A Conversation with Bishop Price

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh is sponsoring a program tomorrow night titled “A Conversation with Bishop Price.” This is a good time to meet Bishop Price and hear about his hopes for our diocese. The program is being held at Church of the Redeemer in Squirrel Hill, 5700 Forbes Avenue, Monday, May 17, 2010, at 7:30 PM.

Goodbye, Easter

Today was the last Sunday of Easter. Yet again, we sang no Easter hymns at the 10:30 service. Hymns were taken from the “Jesus Christ our Lord,” “Holy Eucharist,” “The Church’s Mission,” and “The Church” sections of the hymnal. “Holy Eucharist” was represented by three separate hymns. Next Sunday is Pentecost. Rather than sing an Easter anthem, the choir sang a Pentecost anthem by Thomas Tallis. Couldn’t we have waited a week?

Of course, since St. Paul’s no longer seems to pay very careful attention to the church year, perhaps some of my favorite Easter hymns will show up during Pentecost. After all, we no longer perform baptisms on the traditional days; we do them for the convenience of the families involved. I guess it’s that welcoming thing again.

Welcome (If You’re Going South)

For many months—I have no idea how long—the lamp that illuminates the text on our sign in front of the church has been out. If you pass the church heading south at night, you see “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church” illuminated at the top of the sign, and you can read the weekly worship schedule below it. If you’re traveling north, however, all you can read is “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.” The area below is dark. I mentioned this to Lou at the same time I offered my ideas about coffee hour. (See “Coffee Hour.”) The sign is as dark today as it was then.

Somewhere along the line, we seem to have concluded that our sign, a lovely custom sign, is (1) ineffective and (2) more trouble than it’s worth. We used to update it frequently, at least weekly. Now, we post the standard weekly schedule and leave it alone. If something special is happening, we either put up a tacky banner or do no advertising at all.

I had to stop by the church today, so I took a close look at the sign, something I had not done in a while. The sign is not in good repair. Besides the lighting problem, parts are missing—one of the Os is just a big white circle, for example—the black backgrounds on which letters are placed seem a bit shopworn, letters are misshapen, and some characters are faked. (Colons are made of pushpins.)

Maybe it’s time to use some of that yellow tape we have around the Mayfair steps around our sign as well.

St. Paul’s sign.

Missing pieces of O and A.

Misaligned characters and pushpins.

Missing (removed?) lock.

South side of sign.

Do We Really Want to Repair the Steps?

In a conversation with a friend yesterday, I happened to mention the deteriorated steps at the Mayfair Drive entrance to the narthex at St. Paul’s. My friend is not a parishioner but she is an Episcopalian who is familiar with our building. She also has mobility problems.

I can’t recall the details of our discussion, but the upshot of it was that perhaps St. Paul’s doesn’t need to replace the steps but should build a handicapped access ramp to the sidewalk along Mayfair Drive instead. The most obvious advantage of such a plan is that it would provide more direct access to the church proper and allow a person in a wheelchair, say, to enter the church from the rear, a less conspicuous entrance (and perhaps a less embarrassing one) than through the transept door near the elevator lobby.

Replacing the steps with a ramp might—I emphasize might—even save money. The steps, to be restored properly, should be constructed of limestone. The ramp could be poured concrete, a cheaper material, though one needed in greater quantity. Of course, any savings could be eaten up by the need to remove the current walkway and steps up to the Mayfair door.

I don’t know enough about handicapped access, architecture, or construction to know if my idea is a viable one, but I do think it deserves some consideration. The ten thousand dollars we have talked about spending on a set of little-used steps might be put to better use by building a ramp. In any case, something should be done about the steps soon. In their current condition, cordoned off by yellow tape, they are hardly a welcoming sight and seem to send the message that St. Paul’s cares neither about its building nor about those who use it. Some might conclude that our finances are so dire that we cannot afford to make repairs.

We should ask if people would use such a ramp. It would certainly have the advantage of being a more conspicuous advertisement of our commitment to accessibility than the presence of our elevator. Of course, we wouldn’t want a ramp to mar the beauty of the building, but, being on the side of the church, I don’t think the ramp would be too jarring architecturally. Its obtrusiveness could be mitigated by plantings, which could actually beautify the site.

The steepness of Mayfair Drive presents some problems. It is not the ideal place to get out of a car, especially if you have mobility problems. The sidewalk might have to be re-contoured to place a level slab at the bottom of the ramp. Would a straight ramp to the sidewalk have a sufficiently gentle angle? I’m not sure that it would. A curved ramp would be more complex and expensive.

Perhaps access via a ramp and steps is indicated for the Mayfair narthex entrance. This is probably more of an aesthetic issue than a practical one, and it deserves consideration. It bothers me at least a little that the ramp would not allow easy access from the plaza directly in front of the main entrance. On the other hand, we might be able to design a ramp with a very gentle slope that connects with the plaza. Exiting a car on Washington Road is more convenient than on Mayfair, though traffic is a hazard.

Does any sort of ramp seem reasonable? What do you think?

