Below is a review of 2016 from our leaders on the ministerial work of Christ Church Cathedral.
We are so thankful for their time and dedication, truly serving as representatives of Christ in the world. Questions or other information about our ministries can be sent to info@cccindy.org.
Acolyte Guild
Ministry Leaders:
Indira Samuels and Lee Campbell
Year in Review:
We are especially grateful for the faithful service of our Acolytes who serve all year with dignity and reverence. While we tried to maintain a strong core in the Acolyte ministry this past year, our challenge has been working to identify new members to fill the places left by those who will move on. Initial recruiting for this ministry was held during the month of August, with an overall training with new and old acolyte members. But, participants are encouraged to join throughout the Church year; there is always room for more.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
Our Ministry seeks to widen the circle of God’s embrace giving praise to God through serving and help worshipers to see something of the goodness and glory of God.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
Adults and youth are welcome and encouraged to be a part of the Acolyte ministry. Being an integral part of the liturgical services at Christ Church Cathedral is the expression of God’s love through service. We plan to have quarterly training sessions and group activities to have fun and fellowship to growth the ministry.
Adopt a Family
Ministry Leaders:
Debbie Bartlett and Betty Whaley
Year in Review:
This year we adopted 10 CCC families (22 children) and 80 children from Dayspring. We put up Christmas trees in back of the church with 102 gift tags on them. Great news, all gift tags were taken by our parishioners. The Dayspring staff requested gift cards to allow their parents to go shop with a Dayspring mentor and purchase a gift for their child.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
One goal is to work closely with the Outreach Ministry Team and find ways together that we can be more generous in 2017. Increasing generosity will be a huge goal for us to reach. This will require that next year we start the Adopt-a- Family planning much earlier than we have in the past. We welcome CCC parishioners to join the Adopt-a- Family team and share their ideas for making Christmas 2017 brighter for less fortunate families in our community.
Altar Guild
Ministry Leaders:
Cathy Bhathena and Meg Mikels
Year in Review:
This year we continued our work preparing the table for all Eucharists, including daily noon services, the 8am and 10am Sunday services, and all special services such as holy days, weddings, and funerals. A highlight this year was hosting the Diocesan Convention Eucharist and Election of our new Bishop. Additionally, the Alter Guild continues to care for the silver, linens, and vestments used in all services. We coordinated with other liturgical ministries including, but not limited to, Acolytes, Chalice Bearers, and Flower Guild. We also worked with the Children’s ministry to provide materials for their learning about liturgy and the Eucharist.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission: Our ministry seeks to widen the circle of God’s embrace through providing a welcoming and carefully prepared table to receive all those who seek grace and healing through the Eucharist. We assist in maintaining Episcopal liturgical tradition through caring for the silver and linens used to administer the body and blood of Christ to all who come to the table.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
We are hoping to extend our membership to include more parishioners. We are a welcoming group who seeks to share this quiet, reflective, and prayerful service ministry with others in our church family. Preparing the table and caring for the materials used in Eucharists is a holy task through which a deeper connection with God can be found in the quiet of the sacristy and the service to our community.
Bilingual Conversation/Conversación Bilingüe
Names of people who are part of this ministry team:
Jen Hund, Veronica Godinez, Betty Whaley
Year in Review:
The inaugural season of Bilingual Conversation/Conversación Bilingüe was a great success! We met five times and touched the lives of 31 individuals who participated in sharing, listening, and growing in friendship with one another. Each time we gathered, we began with an icebreaker (activity or game in English and Spanish) and continued with conversations in English and Spanish in small groups.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
The mission of Bilingual Conversation/Conversación Bilingüe is “widening the circle of God’s embrace through languages and cultures.” Through our conversations, we share our stories, listen to others’ stories, build new relationships, and grow in community.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
As we launch our second season, we hope to invite more people to grow in relationship with one another in a safe and welcoming space. We plan to have three seasons: early January through February (before Lent), late spring (after Easter), and fall (September and October) and hope you will join us in this vital community ministry.
