The first task of congregational leadership is to create a congregational culture that embraces change rather than resists it and deconstructs the mythical categories of congregational health such as harmony, reassurance and security.  The erroneous presumption of congregational life is that if everyone is happy then the congregation is healthy, or worse, when someone is unhappy it is the task of the leader or the system itself to make the unhappiness go away.  Change creates loss and loss evokes grief and therefore there will always be tracks of grief in congregational life even at the very same time there is anticipation and celebration of what is evolving.  Get good at managing change, naming grief and allowing unhappiness.

Check back tomorrow for #2

The Anglican Communion - What a joke!

The Anglican Communion - what a joke!  What was it other than the remnant of an arrogant Colonial empire, much as the Vatican is the shrunken remains of the Roman Empire.  They both remind me of a dying Darth Vader as Luke removes the mask that was keeping the Dark Lord alive: a festering body animated by the escaping magic and machinery of state power. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury - what a joke! A tottering academic mortally wounded by the tragic British lust for order over all else.  He denies his own theological and social values in favor of keeping the family together, despite the domestic violence perpetrated by the African princes that covet prestige and privilege. 

The Episcopal Church - what a joke when we wring our hands over whether or not we are embraced by the international House of Lords.  Suck it up, affirm our values and move on.  Let’s stop playing this polite game with bishops representing theological and ecclesiastical traditions that have more in common with extremely conservative Evangelical Christianity than with the via media.  It is okay if we are The Episcopal Church with fewer relatives in the world than we had yesterday. 

Christian unity - what a joke!  Paul’s high-minded rhetoric aside, Christians have never agreed on who or what Jesus is.  We have never been of one mind or body when it comes to theological, sacramental, liturgical or spiritual practice.  We are as wonderfully and cruelly divided as Islam, Buddhism and Judaism and the only reason we have ever pretended otherwise is because of religious empire.  It is the myth of empire that we are one and that we should be one.  We are not, never were and do not need to be.  There is absolutely no reason we should even want to be one harmonious whole because there is no single truth in the Bible, in the Tradition or in any known revelation of a God that may be One but has never been known in one way.  Let’s get on with it!

Okay, enough said.  Have a good day.

What if…Jesus did not die for your sins?

What if Jesus did not die for your sins and you are still a Christian?  Then you shouldn’t be too lonely living among the seventy-five percent of the world’s six and a half billion people who, if they ever thought about it, would also be discombobulated by the idea Jesus died for the sins of prosperous North Americans as well as abandoned Brazilian street children centuries before any of them ever existed.  Joining that throng of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Atheists and more flavors of religion than Baskin Robbins has ice cream are fellow Christians who also find the idea of the Atonement far fetched.

If we simply break down the equation that purports to add up to Jesus as the counterbalance for the sins of all good Christians for the past two thousand years and until the end of time, it becomes clear that the arithmetic is not there. The equation gets set up in the following way. God arranged for his only son – who by the way, is God and not a separate person of the divine multiple personality named Trinity – to be betrayed by friends and then arrested, tortured and executed by the Romans for insurrection.  Along the way God carefully entrapped the hapless hordes of first century Galileans and Judeans of the Abrahamic faith in a net of guilt for Jesus’ death and that way the thousand year old covenant could be taken away from Israel and given to the Romans.  (That’s right, the folks who had executed Jesus for insurrection).  But wait, don’t give up in confusion yet.  This whole Paschal drama is set in motion so that twenty centuries later: Bill Clinton could gain forgiveness for oral sex with an office intern in the very same way that George W. Bush can win forgiveness for initiating and carrying out a war in which thousands have been killed.  Never mind the question of whether God has the power and will to arrange history in advance, the problem of why God would do such a thing leads to multiple questions about what kind of God would do such a thing.