Believe Concert Wednesday

The vocal group Believe (see picture) is presenting a concert at on Wednesday, May 12, 2012, at Christ United Methodist Church. Perhaps you will recognize Rich Williams, a tenor in the St. Paul’s Chancel Choir and an occasional soloist in our church. Believe (well, most of it, anyway) has sung at one of the evening musical programs at St. Paul’s. The group, and its repertoire is a bit hard to characterize. Suffice it to say that they sing some barbershop, but they are not a barbershop group. They are, however, a lot of fun.

Here is Rich’s description of the concert:

As usual, we’re singing a wide variety of music. There’s something for everyone, including traditional barbershop, spirituals, patriotic anthems, sacred choral gems, and some just plain silliness. One of my favorites is a piece called “Lambscapes,” which uses four distinctly different musical styles to portray the story of Mary and her Little Lamb (plus we added a bit of choreography to really keep things fun). I dare you watch and listen to this and keep a straight face!

Believe will be accompanied on by piano by Debbie Schneider. Christ United Methodist Church is above the Bethel Park Giant Eagle at 44 Highland Road. The concert starts at 7 PM.

Coffee Hour

It was good to see an unusually large crowd at the coffee hour after the 10:30 service yesterday. I’m not sure why that was the case, and I doubt that the commissioning of Stephen ministers or the sheet cake celebrating the event was responsible. I enjoyed the cake, but I felt very uncomfortable in the crowd.

A couple of months ago, at a rector-led discussion about becoming a more welcoming congregation, participants were asked for their own suggestions. I pointed out problems with our coffee hour and contrasted it with the full lunch offered by St. James’, Lothian, a Maryland parish where both Lou and my son Geoffrey were once on the staff. My complaints were the following:

1. Everyone is expected to pay for snacks. I have literally never been to any other church that has this expectation.
2. We place what seems like a guard at the table, seemingly to assure that everyone pays.
3. The food is placed on tables that block traffic and make it difficult to reach the food.

My suggestions:

1. Use the coffee hour for fellowship, not as a profit center.
2. Move the tables out to the middle of the floor.
3. Move other tables and chairs out of the way, so people can circulate freely.

In particular, I noted that St. James’ holds their coffee hour—it really seems unfair to call it anything other than lunch—in a large parish hall. The tables holding the food are in a row in the center of the room, where they are accessible from all sides. All the other furniture is against the walls, so people can freely move about, not only near the food but throughout the room.

And how does St. Paul’s arrange things? The food is on tables in the middle of the high-traffic path between the education wing and the Mayfair exit. After church, a traffic jam inevitably occurs in the hallway just outside the undercroft. Moreover, only one side of the tables are accessible by people seeking snacks. Several tables are set up just a few yards from the food tables, so that the crowd is corralled in a small area. This makes it difficult to get to the food, difficult to move through the area, and very uncomfortable for people who don’t like being confined in a small space with other people.

Lou declared that he liked my idea of arranging the furniture for coffee hour the way we do for receptions, with excess tables and chairs moved out of the way and food tables in the middle of the space parallel to Mayfair Drive, rather than blocking the passage in front of the kitchen. He declared that we would try that arrangement the next Sunday. That was, as I said, months ago, and the suggestion still has not been implemented. When I was trying to leave the church yesterday, I had to walk around all the tables toward the back of the room, then walk back toward the hallway to the Mayfair exit. There were a lot of people I had to elbow out of the way. That makes an introvert like me very unhappy.

Welcome to St. Paul’s, by the way, the most welcoming congregation in the world South Hills for all generations.

Whither Easter?

One of the joys I find in church is singing hymns, and my favorite season for hymns is not Christmas but Easter. The Hymnal 1982 has 39 hymns under the heading “Christmas” and 40 hymns, most of them wonderful, labeled “Easter.” After all, Christmas is a late comer to the church year, but Christianity itself is inconceivable without Easter.

Here’s a short list of some of my favorite Easter hymns:

1. “At the Lamb’s high feast we sing” (#174)
2. “Hail thee, festival day!” (#175)
3. “‘Welcome, happy morning!’” (#179)
4. “He is risen, he is risen!” (#180)
5. “Christ is alive! Let Christians sing.” (#182)
6. “Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands” (#186)
7. “This joyful Easter tide” (#192)
8. “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain” (#199)
9. Good Christians all, rejoice and sing!’ (#205)
10. Jesus Christ is risen today” (#207)
11. “The Strife is o’er, the battle done” (#208)
12. “The day of resurrection!” (#210)
13. “Awake, arise, lift up your voice” (#212)
14. “Come away to the skies” (#213)

And don’t assume the ones I left out are not also terrific, but some are a bit obscure.

Unfortunately, for at least the second year in a row, we are singing few Easter hymns in the Easter season. I complained about this to Dr. Starr last year, and I did again this year, but we still are singing few Easter hymns other than at the Easter Vigil or on Easter Sunday. Today, for example, we sang five hymns. They are listed in the hymnal under the following headings: “Thanksgiving Day” (!), “Christian Responsibility,” “Epiphany” (!), “Holy Eucharist,” and “Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I don’t know who is choosing the hymns at St. Paul’s, but I, for one, am feeling cheated. I want to celebrate the resurrection!