The Wardens, Vestry and Congregation of
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Cordially invite you to attend......
The Celebration of a New Ministry
at which
The Rev. Canon Lou Blanchard
Diocese of Colorado
will install
The Reverend Lupton P. Abshire
Wednesday the Twenty-Second day in May
Two thousand thirteen
At seven o’clock in the evening
- St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
- 2000 Stover Street
- Ft. Collins, CO 80525
- St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
- 2000 Stover Street
- Ft. Collins, CO 80525
Reception following
Clergy: Red Stoles
Guest preacher the Rev. Amanda Nickles, Vicar
Grace Mission Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, Florida
Learn more about the remarkable Grace Mission at www.gracemission.net/
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Sunday Adult Forum
9:30am in the Parish Hall April 7th through May 19th
Things Not Seen:
Faith and Reason in Christian History
Corinne Wieben, Assistant Professor
Department of History
University of Northern Colorado
Course Description
Modern thought often contrasts reason and faith, knowledge and belief, science and religion, but people in the ancient and medieval west had no problem integrating their rational, practical, and spiritual lives. This series will explore the relationship between faith, doubt, and rational inquiry in the Christian west. Participants will examine how pre-modern people reconciled reason and faith, learn how and why modern thinkers ultimately separated them, and discuss the changing relationship between reason and faith in the 21st century.
| April 7 | In the Beginning: What are the roots of Christianity? | ||
| April 14 | Begotten, Not Made: How did Christianity develop? | ||
| April 21 | Presentation on Haiti | ||
| April 28 | The New Life: Can there be rational thought in an age of faith? | ||
| May 5 | Schism & Skepticism: Who separated reason from faith? | ||
| May 12 | Devotion & Desire: Why has the search for happiness failed? | ||
| May 19 | Illumined by Its Light: Can we reconcile reason and religion? |
Corinne Wieben teaches ancient and medieval European and Mediterranean history. She earned a B.A. in medieval studies from the University of California, Davis in 2001. In 2004, she completed an M.A. in history, and in 2010, she received her Ph.D. in history with an emphasis in medieval studies, both from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research combines legal and social history and uses records of marriage disputes in the fourteenth-century episcopal court of Lucca to explore how social, religious, and legal conceptions of marital gender roles affected and emerged from the strategies employed by litigants and their lawyers. She has presented papers at various academic conferences, including the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, the California Interdisciplinary Consortium for Italian Studies, and the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, and she has presented at special seminars at the Huntingdon Library in Pasadena, California and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Among the honors she has received are a Fulbright grant for study in Italy and the Medieval Academy of America Helen Maud Cam Dissertation Grant. Her publications include an article in the California Italian Studies Journal and an essay in a forthcoming volume edited by Daniel Bornstein and Laura Gaffuri.
At UNC, Dr. Wieben teaches courses in pre-modern western civilization, classical Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, women’s history, and the history of interfaith relations in the pre-modern Mediterranean.
From the Rector...
Vestry Leadership Development
“How do you like our Colorado weather so far?” I’m asked on a weekly basis. My reply has been, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” Be careful what you ask for. As I write this letter on the last day of April, the skies are darkening, and the forecast is for up to eight inches of snowfall starting this evening. I’m told all this snow in the spring is unusual (of course we desperately needed the moisture), and so, hopefully, next year we won’t find ourselves postponing the Vestry meeting and Vestry retreat over and over again after the Annual Parish Meeting.
On the other hand, both our first Vestry meeting, held on the evening of Monday, April 22 (it was snowing), and our annual retreat, held at the TAMASAG Conference Center in Bellvue on Saturday, April 27 (it was sunny and in the 70s) were well worth waiting for. The consensus amongst us all—nine vestry members, plus the treasurer, the clerk, and myself—was that, not only are we blessed with an exceptional array of talent, which members of the vestry team bring to the table, but we also enjoy a special kind of enthusiasm and esprit de corps, which will launch us forward as we begin to discern God’s particular mission and purpose for St. Luke’s Church.
Our Vestry meetings now have an entirely new structure. Two-hour, monthly meetings are divided into three 45-minute sections. The first part of the meeting is devoted to Spiritual Deepening & Direction. Thus, we begin with Evening Prayer in the Chapel. Then we move to the Library. Each month we will engage a different Biblical topic so as to deepen our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Next, we turn to the subject of Congregational Development. Again, each month we will address a different topic regarding what it takes to become a vital, program, mission-driven congregation. Finally, we turn to the activity of Strategic Planning and Decision-making. The over-arching, task for the Vestry is the on-going discernment of God’s mission for St. Luke’s—always remaining mindful that, as was pointed out at our retreat: “God creates the Church, and invites us to participate in the process.”
And because St. Luke’s is God’s Church, the Vestry’s challenge is to develop the capacity to discern God’s purpose for St. Luke’s, which necessitates being receptive to the Holy Spirit’s on-going guidance and revelations—keeping in mind—to paraphrase our Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter—“God has prepared for those who love God such good things as surpass our understanding, that we, loving God in all things and above all things, may obtain God’s promises, which exceed all that we can desire.” Amen.
Faithfully yours,
Fr. Abshire+