Cathedral Women
Names of people in ministry team:
April Culbertson – President, Program & Service Chair, Strawberry Festival Chair
Johnnie Alex – Vice President, Devotions
Jacquelyn Kenton – Recording Secretary, Cheer and Concern
Donna Wanstrath – Corresponding Secretary, Cheer and Concern, Bake Week Chair
Karen Farmer – Treasurer
Becky Guilkey – Assistant Treasurer
Ann Schulz – Publicity and United Thank Offering
Indira Samuels and Meghan McConnell – Social Chairs
Pat McConnell – Grant Review
Becky Foust – Grant Review
Year in Review:
Cathedral Women unite the women of Christ Church Cathedral in service, friendship, worship and study. We organize service projects, social outings, and hold four general meetings containing an educational program aspect. Our annual Strawberry Festival allows us to give funds in the form of biannual grants to approximately 30 local and international charities. All women of Christ Church Cathedral are members of Cathedral Women and may participate at any level.
2016 saw Cathedral Women hosting service projects at Ronald McDonald House and Gleaners Food Bank. Our two projects at Gleaners were particularly well-attended by both men and women volunteers. Our 2016 meeting programs included speaker Pat Wachtel, President and CEO of Girls, Inc of Greater Indianapolis, and a tour of Damar Services, LLC led by our own former senior warden, Ken File.
The Cathedral Women planned and executed the most successful Strawberry Festival in our history in 2016. From the proceeds,we gave away more than $60,000 and plan to give more during our Spring granting period in March of 2017. We also matched the congregational contributions for a United Thank Offering in-gathering last Spring. We are thankful to the more than 300 men and women who volunteered their time and talents to Bake Week and on the day of Strawberry Festival.
Cathedral Women ended 2016 by distributing handmade poppy pins to CCC members who are Veterans of the Armed Forces on the Sunday after Veterans Day. We celebrated a successful year with a festive Advent dinner and meeting.
How did this ministry participate in the mission of the church?:
Cathedral Women seek to widen the circle of God’s embrace by giving generously, caring for those around us in need, and by engaging with our community through Strawberry Festival. This year in particular, we strove to communicate the connection between Christ Church Cathedral and the Strawberry Festival through media and signage.
What does ministry hope to accomplish in 2017?
Cathedral Women hopes to welcome more churches from our diocese and community agencies to participate in Strawberry Festival. We hope to be able to increase the involvement of women in our congregation in good work.
Chalice Bearers and Servers
Ministry Leader:
Irma Petrosino
Year in Review:
We started slowly after the 2015 Christmas Season, but February and March we began our campaign to expand our membership. We were blessed to have Donna Worth lead two training sessions, with emphasis on the 10:00 a.m. Mass. Irma Petrosino conducted training for the 8:00 a.m. Mass.
How did the ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
Service and fellowship are two of the hallmarks of our Guild. The Chalice Bearer is highly visible and plays a vital role in creating an environment in which worship may be celebrated with reverence and awe. All our members take this office and assignment seriously, as a commitment of time and talent to be shared with everyone who comes to the altar.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
We will have another campaign to recruit new members in May of 2017. A training session and a refresher course will be offered as well. The refresher course will be to bring newer members up to date, to share insider information and tips that have been useful to more seasoned Servers.
Children’s Formation
Ministry Leader:
Anne Tordai
Year in Review:
Our annual rhythm begins our program year in the fall. We alternate scripture lessons using Godly Play storytelling curriculum, liturgical education, traditional celebrations and service projects. We begin most Sundays singing as part of our Alegria Children Singers program. Our fall programming this year included International Day of Peace, All Saints pageant and Day of the Dead celebration, St Nicolaus, Advent wreaths, Virgin of Guadalupe and Pageant of the Nativity. Fall lessons for Godly Play focused on stories from the Old Testament. The older children took a deep dive in to the ‘Great Family’, hearing the Godly Play stories of Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and Joseph.
Epiphany and Lent programming includes stories about the life, ministry and passion of Jesus. This time we also include lessons on liturgy and sacraments, including Baptism, Altar and Sacristy Tour, Acolyting and Bell-ringing. Celebrations include Three Kings Day, Shrove Sunday with Pancakes and Mothering Sunday. Finally end the season of Lent with a Children’s Stations of the Cross.
