My Dear Sisters and Brothers at Christ Church,

2023 is a doozie! As you're well aware, we've had rainstorms right out of the Book of Genesis. In response, we've converted our Parish Hall into a temporary 24/7 homeless shelter. This week Christ Church parted company with our Parish Administrator, Ashley Green. We're beginning a search for her replacement immediately. Here's more information about all of that:

Alameda Homeless Warming Shelter

Last week Christ Church's Social Justice Ministry made the call to rapidly shift from three nights per week to round-the-clock operations. We made this decision for a variety of reasons: 1) It was heartbreaking to evict our guests at 7:00 AM into driving rain. 2) When we asked ourselves how Jesus would use his house during a crisis, this was a theological no-brainer. 3) We are blessed with a flexible space and the world's greatest volunteers, so we're sharing our blessings. 4) We have a number of vulnerable children staying with us.

I want to thank the phalanx of volunteers who continue to be the backbone of this substantial project. John Brennan and Alisa Rasera have spent countless hours in our Parish Hall and organizing volunteers. Kelly Scott has been tirelessly organizing our meals. Our shower team, led by Sally Han, Sarah Passard and Dolores Radding has been amazing. There are too many volunteers from the parish and the wider community to count, though Babs Kenney seems to be everywhere. Props to Zac Bowling and the Alameda Peeps community for stepping up with volunteers and donations.

While honoring existing obligations in the Parish Hall, we've committed to running 24/7 through the month of January. The Housing Consortium of the East Bay is providing professional staff during weeknights. The Village of Love is providing overnight staff on the weekends. Both organizations provide access to the Alameda County Coordinated Entry System, which connects guests with additional services, and helps put them on the path to more sustainable housing. Church and community volunteers are keeping an eye on things during the daytime, improvising gracefully.

We believe we can sustain this pace through the current storm cycle and the month of January. After that, we'll need to work on a more permanent solution for many of our guests, while reassessing the church's volunteer and financial capacity. More to come.

You're probably wondering how we're paying for all of this. We now have an agreement from the City of Alameda to shift shelter budget from later in the year to the present. This will help us cover professional staff right now. The church community and the people of Alameda and the people of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Oakland (where my wife Holly is Pastor) have also responded with great generosity. As of Friday at noon, we have received $14,724 in electronic donations in January for the shelter. We've also received a number of checks and cash donations, which take longer to calculate. The Bank of Marin gave us a $500 grant too. This community has been amazingly generous. Thank you. Direct costs for the shelter include over $1,500 per night for staff salaries. The church is also incurring much higher gas and electric bills, cleaning fees, many supplies and administrative costs.

We can use more money, of course, as well as meals and volunteers to monitor things during the daytime. See here: 

If you're interested in volunteering, please contact me directly at stephen@christchurchalameda.org

All week long we've had more than 25 people and a few dogs each night. In years past the shelter has been mostly older men. We still have plenty of those, but we're also housing a few families with young children, and younger women. Families stay in the Guild Room. Others stay in the main hall. Our volunteers are buzzing like bees in the kitchen, the registration table, and operating the showers.

I want to thank the good people of Christ Church for sharing our space so generously, and for shifting gatherings to other spaces. Additionally, Head Start has also donated some of its leased space to this project.

Parish Administrator

This week Christ Church and our Parish Administrator Ashley Green parted company. We've already begun the search for a new administrator. In the meantime, we have a great team of volunteers helping out in the office, and the rest of the staff are taking on more responsibilities. Please be forgiving with us as we are sure to drop a few balls as we make this transition.

Let me know what questions you have about all of this. Thank you and God bless you.

Peace,

Stephen

Dear Sisters and Brothers at Christ Church,

Happy New Year. This coming Sunday we celebrate the great Feast of the Epiphany. We moved it from Friday the 6th to Sunday the 8th because that's more fun and because the bishop is visiting. Epiphany literally translates as "manifestation of the divine." In Christian tradition this was the manifestation of God's incarnation to the magi. In Orthodox Christianity and in much of southern Europe, the celebration of Epiphany is actually more important than the Feast of the Nativity on December 25. Spending my early years in Italy, we celebrated the visit of Befana the Witch, who brought us gifts on Epiphany. I have no memories of this because I was a baby, but my mother promises me it's true.

Welcoming the Bishop on the Feast of the Epiphany makes some theological sense. If epiphany implies connecting to something larger, then connecting with our bishop is good imagery. Marc Andrus is one of just a few thousand bishops around the world who fall within the tradition of Apostolic succession. Jesus appointed the Apostles who, in turn, appointed successors, who eventually became known as bishops. It takes a few bishops to consecrate a new bishop, so theoretically, there's a line of succession through the bishops (technically the Episcopate) all the way back to Jesus. Bishops, in turn, ordain priests and deacons, who preside over sacraments in the churches with all the people. So this succession extends to the whole Church. To be sure, there have been some bad apples in the line of bishops, especially some of the medieval popes, but the symbolism is still there. 

So, this weekend as we celebrate the Epiphany, the manifestation of the divine presence to humanity, we also celebrate the connection of each one of us to a larger, living church and historical tradition, which stretches all the way back to Jesus. And if you take the genealogies of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke seriously, Jesus' lineage stretches back through King David, the 12 tribes of Israel, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and all the way back to the poetry that starts the book of Genesis.

Happy Epiphany!

-Stephen