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Upcoming
Bishop's
Events
January
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15
St. Paul's, Holdenville
18
St. Augustine of Canterbury, OKC
Visitation and Confirmation
21
Christ Church, Tulsa
Institution and Induction
The Rev. Everett Lees
22-27
Episcopal Camps and Conference Center Annual Meeting
28
All Saint's, Duncan
Installation
The Rev. Anita Slovak
29
St. Philip's, Ardmore
30 - 2/2
Program, Budget and Finance Meeting
The Episcopal Church USA
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Upcoming Diocese Events
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To register, please go onto the Dicoesan Web Site below:
January 21
Episcopal Diocse
Youth Commission Meeting 10 a.m.
January 27-28
Cursillo Reunion
St. Crispin's
January 28 Celebration of New Ministry - Institution and Induction of The Rev. Anita Slovak
All Saint's Duncan
January 28-29
New Beginnings 37
St. Crispin's
January 28, 2012
Godly Play Learning and Sharing Event
St. Augustine of Canterbury
OKC 9 until noon
February 12
Celebrate Summer Camp
St. John's OKC
10:30 a.m.
February 17 - 19
Vocare
St. Crispin's
February 19
Celebrate Summer Camp
St. Patrick's, Broken Arrow
10:30 a.m.
March 10, 2012
Godly Play Learning and Sharing Event
Christ Church, Tulsa 9 until noon
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The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma
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Companion Diocese Uruguay
Holy God, source of healing and of peace, bless with your grace the companion dioceses of Oklahoma and Uruguay. Through our partnership one with another may we grow in mutual affection and communion, seek a more profound experience of truth, build up the Church in unity and give glory to Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.
New Web site:
http://uruguay.anglican.org/
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The Next Issue of this Newsletter will be on Friday, January 20, 2012.
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We Are Epiok.org
January 13, 2012
Issue 2 |
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Join Us on A Journey to the Holy Land!
This is a trip of a life-time~4 spaces remaining!
The Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma
~presents~
A Journey to the Holy Land
Under the Direction of
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Edward J. Konieczny
Local Guide: Canon Iyad Qumri
Hosted at Saint George's
Limited to the first 25
Depart: June 8, 2012
Return: June 20, 2012
Total Cost: $4,100.00 per person
To secure your spot, send your deposit check in the amount of $500, made payable to the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, 924 North Robinson, Oklahoma City, OK 73102 attention: Jeni Kaufman.
Jordan River
For more information, go to www.epiok.org and click on the Journey to Holy Land link. |
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St. Simeon's
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New Beginnings
Youth grades 6 - 9 are encouraged to register for our next New Beginnings to be held January 28-29, at St. Crispin's. The purpose of this program is to help young people grow in the love of themselves, others, and Jesus Christ. During the time together there will be talks, opportunities for reflection, music and great camp food! Registration is on line at http://www.epiok.org/Christian%20Formation/new-beginnings.html. |
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College Ministry Opportunities
Lilly Summer Discernment Institute
Lilly Summer Discernment Institute is offering 12 undergraduate students (including graduating seniors) the opportunity to spend the summer following a dream and exploring what it means to be called to a profession and a particular way of life. This is for students who want to test a career in ordained ministry, or in a church-related vocation, and is being offered through The University of the South (Sewanee). Internship applications are due March 1, 2012. More information can be obtained at http://life.sewanee.edubelieve/lilly-summer-discernment-institute.
Refugee Resettlement in America: Apply by 1/15
March 25-30 in Atlanta, GA
Spend six days with Episcopal Migration Ministries and young adults from across the Episcopal Church as we explore the theology, logistics and community support necessary to resettle the refugees in our midst. One of only nine agencies that work with the US Department of State to resettle refugees in communities across the country, EMM is one of the largest ministries of the Episcopal Church and a statement to the world about our denomination's commitment to welcoming the stranger, sheltering those in danger, and learning to be neighbors all over again. This event is part of the Episcopal Leadership Institute for Young Adults. Applications due January 15.
http://www.formstack.com/forms/DFMS-ELIYA |
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Bread for the Journey
Bread For the Journey -
And a Little Chocolate,
just because . . .
Women's Retreat
St. Crispin's Camp and Conference Center
Retreat Leader: The Rev. Debora L. Jennings
Friday February 10, 7:00 pm -
Saturday February 11, 2:00 pm
All are welcome! Come, and bring a friend!!!
