St. Thomas’ proudly celebrates Campus Pride Month alongside Rowan University all April long! Join us as we celebrate diversity, inclusion, and unity throughout the month with engaging formation hours, notable LGBTQ+ spotlights, The Shop supply drive and more!
April’s formation hour will focus on LGBTQ+ families and challenge us to find more ways to ensure our sacred space is welcoming to everyone. All in God’s Family is a program created by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and promoted by the Institute for Welcoming Resources. Each week, we will be exploring this program in a variety of ways – join us!
Week 4 (28 April): Collaborative Workshop discussing ways St. Thomas’ can be more open and welcoming to the LGBTQ+ Community – bring your ideas and dreams!
Last Week to Donate!
There will be no 4pm Monday afternoon Centering Prayer / Evening Prayer
at St. Thomas’ on 29 April. We hope to see in you in May!
Join the ECW for our church-wide spring book drive to benefit BookSmiles, a local non-profit that provides books to under-resourced school districts throughout New Jersey and Philadelphia. We will be collecting new and gently used children’s books from April 14 through June 2. Whether fiction or nonfiction, we are looking to collect books from ages infant to high school. If you would like to donate books starting on April 14, please put them in the collection bin in the Parish Hall. If you would like to make a monetary donation for the book drive, please see either Rachael O. or Linda K. or leave a donation in a labelled envelope in the collection plate. To learn more about the type and quality of materials BookSmiles accept, please watch the following video. If you have any questions about the book drive, please see Rachael O.
Justin Lee
Justin Lee is an American speaker, author, activist and YouTuber. “He is the author of Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate and Talking Across the Divide: How to Communicate with People You Disagree With and Maybe Even Change the World, and the director of a 2009 documentary, Through My Eyes, which explores the struggles of young gay Christians.”
Lee launched the non profit, Gay Christian Network in 2001, which provides resources to LGBTQ+ Christians. Later on, he would go to create another non profit, Nuance Ministries which also conducted similar work.
“Lee has been an outspoken critic of the “ex-gay” or “reparative therapy” movement. In his book Torn, he discussed his own experience with the “ex-gay” movement in the 1990s, writing that “therapy can’t make gay people straight…what’s typically happening is behavior change, not orientation (that is, attraction) change.” You can read more about Lee here.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Lee_(activist)
Lectionary readings for this week: Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8, Psalm 22:24-30
Lectionary readings for next week: Acts 10:44-48, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17, Psalm 98
Please continue in your daily prayers for: Lou, Bob, Sandy, Joe, Harry, Cheryll, Cecilia, Donna, Bud, Andrea, Sam, Joyce, Margaret, David, James, Sarah, Kathleen
Announcements for the parish email are due via email by noon on Wednesday of each week. You can email them to announcements@stthomasglassboro.org
The church calendar can be seen at https://www.stthomasglassboro.
Are you serving in liturgy? Check the rota!
Prayer requests can be sent to prayer@stthomasglassboro.org
Watch our livestream here Saturdays at 5:30pm and Sundays at 8am & 10:30am!
Full-text of the liturgy is available at https://www.sharedprayers.net
