News
In person worship at St. Peter’s has been cancelled for Sunday, 25 January 2026 due to the incoming snowstorm. We will gather online at our Facebook page for worship at 10am.
As previously mentioned, our Annual Meeting of the Parish will now be held on Sunday, 1 February 2026.
Stay safe and warm!
Fr Christopher
🌟 Faith Formation Kicks Off This Sunday! 🌟
Join us this Sunday at 9:15am in the Gathering Area as we launch our inspiring new Faith Formation series: He Calls Me Loved – A Study of Isaiah. Fr. Christopher will guide us with a powerful overview of the book of Isaiah, setting the stage for nine weeks of deep reflection and discovery. Whether you're new to scripture study or a seasoned soul-searcher, this series promises to stir your heart and strengthen your faith.
👥 Youth Group: Bring a Friend!
Later that day, our Youth Group is gathering—and it’s the perfect time to invite someone new! All youth are encouraged to bring one friend who isn’t yet connected to St. Peter’s. Let’s grow together in faith and friendship. For details, reach out to Chris Carter or Kayla Glenn.
Come curious. Leave inspired. See you Sunday!
Note that April 6 holds a lot in store:
Faith Formation continues 9:15am
Directly following service Healing service takes place, 11am.
Youth Group meets 4-6pm!
As Holy week is approaching, here an outlook onto the services:
13 April: Palm Sunday, 10am. Meet in the gathering area for the beginning of the liturgy.
17 April: Maundy Thursday Liturgy with Washing of the Feet – details to follow.
17-18 April: Vigil in the chapel, beginning immediately after the Maundy Thursday service,
continuing through noon on Friday.
18 April: Good Friday service and Stations of the Cross – details to follow.
19 April: Holy Saturday service, 10am
20 April: Easter Sunday service, 10am
Youth Group meets from 4-6pm (back to regular time).
Bring a friend with you.
We started our lenten Bible study on the life of Saint Peter via the book “perfectly flawed”. For those participating, you should have gotten an email giving you access to the accompanying videos. Reach out in case you did not get it!
If you have not been attending so far, no worries, you can still join any time or just attend one Sunday, whatever works for you, we are not a closed group!
Note from Carol: After you log in, you can search for Perfectly Flawed videos. Note that some of those videos are for preview purposes and are not full length. Make sure to choose the full length videos which are around 20 minutes or so.
Do not forget the time change happens this Sunday! We spring one hour forward. So see you all bright and early for faith formation at 9:15 and mass at 10am!!!
Lenten faith formation study on the life of St. Peter entitled "Perfectly Flawed." All study materials will be provided! Meet 9:15am on Sundays during Lent in the gathering area.
Ever being caught in doomscrolling… thinking you should have rather read a book, be out in nature than looking through your facebook or X feed… This lent, St. Peter’s is inviting you to join us in social media fasting.
As such, we will lay our own facebook page dormant and post here instead.
You can subscribe to our newsfeed here! More details to follow!
Following the last presidential election, tensions were high in many parts of our country (and are still there today). St. David's Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, IN was the target of vandalism in the days follwoing the election. With words such as "Heil Trump" and "Fag Church" spray painted on the side of their building. The painful realization was that it was one of their own who committed this act.
In the three years that have followed, we are now given a much deeper picture of the events that led up to that night as well as surveillance video with the former organist. There is some strong language in some of the video clips with the police officers, but what I found most powerful is the redemptive steps that the people of St. David's and those in the IU and Bloomington communities have shown to this man. It reminds us all that we are all human, we make mistakes, we are sinners, and yet God still searches after us and God still wants to be in relationship with us.
Reconciliation and forgiveness is the restoration of the moral order that invites us to be transformed and into a new way of life. This article powerfully states that it was the people of St. David's who recognized their own failures within themselves on the "type of person" who would do this that led them to reconciliation. It may come as a surprise to many, but reconciliation and forgiveness actually begins with the victims when they are inspired to reclaim their humanity as the Body of Christ and then move towards forgiveness and invites the oppressor into a new relationship. We see that carried out in the ways that Nathan is invited into many Episcopal contexts in our diocese after his sentencing. For it is in community, that the incubation of reconciliation is made possible.
The people of St. David's believe these words - that the first place they had to look was within themselves -as their testimony is featured in the article. The Vestry of St. David's approved this article before it was released. I invite your thoughts/leanings/wonderings.
Hate Crime Hoax
It seems that just last week we were baking with temps in the low 90s and this morning we awoke to temperatures in the upper 30s and low 40s. With temps this low, our bees know that the days are getting shorter and are actively sealing up the hives for winter. Once the temperature drops below 45 regularly, we will close them up for the winter and let them take care of themselves with the honey reserves they have built up. We are going in with six hives, we hope to have at least four strong hives in the spring.
Oktoberfest proved to be another successful time with beautiful weather. Events like this give St. Peter’s an excellent opportunity to model the hospitality and community that we long to create with our neighbors. This coming weekend, your Pathways to Vitality team will be in retreat at Waycross Camp and Conference Center as we begin to think about our Vitality Project and time with our Curate in 2020/2021. This evening, Woke Wednesdays begin as a collaborative effort with young adults in Lebanon/Boone Co and a grant that St. Peter’s is participating in with the Center for Congregations. Look for more information on the coming items in the next couple of weeks.