Easter Sunday we host an Easter Egg hunt on Monument Circle. The children spend the next few weeks preparing for an Easter Pageant on Good Shepherd Sunday (4th Sunday of Easter) telling the story of Jesus’ Resurrection and appearances to his disciples.
Our main summer offering is the Joyful Noise Summer Camp which hosted 30 children for our 5 full-day music themed camp.
This year we added programming for the season of Creation during the summer. We provided activities on the lawn for families to explore ‘Light’, ‘Land’, ‘Water’ and ‘Animals’.
Our ongoing service project is to collect snack food items and to bag them distribution to our guests experiencing homelessness. The children created more than 300 snack bags this past fall. We also collected socks for the #Socktober Kid President (internet personality) sock drive. We collected close to 100 new pairs of socks which were also distributed in early December to our guests experiencing homelessness.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
We are a ministry that includes members from our both our English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities. Our children are growing up and experiencing the love of Christ together. We celebrate the traditions of our diverse community. We serve our community with snacks and socks. We sing together as part of the Alegría Children singers.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017: We hope to host a bilingual Godly Play teacher training during the late summer or early fall. We would like to recruit adults from the Latino community to share their unique perspective, talents and traditions with our youngest members.
Lectors
Ministry Leader:
Briana Rhodes
Year in Review:
This year we were able to read at all services as requested. We added new members to the group to also participate.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
We are happy to lend our actual voices to be part of widening the circle of God’s embrace through sharing lessons with the congregation.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
We hope to be consistent in serving for all events at the Cathedral as requested.
Lay Eucharistic Visitor (LEV)
Ministry Leader:
Briana Rhodes
Year in Review:
In 2016, LEV began with 13 home-bound parishioners, who are either residing in a nursing facility or in a private residence, often times unable to participate in a scheduled Sunday church service. Our visits are for the purpose to motivate and interact with our home bounds regarding current rhetoric of church programs and activities, but mainly to provide the Holy Sacraments of bread and wine.
It is important that we try to provide the Holy Sacraments to our home bound at least once per month as their health permits. We are to report to clergy our visits on a monthly basis in the event that the patience has been hospitalized or in hospice. There have been at least 56 regular visits and many phone calls to our home bounds which constant communication is maintained. It is also imperative that tracking of visits are logged and that consistency in the reporting is channeled to the Chair Administrator. This year 2016, three home bound parishioners have passed, and we prayed for their eternal soul.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
LEV ministry seeks to widen the circle of GOD’s embrace through bread and wine as we venture outside GOD’s house of prayer.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
LEV is hoping to have our newest two members well trained and versed in reading scriptures and offering the sacraments to ones that have requested our services and prayers. We also hope to add more staff in order to evenly serve each home bound from 3-4 to 1-2 patience per month. Lay Eucharistic Visitors are like care givers, who take their personal time and talent doing God’s work in making our home bound members happy and welcoming.
Outreach Ministry
Ministry Leader:
Jude Magers
Year in Review:
Over the past year, our committee has continued play a leadership role in coordinating the Cathedral’s local and international mission work. We have met regularly throughout the year to consider a wide range of issues surrounding our engagement with a large number of community partners. Our primary roles have been to both establish and foster relationships with our partners in the community, and to provide opportunities for Cathedral members to get involved with these partners. One organization we have strengthened our relationship with is the Dayspring Center. Various members of the committee have met on several occasions with the Dayspring leadership regarding how we can form a more mutually-beneficial relationship. This resulted in the Cathedral throwing a Christmas Party for Dayspring residents on December 10 th. Plans for 2017: Our plans are to continue with the work we’ve been doing, with a particular eye towards further increasing parishioner involvement with our community partners.
Outreach Ministry Team Global Missions
Name of Ministry:
Companion Relationship with the Diocese of Southeast Mexico
Year in Review: Christ Church Cathedral welcomed Bishop Benito Juárez-Martinez, his wife Angelica and son Eigner to Indianapolis this year for a week-long visit May 16-23. There were plenty of activities to help the Bishop and his family continue to get to know our Cathedral family better and participate in life at the Cathedral. There were dinners with the Vestry, Clergy and with members of our congregation. Bishop Benito and his family participated in our English as a Second Language class (ESL) and joined our Ministerio Hispano at their annual retreat at Waycross. We visited with Christ Church Cathedral covenant grant partners and spent a day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The week ended with Bishop Benito preaching at both the English and Spanish-speaking services on Sunday.
