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The Best Is Yet To Come


Beloveds!


Thank you all kindly for your warm reception of the launch of our Stewardship campaign. The Best is Yet to Come: Preparing for our Future is the theme of this time, and I know it’ll be a marvelous pledge season! Have you heard Sinatra’s song of the same name that inspired our theme? Listen and imagine (loosely!) that it is God singing to us to encourage our faithfulness!


LINK: Frank Sinatra - The Best Is Yet To Come (The First 40 Years) - YouTube


In the meantime, three items for you:


1.  This weekend, Christ Church School (with CCA input and approval) will install two new gates for the protection of their campus and the students and teachers who inhabit it. The one that will impact us at CCA most will be at the juncture between Ascension Chapel and the upper building (where the Choir room is). While we considered other locations, after the devastation at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas in May resulting in over 20 children’s deaths, we determined that we needed to secure the campus as completely as possible. For those who use the Teen Center on a regular basis for meetings, please come see us in the office next week, and we will help facilitate your ease of use/transition, okay? If you have any questions or concerns, please do let me know.
 

2.  You may have seen that we’ve been doing some work in and around our Memorial Garden! Thanks to our Board of Trustees, (Rick Williams, Beth Wickstrom, Mary Ann Bradbury, Elizabeth Karabatsos), several much-needed projects have been addressed including new trees, updated lighting and irrigation, new drainage for rain water, new plantings, and more! Please do offer your thanks to this wonderful team for their commitment, investment, and hard work to see our beloved Memorial Garden well-tended!
 
3. In Diocesan news, 10 of us from CCA will be at Diocesan Convention this weekend in Tucson. Our five delegates are: Mark Hawkins, Carly Davis, Freda Schenk, Carrie & John Harlan—thank them for their service next time you see them! Our clergy and Wardens (Melissa Bull and Janene Smith!) will also be in attendance. Pray for the gathering please—even the business of the church (especially the business of the church?) needs our prayers for God’s will to be done.


Note: new Convention delegates will be elected in January at our parish Annual Meeting. If getting to be involved as a parish rep at the diocesan level is of interest to you, our nominations will open this Sunday, October 23, and you can request to be nominated to be a Convention Delegate! We will elect 5 people and you could be one of them!


Thanks, friends. It is a gift to dwell among you and your faithfulness. Carry on.


Peace,

Mother Erika

The Rev. Erika von Haaren

Interim Rector, Christ Church of the Ascension

Merry Christmas!

By The Rev. Fr. Rod Hurst+ • January 4, 2024
Merry Christmas! Today, this Eleventh Day of Christmas (for us who begin counting on December 25th), I’d like to share some wisdom from the pen of Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. As Bishop of Durham, he was part of the episcopal entourage and inner circle of bishops surrounding Queen Elizabeth II at her Westminster Abbey Coronation in 1953 and, later, Archbishop of York before his elevation to Canterbury in 1961. In the 1980’s, after his retirement from Canterbury, Ramsey was a regular presence at my seminary in Wisconsin where I first learned about him years later. The following is an excerpt from one of Bishop Ramsey’s annual letters to his diocesan clergy on New Year’s Day. This is also good advice for all the people of God and us at Christ Church of the Ascension as we go into 2024 expectant of what lies ahead and grateful for all our many blessings, past, present and future. Here are The Baron Arthur Michael Ramsey’s five tips for the new year. 1. Thank God. Often and always. Thank him carefully and wonderingly for your continuing privileges and for every experience of his goodness. Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow. 2. Take care about confession of your sins. As time passes the habit of being critical about people and things grows more than each of us realize. [He then gently commends the practice of sacramental confession.] 3. Be ready to accept humiliations. They can hurt terribly but they can help to keep you humble. [Whether trivial or big, accept them he says.] All these can be so many chances to be a little nearer to our Lord. There is nothing to fear, if you are near to the Lord and in his hands. 4. Do not worry about status. There is only one status that Our Lord bids us be concerned with, and that is our proximity to Him. “If a man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am there also shall my servant be” (John 12:26). That is our status; to be near our Lord wherever He may ask us to go with him. 5. Use your sense of humor. Laugh at things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh at yourself. Through the year people will thank God for you. And let the reason for their thankfulness be not just that you were a person whom they liked or loved but because you made God real to them. *** Amen! and Happy New Year !!  Grace & peace, Fr. Rod+

Rector's Note for 12/21/23

By The Rev. Fr. Rod Hurst • December 21, 2023
Rector's Note for 12/21/23 As we enter this season of giving in celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord, I want to thank you for your generosity to Christ Church of the Ascension during 2023 in your gifts of time, talent and treasure. I want to say a special thank you also to those who have pledged for 2024! As our 2024 Stewardship Campaign continues, if you haven’t yet completed your pledge card or pledged online, I encourage you to do so as an act of spiritual worship and tangible prayer for the future of the Church in thanksgiving for all of God’s many blessings these past 60 years. Please join me in giving from the heart for the building up of this community of faith to inspire hope and love through worship and service in the Church and in the world. Make Christ Church of the Ascension part of your daily spiritual practice as you prayerfully discern what God is calling you to give in 2024 starting now. PLEDGE HERE Grace and peace, Father Rod+

A Note for Thanksgiving

By The Rev. Fr. Rod Hurst • November 16, 2023
A Note for Thanksgiving My series on the Collects of Thomas Cranmer will continue at a later date; but today I’d like to share with you one of my favorite stories by pastoral care pioneer Howard Clinebell. It speaks to us about the fact that the Church, our church, is not only a house of worship and prayer but a hospital for the broken, where Christ welcomes each person, where they are and for who they are. As Christ's hands and voice we then bring the healing arts of spiritual friendship and Christ-like love to all Christ brings our way. If we were all Christ-like all the time we would have no need for Christ and his Church; but everyday experiences tell us all that we have need of Christ each and every day of our lives—the healed and the healers alike. This charming and cautionary tale tells us what we are meant to be, and what we could become if we lose sight of our mission; but it is a reminder of our potential when we retain and, as necessary, reclaim our Christ-centered focus. Thus we give thanks! Please touch or click the link below to read the story. Lifesaving Station Grace and peace, Fr. Rod+
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