Fee of $70.00 includes double occupancy and 2 meals.
as well as $5.00 per person for supplies.
Add $10.00 for single occupancy
Send Registration fee by JANUARY 28 to
Pam Hudson,
2800 N.W. 21 Street,
OKC OK 73107
Bring a loaf of your favorite bread to share! Also munchies for Friday evening!
Sponsored by Oklahoma Episcopal Church Women |
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Men's Retreat
2012 Men's Retreat
Sponsored by The Brotherhood of St. Andrew's
with
The Reverend Bill Holly
Retreat Chaplain
March 8-10, 2012
Thursday Supper - Saturday Lunch
St. Crispin's Conference Center
2 nights/6 meals
$125 double/$160 single
Contact: Bob Baker 918-258-5656
baker111@tulsacoxmail.com
Registration forms are on the Diocesan Web page. Click here. |
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Parish Resources
Episcopal Relief and Development is again offering 2012 Lenten Meditations booklets. This year their focus is on promoting health and fighting disease while preparing our own lives for healing. If you are interested in receiving these booklets for your congregation, go to http://episcopalmarketplace.org or call 1 866 934 2772. They have additional materials available for lent.
Looking to start a children's chapel? See the web at http://www.epiok.org/Christian%20Formation/christian-formation.html for a sample service.
Wednesday Night Lenten Ideas for Children - Wild Willy and the Prodigal Son (looking at the similarities of Willy Wonka and those children with the prodigal son.
Using Dr. Seuss storybooks and seeing the them that can be applied to today's situations.
Bugs, Butterflies, Lilies and Lent - Using storybooks to bring this season of waiting to life.
Would you like to have a calendar to go with Mite Box Collections this year? Maybe try and collect enough to buy a cow through Heifer? Or purchase nets through Nets for Life?
All these and more areavailable at our diocesan offices. Contact Sabrina for information.
VBS planning will begin soon. Would you like some help? Some new ideas? Maybe free curriculum? Contact the office. We have lots of resources that could work. |
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What People Experience in Churches
Most Americans have first-hand experiences in churches or parishes. What happens, if anything, in the hearts and minds of those who attend? To explore this matter, Barna Group surveyed Americans who have attended a Christian church sometime in the past and discovered what they say about their experiences in these congregations.
To read the rest of this article from Barna, click here. |
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What Does our Children's Nursery Say?
Did you know that your parish nursery could be your best form of evangelism? Your parish nursery is one of the first things visitors with children will look for. And how they find it and the condition it is in, will let them know if this is the kind of parish they want to belong.
As a parish we are called to receive, nurture and treasure each child as a sacred gift from God. In proclaiming that sacredness, we carry a commitment to love, shelter, protect, and defend all children in our care.
We are to share God's love with our children by ministering to their needs in a caring and nurturing environment.
So, what needs to be #1 on our list? Loving and caring worker! Do you greet your visitors at the door and invite them into the child care area? Do you show them around and help them hang up their child's bags? Do you put a nametag on their bag/coat so you are positive each child is getting their own bottle?
Next on the list would be cleanliness. Do you wash toys that have been chewed on or played with at the end of each session? Does the floor get vacuumed or mopped each week?
Many of the items regarding childcare/nursery workers can be found in the Diocesan Policies for Parish Ministries with Children or Youth. But, in order to help clarify, below are some suggestions for your nursery/childcare area.
Childcare workers are usually the first people to greet visitors who have children. These individuals are your welcoming committee!
- Childcare workers would be considered Church Workers who regularly work with our Around Children or Youth as found in Section 3 of the policies. As such, they should have the following in their personnel files:
- Standard application
- Reference checks
- Criminal records check including the National Sex Offender Predator Registry
- Face to face interview
- Safeguarding God's Children training, and updated every 4 years.
- Church workers who regularly work with or around children must be at least 18 years of age.
- Monitoring and Supervision Policies are set out in Section 6 of the policies mentioned above.
- Go over the Guidelines for Appropriate Affection in Ministry with Children or Youth.
- Emergency Procedures - Discuss and establish how childcare workers should respond in the event of weather or fire emergency.
- Make sure you provide good diapering information for all your nursery/childcare workers.
- The nursery should be the cleanest room in the church, for both the safety and health of the children and workers. Discuss proper cleaning methods to be used at the end of the day, to include toys and linens, along with equipment surfaces.
