In September of 1992, 30 years ago, St. Mark’s was gearing up for the fall with new programs and some liturgical changes.
Building Caring Families was a new program where five families gathered monthly for dinner and a sessions that dealt with topics such as affirmation for self and family members, conflict resolution and family-decision making techniques.
Community outreach programs St. Mark’s worked with included INCH (a program that helped homeless families get back on their feet), the 1992 Walk for Aids, Links to Positive People (a tutoring program in East Palo Alto), and Urban Ministry (the food closet located at All Saints).
The Liturgy Team announced the fall focus would be looking at the stories of the Gospel of Luke as they relate to the whole life and teachings of Christ, bringing to consciousness Christ working in our lives through the Spirit, and looking at the Eucharist as a celebration of Resurrection and not the Last Supper. To help facilitate this focus, the team announced that the congregation would be seated at the end of the nave and the altar would be moved to the other end (rear) of the church. In addition the deacon would process around the room holding the Bible accompanied by Taize chants, and parishioners were encouraged to kiss the book as a sign of reverence or bow if they preferred. Two lessons would be read instead of three, but both were considerably longer than normal lessons. The team encouraged the congregation to live with these changes for a while and “let us know what you think about them.”
Organist Don Giberson left St. Mark’s, and new organist, Russell Hancock, took over.
The Altar Guild displayed several newly restored St. Mark’s ‘treasures.” These included a carved wooden table, the portrait of St. Nicholas, and the bas-relief Madonna.
The Treasurer reported the parish was running at a deficit of close about $90,000 year to date and needed more contributions and more contributors.
And finally, the Rector wrote that:
“St. Mark’s made up its mind to include our children in the worship services some time ago. It is now difficult to imagine what our worship would be like without the life and energy their presense provides. It is difficult for us to understand why any segment or class of our baptised community would not be a part of the community meal. Gradually our children have develped better worship ‘etiquette’ and we adults have overcome our automatic aversion to extraneous movement and sounds. Nevertheless, problems remain. We have always understood that we would have to ‘re-invent’ the wheel on how to best include the children, having virtually no modern models to copy. We knew we would have to change certain foundationa matters, the very ‘culture’ of our worship. We knew some problems would be more difficult than others. It is now time to evaluate our efforts.”