As the seasons change and the daylight decreases, this is a perfect opportunity to fall into something new in your life - be it a new spiritual practice of prayer, of walking, of journaling, or of giving thanks to God for a new day. Oftentimes, we only seem to pray to God when we are in need of something to happen. We pray for that new job or promotion, we pray for good weather, we pray for healing for a loved one, but what if we started our prayers by first thanking God? It could be something as simple as saying, “Thank you God for the gift of the sunrise as I drank my coffee this morning”, “Thank you God for the bees that helped pollinate the crops that fill my belly with food.”, “Thank you God for the community of St. Peter’s and their willingness to journey to places they never thought they would be.”, “Thank you God for being there when I make mistakes and hurt others.” For me, I pray every day for each member of St. Peter’s and those who have journeyed with us for a season of their life but are on new adventures. When I do so and say their name, their face pops into my imagination and brings a smile to my face.
When we give thanks first in our prayer, it changes our whole disposition to the day or the situation that we are seeking intercessory prayer for. We become conscious of the many ways that we are blessed each and every day. We are able to bathe in God’s overflowing, all-encompassing love for each of us no matter how broken we are, how long we have followed our own ways, or how long it has been since we talked to God last.
As the day wind down, I hope you fall - into something new.
Rector’s Address given on 27 January 2019.
In the attached file, you will find a brief summary of the activities of the parish during 2018. This document was presented at the Annual Meeting on Sunday, 20 January 2019.
So have you been missing the blog the last couple of weeks?
It is one of those things that is hard to get back into after a long vacation. Here in Indiana, we are into the full swing of the school year. Almost finished with three weeks already! And then there is all the activities that have their kick-off nights. Meet the teacher, Scouts sign-up, Fall Baseball Games, and the start of high school football season. It seems like we are all getting back to the tried and true as the calendar starts to prepare to turn to September.
The same is happening in the church, we are celebrating our successes with the gardening programs and preparing to launch our independent classes this fall. I met with the Christian Education committee last week to plan the Fall semester and yes, settle the date for the Kids Christmas Pageant. Plans are in the works for diocesan convention in November and once we leave the “Bread of Life” discourses, it will be full steam towards Advent.
So I have to ask, what is on your calendar that is automatically there because it has been there year after year? What new items have appeared? What has disappeared? How does being a part of a faith community fit into your Fall schedule? Is it the thing that remains constant week after week? Or is it the item that is able to be fit in, when all the other hours have been scheduled?
This fall, I invite you to come and see St. Peter’s. We are on an exciting journey together and we are all stronger as a community of faith when we give one hour a week for the One who gave His life for us.
Christopher+
This week, my family and I have been vacationing in Provincetown, MA – the outermost place on Cape Cod. The weather has been beautiful, we have been whale watching, climbed to the top of the Pilgrim Monument and spent most afternoons at the beach. All of that sounds great, sounds like typical vacation stuff on the surface. Until you hear the details.
I left my 6 acre homestead on a country road, with my own pool, own bed, own television and drove one thousand miles to a town that in the dead of winter is maybe 3,000 residents strong, but in summer season, swells to nearly 75,000 people. I know. I know. I came here to find…rest?
We came to a place where Commercial Street is busy until the late hours of the night and where the barkers are out trying to get you into this store or that restaurant. A place where the bump-bump-bump of the music at the Boatslip for afternoon tea-dance is almost unavoidable. We came to a place that I know I do not fit in. A place that I can get easily anxious in, being the introvert that I am. Still, this is the place that I choose to come each and every year for rest and relaxation.
Our gospel reading this past Sunday, reminds us of our need to rest, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says “Come to me all whose burden is heavy, and I will give you rest.” So there must be something to this rest thing.
Truth be told, we all need to rest. We need to take time to get away from it all and rest. Here at the outermost point of the Cape, where the land and the sea meet, I encounter the Sacred and can rest. In the midst of all the vacationing families and townies and people who have homes here on the weekend, I can rest and be just another person on this fragile earth, our island home.
Sure my mind wanders like it always does….But I have a parish that I am trying to grow and I have a full-time job where it is almost budgeting season, and I have a family, an eight year old that starts fourth grade next week, then there is termite damage to some of the siding of my house, and I have a Waycross Board meeting next week, and……
But for one week, I can experience the majesty and wonder of a place in the dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore that few people get to experience. I get to walk the same shoreline that the Pilgrims walked as they set out to forge a new way of living (no, they did not land in Plymouth first). I get to sit by the ocean and its vast ecosystem and give thanks and most importantly I get to rest.
And I think, our churches should more of that. A place to come and rest and be fed physically and spiritually. To be the alternative to the denominations that tell you that you are less than and not worthy of the love of God. To hear that day after day, week after week has to be exhausting on the soul and on the mind and ultimately the body. It is hard work to constantly be working on keeping the façade going and not revealing too much about yourself, trying to say the right things. To constantly be worrying about keeping us with the Joneses, who are trying to keep up with the Smiths, who are never going to be able to keep with the Thomases. I know I have dealt with that. But then I walked into St. James, New Castle on 1 Advent 2003 and suddenly I felt that I could rest in that pew. I walked into a church and there above the altar was a carved wooden figure of Jesus with outstretched arms. It was if He was saying, “Come. Rest a while.” I have never left the Episcopal Church since that day.
I don’t know if we always get that right at the parish I serve. But I know we try. We try to welcome the neighbor to share a meal with us, to help care for the land that has been entrusted to us, to help reverse the decline of the honeybee through our instrumented apiary. Over my four years there, we have had many visitors come through our doors and some have rested with us weekly for a short time, some have stayed longer. But I am glad we are a place that people can rest with us. I also hope that we never become a place that is too busy to notice others, unable to talk to them, or to rest with them.
Christopher+
950 East Washington St., Lebanon, IN 46052 Tel: 765.482.2322 Office Hours: Tues/Thu PM
