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2019 Rally for Service

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Rally for Service Sunday: September 8, 2019

Special Outdoor Church Service at Hurkamp Park at 10 am.
Come dressed for work!

Volunteer Opportunities
11:15 am – 1:00 pm

Lunch in Sydnor
1:00 pm

Grace in Action would like to invite everyone to participate in a day of service!  You may sign up for one of the following service projects:

  • Painting Rocks with messages of LOVE, to be distributed throughout Fredericksburg – Sydnor Hall
  • Beanstravaganza at St. George’s: Repackaging 600 pounds of beans! Sydnor Hall
  • Tree Fredericksburg:mulching trees, on Princess Anne Street, near Ford Street, across from 1801 Princess Anne Street. Gloves and tools will be provided
  • Cemetery Clean up: Weeding at the City Cemetery (at the corner of Washington and Amelia). BRING GLOVES
  • River Clean Up: Trash pick up at City Dock City Dock on 101 Sophia Street- BRING GLOVES
  • Cleanup Crew: Take care of clean up for lunch, beans, and rock painting
  • Micah Warehouse, 1212 Lafayette Blvd.: Helping to organize household items for the newly housed
  • Fredericksburg Military Park, Sunken Road and Lafayette Blvd: General clean-up and painting. BRING GLOVES

Service Projects will begin promptly after the 10 am service and will end at 1 p.m. where we will join together for a light lunch in Sydnor Hall.

Please register you and your family below.

If you have problems viewing the form, please click here.

2017 Trinity Institute: Water Justice

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TI2017-MainWebBanner

We’re bringing New York to Fredericksburg for an important conversation on water justice.

You’re invited to attend Trinity Institute, an annual conference that takes place in New York City and at partner sites around the country via webcast, including at St. George’s. We’ll develop a deeper appreciation for water as a sacred gift, gain a thorough understanding of the relationship between water justice and climate change, and learn what we can do about water issues of access, pollution, drought, and rising tides.

Join the water justice movement!

Featuring:

Christiana Peppard
Christiana Peppard, Professor of Theology and Author of Just Water

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Senator Barbara Boxer

David Toomey, Ph.D. economist and Episcopal priest
David Toomey, Ph.D. economist and Episcopal priest

Katharine Hayhoe
Katharine Hayhoe, author, climate scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University

Thabo Makgoba
Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, past chair of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network

Best-selling author Kim Stanley Robinson
Best-selling author Kim Stanley Robinson
WHERE: St. George’s Episcopal Church

WHEN: March 22-24, 2017

  • Wednesday Night, Faulkner Hall, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. — Opening session and keynote with Sen. Barbara Boxer.
     
    Thursday morning: 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Sydnor Hall. Session 1: “Water: Commons or Commodity?”
    The United Nations has declared water as a human right. Global markets regard it as a commodity. Can a fresh approach to market capitalism serve the common good, or does the world need a new and different system of exchange?
     
    Thursday afternoon, 2 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., Sydnor Hall. Session 2: The Global and the Local
    As Hurricane Sandy demonstrated, New York City is vulnerable to sea rise and surge. Climate change is making matters worse. Speakers will examine New York’s issues as a model of how to examine local problems in light of global realities.
     
    Friday morning, 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Sydnor Hall. Session 3: “What Churches Are Doing to Make a Difference”
    People of faith are working for water justice all over the world. Speakers will talk in practical terms about the challenges and achievements, and we will examine what strategies lead to projects that truly improve people’s lives.
     
    Friday afternoon, 2 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., Sydnor Hall. Session 4: “Being Agents of Change”
    As the conference closes, our work begins in earnest. Our speaker is a leading climate scientist who knows both the data on climate change and its impact and also the solutions that lead her to say “Together, we can fix this.”

COST: $10 (attend all or any part of the conference; please don’t let the cost deter you from coming)

CONTACT: For more information about attending the conference via St. George’s, contact the Rev. Bob Miller (540-373-4133).

