out as a libation. We enroll our children in Christian Formation. Youth programs resume in full swing. Adult Christian Formation returns to a full calendar. We sign up for new ministries and recommit to ongoing ministries. The music programs resume in earnest. We gather together again as a faith family after being scattered by vacation and summer activities.
This year we will see a special emphasis on Christian Formation and Family Ministries. With the arrival of our new Canon—Mtr. Hope Benko—we will be restructuring our nursery program, reviewing programs for children of all ages, supporting families in faith formation, and moving toward small group ministries. There will be a number of excellent offering for adults on Sunday. Among those offerings will be my own class: a study of the Sermon on the Mount. We will follow Jesus’ own teaching about how to be disciples in our everyday lives. Fr. Michael Millard will off an excellent series entitled Emmaus. During the week, we will offer NOOMA on Wednesday evenings (there will not be an ALPHA class; this was a miscommunication) on dates to be announced. And I will teach “What’s Love Got to Do With It” for three Tuesday nights in October (NOOMA will be in recess at that time). Our new Canon for Communications and Evangelism—Fr. Andrew Benko—will help keep us informed about all the offerings available to us.
Rally Day is upon us. I could not be more excited to begin a full program year with all of you. Don’t miss this special day! And don’t miss the opportunity to help friends find a faith community that will replenish their hearts for joyful service in Christ’s name. St. Mark’s is a very special place and exciting things are happening. Come replenish your heart on the 16th of August.