Routinely over the past ten years I have tuned in on this subject with long-time Christians, people deeply invested in the Church and who keep it alive via councils, committees, bake sales and Habitat for Humanity crews.  Once a safe environment is established in which members feel they can offer their critiques and doubts without recrimination or scandal, a rejection of Atonement theology is the norm, not the exception.  Too often, because few congregations establish cultures of openness and authentic inquiry, members feel like moles of doubt burrowing underneath the crust of declared beliefs.  Little do they realize that the theological ideas and assumptions espoused from the pulpit and through liturgical language are not universally upheld by those gathered around them in worship.  The repression of disbelief, by intention or by neglect of nurturing a culture of theological openness, prevents a congregation from bringing greater credibility to the Gospel as well as more seekers into the community of faith.

All of this brings us then, to a big fat question about Jesus’ death: if Jesus did not die for our sins then why did he die?  If we read the parts of the equation historically and critically then it adds up in only one way: he died because of human beings not for us.  He died because that is what we do to the agents of God who threaten our arrangements of power and wealth. The Romans were prolific killers of rebels and provocateurs and Jesus was executed as one or the other, or both.  We have only to look upon the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador as he raised the bread at the pinnacle moment of the Eucharist.  Just as we can dig around in the politics of The Passover, in the paschal drama of the Romero story we can trace the fingerprints on the rifle back to the Salvadoran Government, the Roman Catholic Church so thoroughly intertwined with the power elite and death squads in El Salvador, Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II who were complicit in the ways they managed the suppression of the Liberation Theology Movement and finally, and most completely, The United States who perfectly played the part of Roman Empire.  This story has been played out over and over and over again all around the world. 

The notion of Jesus dying for such a supernatural act as the atonement of all sins must have began with first century followers of Jesus struggling to reconcile dashed hopes and sudden grief by remembering their Abraham and Isaac story.  Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac became a theological lens through which to see the death of Jesus upon the cross, even one-upping it when applied to God and Jesus – which I would guess was applied poetically rather than historically.  It then required centuries of stewing in the crock pot of Christian empire for it to steep into a full blown Atonement-ology.  What must have begun as a desperate explanation of the inexplicable and ignoble death of the Messiah has come to so thoroughly define Jesus and Christianity that it nearly annihilates the far more significant and subversive teachings of Jesus.

To begin with, let’s acknowledge that most worshippers have not committed sins so grievous as to warrant anyone’s death in compensation for them.  The sins of omission and commission perpetrated by millions of Christians are of a garden variety such that God’s requirement of so steep a price as Jesus’ torture and execution can only be perceived as despotic cruelty.  No matter how we slice the interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross through the lens of Abraham and Isaac it always adds up to incoherent theology at best and appalling theology at worst. 

How much more powerful and compelling then, to look at the silhouette of the cross as the shape of human agency when our perch on power and privilege is threatened?  Read from this perspective, The Passion is actually about what human beings do instead of what God does, and consequently the narrative becomes a great deal more credible, as does Christianity itself.  Jesus died because of our sins rather than for them.  He did not want to die, he wanted to change his world just as we want to change ours.  He died trying to change his world and in that willful vulnerability we have a model for our own spiritual activism.  When it comes to our sins, Jesus is not a silver bullet that wipes them away.  So, we are either going to have to come up with another spiritual scrub brush or truly accept that God is merciful and gracious in spite of our best efforts to stay alienated.

What if Jesus was not God?”

What if Jesus was not God – and you are still a Christian?  Then it would probably make your theological DNA a more nearly perfect match with the people who lived, worked and played with Jesus than that of most 21st century Christians.  Those who knew Jesus well enough to eat with him would never have called him “God,” as in the second person of the Trinity, even after the resurrection experience.  They may have called him “Messiah” but they did not mean by that what orthodox Christian doctrine has come to mean by its translation “Christ.” In what has come to be known as “Peter’s Confession” (Mk 8:27-33 and parallels) we hear Peter proclaim Jesus as “Messiah” but since that was a casserole term and not a precise title in the first century we have no idea what Peter really meant by it. What a liberating idea that we can get underneath the imperial overlay of doctrinal formulas intended to wreak conformity on all Christians everywhere and find in the Gospels vagueness, confusion and conflict about Jesus from those who knew him best.