In October, ten missioners from the Cathedral traveled to Southeast Mexico for the first mission with our companion parish, La Transfiguración. We began our time together by celebrating Holy Eucharist. Among the many activities were cake baking and canning workshops, art and crafts with the children and their parents and painting one of the rooms in the parish house.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
We definitely widened the circle of God’s embrace with heart and song. We spent every day in fellowship and developing a closer relationship with the members of La Transfiguración. As a family in Christ, each day we prayed together, shared each other’s music, stories and laughter and some tears. We ate delicious food lovingly prepared by the ladies of the La Transfiguración. Christ Church Cathedral funded restoration of the water purification system that will provide work for members of La Transfiguración and generate income as well. Life-long friendships were formed in the time we were with our brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Southeast Mexico. It was very hard to say good-bye when the time came to leave.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
We will continue our journey of faith together by supporting each other through prayer.
We are very happy with the enthusiasm our congregation has shown for our relationship with the Diocese of Southeast Mexico. What a great response we got from our CCC family when we asked for donations of measuring cups and spoons to distribute to the church bakeries in the Diocese. We collected enough cups to nearly fill a suitcase and had enough to give to all the people in the bakery ministries. Our Hats for Indy ministry sent to the ladies of the Diocese of Southeast Mexico several skeins of yarn and needles and an invitation to join them in knitting and exchanging hats and scarves. The exchanges will take place whenever we visit each other.
Anne Tordai, Children’s Formation Ministry Coordinator, has been especially helpful in fostering a relationship between the children of Christ Church and the children of the Diocese of Southeast Mexico.
Working together with Bishop Benito, Eigner and Angelica and our CCC family, we will develop other collaborative projects and programs to mutually share our gifts and talents.
Mission is transformative. Members of the 2016 mission team will continue to share our extraordinary experience in Mexico with our congregation and invite other members of CCC to participate in upcoming annual mission trips.
St. Dunstan’s Guild
We have here in our tower at Christ Church Cathedral eight bells that date back to 1860. St. Dunstan’s Guild is made up of a small group that works at furthering the art of English Change Ringing by ringing these bells. We try to ring the bells before and after special services through out the year, such as Christmas, Easter, Weddings, Funerals.
Our numbers are small so we are always looking for anyone, young and old, members of CCC or not, that can count to eight and enjoy participating in a group effort. Also you need to be able to climb three flights of stairs. If you have any interest in finding out more about this fun group, please contact John Goulding jwg1501@yahoo.com or Bill Gray graysails@aol.com
Ushers
Ministry Leader:
Terry Kirsten
Year in Review:
Our group of ushers has been fortunate to have added several new members during the past year. We have a presence at all of the scheduled Sunday services as well as those at special times during the liturgical year. Our main duties are the welcoming of parishioners, the greeting of all visitors, and helping our worship services to flow smoothly. In addition, we also serve as tellers after services are completed, counting and recording the offering
Sacred Space Yoga
Names of people who are leaders of this ministry team:
Catherine Tragesser, Ministry Leader: Anne Tordai
Year in Review:
Sacred Space yoga has developed a regular attendance of 6-10 people per session. Our numbers are greater in the summer when we can be on the lawn and enjoy the beautiful evening weather. We also get many drop-ins, people who are just walking by and decide to join us. Once it is too cold to be outside we move to the Nave. Based on the sign-in sheets, we have welcomed ~70 members of the downtown community to CCC through this program.
How did this ministry participate in CCC’s mission:
Sacred Space Yoga touches many people who may not regularly attend CCC. We offer this as an opportunity for members of the downtown community to enter our space as a refuge and a service to the community. Some regular ‘yogis’ attend Evening Prayer before yoga begins, but many are looking for a quiet refuge after work on our lawn or in our church.
What does the team hope to achieve in 2017:
Sacred Space yoga hopes to continue welcoming the downtown community in to our space.