The Call to Serve Launch
Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
Our Scriptural Guide Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt 22: 37-39)
Our Program Touchstone As followers of Jesus, we are called to create abundant life in beloved community with each other and with our neighbors.
Saint Mark’s continues to respond to the gracious pull to becoming Beloved Community. Last year, we explored together, “what does the Lord ask of us?” and found answers in Micah 6: 8: “To act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with our God.” Now, we take another step, standing humbly but firmly on our Baptismal vows.
In The Call to Serve program, we seek to create authentic relationships in beloved community both within Saint Mark’s and in our neighborhood with special concern for those marginalized on the basis of ethnicity, class, race, and gender identity.
The Call to Serve dedicates us to deepening our common life by
- openness to inspired preaching, challenging teaching, and common prayer at Sunday worship and Evening Prayer;
- seeing and hearing and supporting each other in small group “Connecting Circles” and at Round Table, where we share our experiences and explore our gifts as servant disciples;
- partnering with others in serving our neighbors in need, with particular emphasis on hunger (fall) and shelter (spring).
Launching The Call to Serve: Sunday, Sept. 29th, Banquet Room
9:15 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.
Choose to attend whatever hour-long session is most convenient for you!
Learn “why” our fall focus is “Sharing Abundance: Feeding the Hungry.” Discover the unique Wednesday night “Connecting Circles” being offered and the rota of service opportunities planned with our local partners--First Nations Kitchen, Groveland Food Shelf, and Sunday Night Supper. Grab this chance to chat informally with service site representatives and our veteran volunteers, sign up for special emails, the Circles, and for service dates.
Connecting Circles
As we reach out, spending time in fellowship with our marginalized neighbors, we offer eight Connecting Circles for the next program year. The model for the Circles is to be a place where intentional listening and sharing can build a robust beloved community. We will reflect on the testimonies of St. Markans that have a story to share. We will pray together. We will have quality time to listen to each other. This is a place where we will have uninterrupted time in a small group, more time than on a Sunday morning.
These gatherings are inclusive of all ministries held by St. Markans, inside the walls and outside the walls. A short testimonial will be given by a person who is knowledgeable about the hunger ministries. We then pray together. A prayer and conversation starter will be printed for each table. Listening is a gift. Personal inquiry illuminates our gifts. This is a safe space. The table host will facilitate introductions and ask for opening reflections from anyone so inclined. “How does this social justice activity or ministry remind you of a time in your life?”
By the end of the year, we will have grown as a place of understanding. We will have heard about our diversity. We will have heard about the partners and social justice areas we serve. We will have found the courage we need to go out as servant disciples. “ For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Matthew 18: 20.
Timeline:
6:00 Gather to share dinner with BYO servings.
6:15 Testimony from volunteer or service partner.
6:30 Convene in small group and read the opening prayer and conversation starter.
7:15 Each circle will be asked to put down what words or ideas were shared. Notes
taken.
7:25 Gather as a circle for the closing prayer.
October 2 and 9th
November 13 and 20th
6:00 – 7:30
Our Fall Service Partners
Sunday Night Supper
Provided each Sunday by a rota of downtown churches; Second Sundays has been assigned to Saint Mark’s for decades. Since the pandemic, Saint Mark’s Sunday Night Supper has survived financially through interdenominational cooperation. We have a steady corps of volunteers participating with Plymouth Congregational continues to serve as the venue for our SNS. Saint Mark’s is now collaborating with the First Unitarian Society who supplies primary cook and food. We need more Saint Markans to help with the sit down service can be resumed. A variety of volunteer opportunities are available each month. Thursday morning before the second Sunday of every month: cooking shift. Second Sunday of every month: 2-4pm (cooking shift) and 4:15-6:30pm (serving shift). Drisana Iverson is the Cathedral coordinator.
First Nations Kitchen
First Nations Kitchen (FNK). “An outreach of All Saints Episcopal Indian Mission in South Minneapolis serving healthy organic and indigenous meals and produce to the community each Sunday.” Saint Mark’s assisted in the top to bottom renovation of All Saints in the 1990’s under the late Rev. Melanie Spears. When FNK began in 2008 St. Mark’s volunteers served faithfully on preparation, dinner service and clean up shifts for a number of years. Currently we have sporadic individual volunteers’ participation. We are eager to renew and expand our relationship. Several shifts available for sign-up on Oct. 6 and Dec. 29. Betsy Lee is the coordinator for the Cathedral volunteer days.
Groveland Food Shelf
A non-profit providing emergency groceries in the Loring Park neighborhood for those in need. About 5,000 clients are served per month and over 150,000 pounds of food are distributed. Saint Mark’s was one of the founding churches of the Food Shelf, which has also received grant support through the non-profit Wells Foundation. Post-Covid the Food Shelf’s needs for supplemental funding, food, and volunteers has greatly increased. The Groveland Food Shelf works out of the basement of Plymouth Congregational Church on LaSalle and Groveland, .7 miles from the Cathedral. It is open for clients Monday-Friday mornings. A long-time parishioner and volunteer, Rich Maier, serves on the Board. We are recruiting for another Saint Mark’s representative, with skills sets in legal, finance, and marketing especially desired. We will have a food drive for the Food Shelf running the full month of November. Margie Johnson and others will be assisting with this initiative.
Fall Calendar: Sharing our Abundance/Feeding the Hungry
Sun., Sept. 15 Beginning of Saint Mark’s Program Year/Potluck/ Preaching on The Call to Gather
Sun., Sept. 22 Wells Sunday (posters of their grantees in Art Gallery)
Sun., Sept. 29 The Call to Serve Launch! Banquet Room
(choose one session to attend)
9:15 – 10:15 a.m. Introducing: Sharing our Abundance: Feeding the Hungry
12:15- 1:15 p.m. “Connecting Circles” Service partners
Sign-ups: “Connecting Circles” and Service Dates (Preliminary)
Weds., Oct. 2 Connecting Circles, 6:00-7:30 p.m. (Following Evening Prayer, 5:30 – 6 p.m.)
Brown bag/small group sharing
Sun., Oct. 6 Service: Saint Mark’s at First Nations Kitchen
Wed., Oct. 9 Connecting Circles, 6:00-7:30 p.m. (Following Evening Prayer, 5:30 – 6 p.m.)
Brown bag/small group sharing
Sun., Oct. 13 Service: Sunday Night Supper
Wed., Oct. 16, 23, 30 Round Table sessions focused on The Call to Serve
Month of November Service: Non-perishable Food Collection for Groveland Food Shelf
Sun., Nov. 10 Service: Sunday Night Supper
Wed., Nov. 13 Connecting Circles, 6:00-7:30 p.m. (Following Evening Prayer, 5:30 – 6 p.m.)
Brown bag/small group sharing
Sun. Nov. 17 Blessing of Food donations at 10:30 service
Wed. Nov. 20 Connecting Circles, 6:00-7:30 p.m. (Following Evening Prayer, 5:30 – 6 p.m.)
Brown bag/small group sharing
Sun., Dec. 8 Service: Sunday Night Supper
Sun. Dec. 29 Service: First Nations Kitchen (3:30 – 5:30 p.m.)
For more information about these events and this program year, please visit the official The Call to Serve page.