Let us leave behind arguments of history and archeology and place the Christological conversation in our moment in time.  While precise numbers can be argued, somewhere around sixty percent of the United States population as a whole is not worshipping on Sunday morning and while many of them may claim membership in a Christian congregation few of them would be considered active members by any meaningful criteria.  In the Northeast and the Northwest the minority of active Church-goers is shrinking to the pallid proportions seen in Europe.  I have spent most of the past twenty-five years building congregations hospitable to these elusive candidates for Church membership and I can tell you that Jesus is a huge stumbling block for them.

Once they work their way past the knee-jerk reaction to Jesus as the poster-child for theologically and politically conservative Christians who they assume compose 90% of all Christian congregations, they face the “god-thing.” Nothing in their experience, nor mine or most everyone else I have ever met, even hints at the possibility of a creature that would qualify as fully human and fully divine.  Faced with a choice between trusting their own experience and trusting the words of religious institutions that bear the burden of a sketchy track record on everything from human rights to incarnating their own espoused values of love and acceptance, these folks that have become allergic to Church do the healthy thing and trust their own experience. 

In fact personal experience is perhaps the greatest stumbling block to a religion that constantly asks and actually expects people to trust it over experience knowledge.  Think about it: what kind of person will place trust in the doctrines of an institution above their own experience?  The answer is people who can be easily manipulated, abused, confused or guided in exchange for the mollification of anxiety about things beyond their own control.  I would rather build a congregation upon the foundation of tough-minded skeptics and antidisestablishmentarians who can smell authenticity when they find it and are quick to raise the alarm when it is leaving the room. 

Jesus does not need to be God in order for him to retain his role at the center of Christian theology.  Buddha, Moses and Mohammed are doing just fine in their respective roles without the god-thing.  Let’s face it Jesus would not have become a Herculean action hero if Christianity had remained a Semitic religious movement instead of taking a severe turn toward Greece and Rome.  Jesus as a fully human person anointed by God for a specific task, i.e., Messiah, would still offer us the pithy and subversive wisdom he does today and his teachings and parables would still be as powerful and astonishingly current.  A Christianity passionately engaged in conversation about what Jesus’ messianic task was would provide far more vitality than the defensive bumper-sticker Christianity in which Jesus is Lord and we have to keep reminding everyone of it. 

There will be objections to the godless Jesus based upon snippets of Scripture but the case for Jesus as God is born of ecclesiastical tradition and doctrinal wars far more than from Scripture.  In fact, in Scripture there is a plurality of voices with the editor of each Gospel offering a different point of view from each other and from Paul, whose point of view clearly evolves over time.  There is nothing in Hebrew tradition before Jesus or since that could make the case for Jesus as God without tortured machinations applied to them like fraudulent numbers squeezing out a desired sum.  So while the debate can rage about the god-thing we need to embrace it as a legitimate debate between Christians rather than imagining it pits Christians against Unbelievers.  The crumpling of ecclesiastical empire has freed us from the forced homogeneity of beliefs and practices (always a denial of the actual miscellany of belief) and is allowing us to hear many more voices within Christianity.  The spectacular diversity of beliefs and worship styles in the world today demonstrates a growing vitality to be celebrated rather than feared as if order and the pretense of unity were our most cherished belongings.

There are millions of people in the United States with deep spiritual yearnings and a gapping hole in their lives that they do not know is the absence of community.  Jesus need not be a stumbling block to their participation in our communities of faith so long as our communities offer the openness that Jesus hosted at his table.  We need not require that people believe Jesus is God and their personal savior simply because that is one of the proclamations of historic Christianity.  We can proclaim Jesus as Messiah and engage in vigorous debate about what his mission was and that will deliver us to a focus on what he said and taught instead of ineffable arguments about his nature.  A new day has dawned when others will see Christianity as a field of a thousand flowers blossoming in the sun instead of one son standing like a guardian statue.  There are millions of people in the United State who think they are allergic to Christianity because they have never been properly introduced and they await our welcome. 

