"Striving to enhance spiritual growth":
Your Vestry Envisions a Chapel

Here’s a piece of St. Barnabas history for newcomers like my family. Did you know that, before 1978, the people worshipped in the Parish Hall?!!

To enhance spiritual growth though corporate worship, we have redecorated some of this space. Walls have been repainted. We have replaced old green carpet with new tile. Over the next days and weeks, we await new gifts: an altar, a cross, a credence shelf¹ and an aumbry².

This is NOT a dedicate "chapel space." Our plan is always to desire for growth in our St. Barnabas' family. Thus, we stay aware that we’d like our Sundays, someday, to need the whole parish hall! At two annual events, (the ECW Rummage Sale and the Annual Parish Meeting) our the chapel will "disappear."³

The flexibility of this chapel is a curse and a blessing. As we grow, there maybe more "disappearances." But the chapel might also enhance different formats for corporate worship. This flexibility is inherently true to Judeo-Christian worship—just as the priests move the chapel "tents" as Moses’ people journeyed thru the desert.

God’s call for the whole Barnaby-family is to share BOTH the diversity AND the unity of this moment. Your voice—your idea--in that diversity is important. As the Spirit moves you, look at the space. Then answer these questions in writing:

1. What is your vision? How might you use the chapel? How might a small group of Christians use the chapel?
   
2. Would you, one day each month, lead any who gathered in prayer? In your vision, even if you alone kept the "prayer duty" for that day, would your conscience rejoice in that duty?
   
3. Are there revived ancient practices, to which God may call someone like you? A weekday Holy Eucharist?An annual celebration of the heavenly birthday(death) of a saint who came to St. Barnabas, Odessa? A small group recitation of the Anglican Rosary? Walking the labyrinth?

"Zeal for your house has eaten me up," (BCP, p. 680) said our ancient Judeo-Christian people. May our joy in this space be a sign of Jesus’ resurrection-gift: The Holy Spirit.

In Christ,
David J. Mossbarger

¹ Any shelf near the altar where the bread and wine are kept until they are placed on the altar. One dictionary suggests that the name derives from similar tables/shelves near the dining tables of the rich. Since foods had to be tasted before servants placed them on the table, they were kept on the credence (from Latin “credo” I believe/trust) until the master “believed” them to be suitable tested.
²Either a recess within a wall (like a “wall safe”) or a cupboard with a door, the aumbry, like a tabernacle, is used for storing the reserve sacrament. While both maybe “box-like,” a tabernacle sit on the altar but an aumbry does not.
³ I think of these times being like the “protective” disappearance of wonderful places like Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon.