TIDINGS Trinity’s Mission: Acting in God’s love, Trinity Episcopal Church welcomes everyone to enthusiastically live the Christian faith. We call our members to worship and prayer, lifelong education, spiritual growth, cheerful giving, and active ministry with our community. All members serve as witnesses to Jesus Christ.
Vol. XXVII No. 2 February 2018
A Celebration of Absalom Jones
Inside this Issue Stewardship page 2 Christian Formation page 3 Children and Family Ministries page 4 Young Adults page 5 Trinity Connections pages 5, 6, 7
Ours is a Savior who puts love of the other at the center of being; ours is a Faith which calls us to build and nurture a “blessed community.” Trinity Church’s commitment to undo racism embodies these truths; and we welcome every opportunity to honor those saints in Episcopal history who have stood against racial injustice. One such opportunity will be on Saturday, February 17, 2018, starting at 11:00 am, when we will host an important event in collaboration with the Union of Black Episcopalians, our Diocese’s Racial Reconciliation Committee, Members of Historic St. James AME Church, and St. Luke Episcopal Church, among others, to celebrate the life and ministry of Absalom Jones (1746-1818). All Trinity Church members are encouraged to attend this service, to be followed by a reception in the Parish Hall. Reverend Jones, born into slavery in Delaware, bought his own freedom and served as a lay minister for St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church. He dedicated his ministry to helping establish an interracial congregation of both white and black members for this church, and went on to become an elected overseer of the Free African Society, an organization for black Christians in Philadelphia. In his steadfast denunciation of slavery and in his tireless preaching on behalf of racial reconciliation within communities of faith, Reverend Jones came to be known as “the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church” in the United States. Please consider this early Lenten opportunity to join in an ecumenical celebration of our “blessed community.”