Trinity @ 7 (June 6)

Was it the bird? (June 6)

What’s Your Story? (May 23)

Trinity @ 7 Makes the Headlines!

Church’s Sunday night gathering is more spiritual than religious
THE LOW-KEY, NO PRESSURE SPIRITUALITY OF ‘TRINITY@7’
By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: May 22, 2010, 10:17 am /Published: May 22, 2010, 12:30 am

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an occasional series exploring the broad and changing spectrum of faith in Western New York. Reporter Jay Tokasz focuses on how area religious groups practice their faith, and how the divine is present –or represented –in various forms of gathered worship.

You may hear a reading of Wendell Berry poetry, but probably not a letter from Paul to the Corinthians. You’ll definitely get a sampling of live instrumental jazz without any accompanying bar chatter. A chorus or pipe organ? Not here. There’s no collection plate, no Communion procession and no sermon, either. Most Sunday evenings, there’s not even a mention of Jesus Christ inside Trinity Episcopal Church on Delaware Avenue.

Trinity’s chapel, with stony pillars and fine stained-glass windows, is as traditional a Christian worship space as any in Western New York. But this particular gathering, known simply as “Trinity@7,” could hardly be described as a religious service.

Organizers prefer to call it “an encounter with God without all the religion.”
And it might represent the rumblings of a post-modern spiritual response to society’s seemingly endless obsession with all things multimedia.

“We specifically say it’s not Christian. There’s not a category for it,” said the Rev. Cam Miller, rector of Trinity Episcopal. “It’s a highly ritualized sort of group meditation. It defies any categories that exist. It was designed to make people who are allergic to organized religion comfortable.”
Trinity, which was founded in 1836, still offers traditional and contemporary Episcopalian services on Sunday mornings.

The church started hosting the weekly jazz sessions about seven years ago, and when the weather warms up, Miller often stands outside to greet visitors. They usually hear about the gathering through word of mouth or from a small ad in a local weekly publication.

Participants are encouraged to listen and contemplate. They’re not called upon to sing or shake hands with each other or kneel or mark themselves with the sign of the cross.

On a recent Sunday evening, more than 60 people settled into folding chairs, their faces illuminated only by a sandpit of votive candles. Gentle breezes from an open window above tickled the flames, making them appear to sway with the rhythm of an upright bass played by John Fadale.

Greeter Tess Spangler handed out programs that included pithy quotes from the likes of W. Somerset Maugham, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Helen Keller. Visitors were invited to sit or stand wherever they wanted, including at scattered cafe tables.

Miller opened the session by imploring a “God of grace, of stillness behind the quiet, (to) speak to us in the space between our breaths.” The short prayer and an “Amen” or two were about as religious as the gathering got — fine for Ron Reczek of Buffalo.

“I’ve been an agnostic most of my life, and I don’t really fit in with organized religion,” said Reczek, who stumbled upon the meeting a few months ago and comes back because it relaxes him.

“Even as an agnostic, I need some kind of spiritual help in my daily life,” he said. “It’s sort of a churchy atmosphere, but it’s not overpowering or overwhelming. You might say it’s seductive.”

The readings began with Berry’s “Practice Resurrection” —a poem that encourages us to “every day do something that won’t compute”—and included writings by Denise Levertov and George Ella Lyons.
Miller provided a 10-minute reflection, incorporating the readings into his own lyrical contemplation on the necessity of good listening in all spiritual practice.

“It’s not about talking to God, about making a list and checking it twice,” Miller said. “It’s about listening. Just . . . listening.”

Miller’s Midwestern tenor delivery was smooth, relaxed, understated — and he just as easily could have been introducing Miles Davis tunes on a nonprofit FM station.