- Be aware of allergy possibilities.
- You may design a check in/out form for your children. If not, be sure you know the person to whom all children are released.
- It is helpful to label juice cups, bottles, and diaper bags.
If you have other questions, please contact the Sabrina Evans at the Diocesan Offices. |
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Everyday Parenting Ideas: I Hate You! 6 Tips for Surviving Teen Angst
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years." Mark Twain
Few parents would say they have launched a child into adulthood without hearing the dreaded, "I hate you!" in the throes of a heated exchange with a red-faced, fist-clenched adolescent. For parents who haven't heard it, they have almost certainly felt it through a seething glare or the rock-solid freeze of a cold-shoulder.
This stage of adolescence (and yes, it's generally a stage) can make parents feel unfit, unqualified, and unsteady. The parenting strategies you thought were good and right feel like they're not working. It's kind of like putting in the ingredients for a chocolate cake, but pulling out a cherry pie. What's a parent to do?
* Tip #1: Breathe. Literally. If you are feeling really disconnected from your teen, you are likely feeling some pretty strong feelings yourself. Concentrated breaths help calm the body's fight or flight response, lower heart rate and blood pressure, and restore reason. Breathing before responding is a good thing to model for your teen. It might feel strange at first, but keep practicing. For breathing tips, read Michele Timmons' article,Sanity Saving Tips for Crazy Busy Moms on the ParentFurther blog.
* Tip #2: Resist the temptation to climb into the sandbox with your child. "Oh yeah, well right back at ya!" may provide a temporary relief, and a way to vent your frustration, but it will not help the situation and may push your teen even further away. It's difficult, but your teen needs you to show that you can remain calm, even when tension levels are high.
* Tip #3: Get to know the teenage brain. It can help you gain perspective to know that your teen's prefrontal cortex (the reasoning part of the brain) is in a bit of a stall mode right now, which is part of why you're seeing a temporary increase in emotional response and a decrease in common sense. A great resource for learning about your teen's developing brain is Dr. David Walsh's book, Why Do They Act That Way? A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen. A firm grip on teen development can serve as part of the antidote for when you're asking yourself, what am I doing wrong? You're probably doing a lot of things right. You just can't see the results yet.
* Tip #4: Try not to take what feels insulting and hurtful personally. This is much easier said than done, of course, but remember that when you hear or feel "I hate you," what your teen really means is "I hate that I'm grounded" or "I hate that I can't use the computer for a week". You are merely the lightening rod for all things sad, bad, and undesirable in your child's life right now. But rest assured - your child still loves you and is watching and listening to everything you say and do.
* Tip #5: Exercise empathy. Being the parent of a teen can be tough, but being a teen is hard too. Most of us can recall times from our youth when we were on less than ideal terms with our own parents. Tap into those memories and talk to your child about how you remember feeling back then. A little acknowledgement, "I can tell you're really disappointed" and empathy, "I remember feeling misunderstood by my parents", can go a long way in the fence mending process.
* Tip #6: Connect where you can. Watch and wait for moments of calm-in the car time, mealtime, the end of the day - and make yourself fully present for your child. Listen without editing or fixing. Get out some old family photos or videos that will make both of you laugh and remind you that there have been (and will be) more harmonious times. Use written words to communicate where spoken words fall short - an encouraging text or a note on the pillow. Your teen may be very prickly right now, but don't let that stop you from showing your softer side.
Reprinted with permission from Search Institute®.
Copyright © 2008
Search Institute, Minneapolis , MN
800-888-7828
www.search-institute.org.
All rights reserved |
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Second Half of Life
Happiness May Come With Age
Study By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can't run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old. 
In Midlife, Boomers Are Happy - and Suicidal (June 13, 2010). It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
"It could be that there are environmental changes," said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, "or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological - for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes."
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about "global well-being" by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal "hedonic well-being," a person's immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being - yesterday's emotional state - the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. "It's a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s," he said. "And it's not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It's something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this."
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. "These results say there are distinctive patterns here," he said, "and it's worth some research effort to try to figure out what's going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?"
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll's health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. "These are four reasonable candidates," Dr. Stone said, "but they don't make much difference."
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
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| Closing - Thought for New Year
We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.
- Ellen Goodman |
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Contact Information
Sabrina Evans
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