For more information about Trinity Institute’s national theological conference—including speaker bios, schedule, videos, and more—visit TI2017.org.

 

Register here!

Environmental Corner: The Ubiquitous Grocery Bag

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They’re everywhere: on the trees, along the road, on the beaches and in the forests. How can you help stop this littering problem that leads to these “urban tumbleweeds?”

The best thing you can do is bring your own bag for shopping and reuse it. Keep some in your car to have at a moment’s notice.

The next best thing you can do is recycle the plastic bags. Don’t put them in with your recyclables at home because they will clog up the works, but you can take them to most of the area grocery stores.
The stores have contracts with places that can turn the plastic bags into composite material to make flooring, park benches or even use them to make more plastic bags.
And one more tip: Look for corn-based biodegradable bags where available for carrying your produce. They’re great for holding composting scraps, too! Just don’t let them get too wet.

To recycle plastic bags: 
– Bags should be clean, empty and dry
– Remove any strings or rigid plastics, such as zip locks
– Avoid plastic from frozen foods and six-pack rings
-Bubble wrap, newspaper bags and the plastic wrap around things like paper towels all can be recycled too.
What stores participate?

  • Weis Markets, formally Food Lion
  • Giant
  • Wegmans
  •  Target
  • Lowe’s
  •  Walmart

You can also check in with the church office to see if the Table is in need of grocery bags! Spread the word and help reduce grocery bag litter!

St. George’s Environmental Stewardship group meets on fourth Monday of each month  at 7 p.m. in the Elsie Lewis Room. 

Starting a New Conversation at St. George's for Earth Day

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By Robert Courtnage, St. George’s Episcopal Church, Fredericksburg, Va.

This Earth Day, let us celebrate and reflect upon the splendor of God’s creation—our planet and all the wonderful life that lives upon it. As a new parishioner at St. George’s, I am looking to become involved in the church and continue to grow my faith in Christ. For me, cultivating my faith includes the stewardship of God’s creation. God’s creation, including his people—in particular his poorer people—are now under threat from a changing climate.

Climate change is a tragically polarized political issue. Even with a scientific consensus on its existence, many continue to deny the severity of the problem or think it is something they can do nothing about. The threats associated with climate change include global food and water scarcity, increases in disease, droughts, floods, other extreme weather events and sea level rise. Even the abnormally frigid and snowy winter we had on the east coast of the United States may become more common in some regions in the future as part of our altered climate. This issue should concern all of us: enough to take action. So why doesn’t it?

It is partly because climate change is perceived as impersonal and highly political. However, climate change has and will have a disproportional impact on poorer people because the poor have fewer resources available to adapt. The aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005 is an example of how poorer people are less able to deal with extreme weather. Religious leaders, including our own presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, are changing the conversation on climate change. They realize that climate change is not just a scientific and political issue, but also a moral issue we must and should act upon as Christians. Bishop Schori is speaking out on climate change and recently said, “Like a human being with a runaway fever, the malfunctioning thermostat causes a body to slowly self-destruct as inflammation erodes joints, causes nerve cells to misfire, and prevents the digestive system from absorbing nutrients critical to life. This planet is overheating, its climate is changing, and the residents are sick, suffering, and dying.” You can read the rest of her message here.

I invite you to be part of a new conversation starting at St. George’s on faith and environmental stewardship, including how we as a church can be better stewards of God’s creation by acting on climate change. Here are a few ideas on how we can be better stewards of God’s creation this Earth Day from the Episcopal Church Foundation’s Vital Practices: http://www.ecfvp.org/posts/vital-practices-digest-5-resources-for-caring-for-creation/

Also, tell us your thoughts on climate change, including Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s speaking out on the issue.

Robert Courtnage, his wife and 2-year old son moved to downtown Fredericksburg this past October. Robert is part of a newly forming environmental stewardship ministry at St. George’s. If you would like to join this ministry, contact Robert Courtnage at rcourtnage@yahoo.com