To conclude, he welcomed people to light a candle and make the moment “a time of listening, not for anything in particular, but for what is here within us and around us and among us, to listen not for what we want to hear or think we should hear, but to listen for what is here that we might be able to hear.”
Afterward, over cheese, crackers and wine, Gus Perfect said she felt “more peaceful, more centered” by simply sitting down and listening to what was going on and “being reminded you can do that.”

Teresa Maciocha, who has attended the gathering for years and sometimes serves as a reader, noted a certain “energy” about all of the elements—music, church architecture, poetry, soft lighting—coming together seamlessly.

“Every week, I feel differently than when I walked in,” she said. “It speaks to me.”

But was it an encounter with God?

Participants, many of them still wrestling with their beliefs about the divine, hesitated to describe it in exactly those terms.

“I had a transformation through the experience. I should hold it at that,” said Curt Mott of Buffalo, an Erie Community College student who was visiting for the first time with a couple of friends.

For the jazz musicians, too, the evening offered more than just another opportunity to perform. The intimate setting, coupled with attentive listeners, is “completely the way music should be played,” said Richard Griffo, who performed on saxophone and flute.

It allowed him to let down his guard and have a kind of out-of-body experience, he added. “When I’m playing, I’m no longer here entirely,” he said. “You finally get away from the earth you’re on.”

Krista Seddon, who plans the music with Miller, described playing piano during Trinity @ 7 as “an extremely soulful experience.”

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done musically,” she said.

Walking Out of Poverty

Walking Out of Poverty (WOOP)

“When you pray, pray with your feet”
--African Proverb

What is WOOP?
Walking Out of Poverty (WOOP) is a hands-on community outreach project and a way for members of Trinity to serve and impact the lives of our neighbors and reveal the person and message of Christ in all of us.  Trinity is a vibrant and diverse community committed to helping children, youth and adults.  Our church is a place where the reach of God to the world is made plain through our service to people, neighborhoods, to our city and to communities around the world. We, like many others, understand the damage that poverty causes to the bodies and souls of individuals, families and neighborhoods.

It is for that reason, that we began WOOP.  Now in its creation stage, we see WOOP forming real and practical ways our members can contribute to positively impacting the lives of our neighbors and revealing the person and message of Jesus Christ to the world.  WOOP helps members of our congregation make life transforming connections that support a full life and equipped them to impact the world through service.

How You Can Get Involved
There are a few main ways that you can get involved in WOOP.  Please take a moment to browse through our current Support WOOP areas below and see if there is an area that is calling to you!

Support WOOP Areas
Be Interviewed- We are interviewing Trinity members and friends to find out about their experiences, resources, skills and interests in making a difference.
Be an Interviewer- Help the WOOP Core Team collect important information to understand what we have to offer and
Interested in donating or sponsoring our Community Development efforts? If you have resources or skills and are interested in becoming part of the WOOP initiative please contact Erickson, WOOP Co-Chair, at ehc at buffalo.edu

Contact Us:
If you are interested in getting involved in WOOP, if you need additional information or if you have ideas about WOOP, contact Erickson at ehc at buffalo.edu

Who on Trinity’s WOOP Core Team?

Zoe Hollomon, WOOP Co-Chair
Zoe was formally trained as an Urban Planner at Cornell University and found her love for community organizing in Buffalo while training neighborhood leaders at United Neighborhoods Block Club Incubator. Zoe received an M.S. in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University in 2007.  Zoe has attended Trinity Episcopal for two years and has experience in urban housing development and youth organizing. Zoe currently works at the Massachusetts Avenue Project for the Growing Green Urban Agriculture Program and teaches a youth enterprise course to local teens.  Contact Zoe at hollomon at mass-ave.org

Cynthia Lehman, WOOP Co-Chair
Cynthia has a long history of involvement in social justice projects ranging from women’s concerns to improving education and health to peace and international cooperation.  She has been involved professionally and as a volunteer in developing and organizing projects, fund raising, hands-on service, volunteer recruitment and training, and advocacy.  Recently, she accepted a position teaching English to newly settled refugees.  Her current volunteer commitments at Trinity include the Vestry, Healing Ministry, Study Pod facilitator and the cooking team for meals for Trinity members/friends.  She also volunteers two afternoons a week at the FLY After School Program for 6th-8th grade immigrant and refugee students, and is a Lead Facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Program.  She’s the proud mother of Matthew who lives in Cleveland.  Contact Cynthia at lehman.cynthia at gmail.com

Erickson Contreras, WOOP Co-Chair
Erickson is a firm believer in Trinity’s Mission which call us to “gathering the wisdom and resources of the community of faith to name and heal the wounds of injustice”. In addition, he is a strong supporter of building community within Trinity. Recently Erickson completed a 3-year term in the Vestry where he was involved in the early stages of WOOP. Other volunteer commitments have included: Check Out Coordinator for the Starlight Auction and Holiday in the Avenue, Chalice Bearer, Greeter, initiatives aimed at new members and serving as translator in El Salvador. Erickson holds two undergraduate degrees in Accounting and Political Science and an MBA from UB. Currently he is a Senior Accountant for BlueCross BlueShield. Erickson and his wife Jennifer have attended Trinity since 2003. Contact Erickson at ehc at buffalo.edu

Steam Room Diaries With Cam Miller

Cam’s spiritual reflections entitled, “Steam Room Diaries,” will be used as a spring board for discussing encounters with the Holy among other things.  The only prerequisite is to bring some finger food, snack, or drink to share!

8:30 am service discontinued until Fall.

“WARNING! Dangerous Waters!” (May 16)

Trinity @ 7 (May 16)

Get Well! (May 9)

Trinity@7 (May 9)

summer worship tile

Summer, Summer, Summer

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean -

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do 

with your one wild and precious life?
--
Mary Oliver

Summer Worship

Open Air Worship – in the courtyard of Trinity Church every Sunday morning at 10:30.  Communion in the round, Trinity Ensemble musicians and good preaching.  Don’t waste your time on the golf course when you could be hanging with us!

An Encounter with God without all the Religion – every Sunday evening at 7 (except Allentown Sunday, June 13 and Labor Day weekend) enjoy the chapel in candlelight, the Jazz ensemble and readings from many of the world religions.  Mellow, peaceful and a community all its own.

The Universal Wisdom of 12-Step Spirituality – each Thursday evening at 7 a compelling combination of introspection and extroversion with a pick-up guitar choir, readings rooted in 12-Step wisdom and the Bible, followed by a great discussion.

Special Events

Allentown Bluegrass Eucharist – special for the Allentown Arts Festival weekend, our Bluegrass Eucharist has become a regular feature of Sunday morning for the artists, vendors and on-lookers joining in with our community to sing and worship together.  10:30 Sunday, June 13th.  We also welcome thousands of people into the main sanctuary and sell ice-cold bottled water.

Heavenly Hacker’s Golf Tournament – One of Trinity’s most popular events — the seventh annual golf tournament is right around the corner. The day includes, in addition to an enjoyable 18 holes of golf on a beautifully maintained course, a variety of activities and contests, specialty prizes, raffles and auction - and of course spectacular food! A fun event for the entire family.  Watch for details. 

Summer Programs

We are slowing down with you this summer, taking time to breathe, organize the drawers and clean out the file cabinets.  But you know we never just stop!  Here are a few things to do this summer at Trinity.

Trinity’s Talent Show
On Wednesday June 2nd Trinity will host it’s first ever Talent Night.  Singers, poets, comedians, acrobats, artists of all kinds, this is your chance to strut your stuff.  No talent, or just shy, come and enjoy and night of laughter, fun, and good food – Tony Radish is in charge of the art of cooking.  The fun begins at 7pm in the Marfield Room.

Vestry Volunteer Appreciation – Wednesday, June 16th in the courtyard the Vestry is going to barbeque some YUM for any and all Trinity volunteers.  Whether you helped with White Elephant or another fundraiser, read or serve the chalice, cook in the Kitchen, participate in outreach…whatever, you are invited.  Drop by between 5:30 and 8:00 and you will be fed and served by the vestry.

Steam Room Diaries with Cam – this is a new discussion-oriented program held every 4th Sunday from 5:00 – 6:30 PM.  Cam will begin each discussion with a brief reading from Steam Room Diaries that offer a muse for spiritual reflections on life.  One entry requirement for the discussion is bringing some finger food, snack or drink to share.

Midsummer Courtyard Potluck – Join your partners in community on Wednesday, July 21 from 6 – 8 PM in the courtyard (Marfield if, God forbid, rain).  Bring something really, really good to share!  Cam & Holly will provide the grille (for your delectable’s), drinks and music and whoever shows up will supply the rest! 

Mark Your Calendar: Tailgate Eucharist
September 12th in the Greenspace!

Sermons@Trinity (May 2)

Trinity @ 7 (May 2)

I don’t know how you guys keep score (April 25)

Trinity @ 7 (April 25)

Trinity @ 7 (April 18)

Church Camp revamped.

Applications are in the red carpet area.

Junior High Camp: August 8 - 14
Sleep Away Camp: August 18 - 21

For more information contact Holly or the diocesan web site at .

Spring WES Tile

Easter Sunday (April 4)

Good Friday (April 2)

Thursday in Holy Week (April 1)

Wednesday in Holy Week (March 31)

The answer is: Surrender (March 28)

A Tale of Two Jesus’ (March 28)

Easter 2010

Thursday @ 7

“Thursdays@7” is an intimate moment of quiet and contemplation during the week centered in the spiritual wisdom of the twelve-steps. The twelve-steps were created for AA by an Episcopal priest, who in turn took them from the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. The Rev. Steve Lane, deacon at Trinity, is the primary leadership for this worship. Join us for this service that includes a reflection and guitar music every Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. in the Chapel.

I’ve known rivers (March 21)

Mary loves Jesus (March 21)

Ain’t No Manna in the Promised Land (March 14)

New to Trinity? Have dinner with Cam!

A Evening with Cam for New Comers

Wednesday, March 24 from 6-8 PM

If you have entered the community of Trinity in the past twelve months or so, and you would like an opportunity to connect with Cam beyond Sunday morning, and to have any questions about Trinity answered, please join us for this casual dinner and discussion.  There will be other staff and some vestry members in attendance as well so that you can make the connections of particular interest to you.  Child care will be available upon request.  Please contact the office at 852-8314, x14 to let Cam know you would like to attend.

March 7 @ 7:00

March 7 @ 10:30

Jesus in Buffalo - Lent 2 (February 28)

Lent Tile

Jesus In Buffalo: Revelation at Hamlin House (February 21)

Trinity @ 7 (February 14)

Hang Time with Jesus (February 14)

Trinity @ 7 (January 24)

Snowflake Auction Tile

Trinity @ 7 (January 17)

The Man in the Black Hat (January 17)

Jesus in Buffalo

Sex with an Angel

An Encounter with God (December 27)

Holy Darkness (Christmas Eve 10:30pm)

Don’t be afraid (Christmas Eve 5:00pm)

Hierarch of Needs (December 20)

From Blossoms (December 13)

Pondering these things (December 13)

Fox News more than C-Span (December 6)

Christmas 2009 Tile

Small Act of Love (November 22)

Oh yeah… (November 22)

Walking through the rubble (November 15)

Let in the Fear (November 8)

State of Mind (November 8)

When my heart is hardened (November 1)

Hear the Silence (October 25)

Enzymes, Microbes, Hope & Joy (October 25)

God in the Bathroom (October 18)

Same Story, Different Meaning (October 18)

Spirituality of Death (October 11)

Naming Our Place in the Story (October 11)

Holiday on the Avenue Tile

Dawdling People (October 4)