The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

5pm   Holy Eucharist Rite III (Bulletin)

8am        Holy Eucharist Rite I  (Bulletin)

10am      Holy Eucharist Rite II  (Bulletin) 

6PM       Youth Groups Meet

Wednesday  9am Holy Eucharist Rite II in the Sanctuary

                      Adult Forum, via Zoom
Thursday      12noon Midday Mindfulness on Facebook

Saturday       5pm Holy Eucharist Rite III 

Sunday         8am Holy Eucharist Rite I

                      10am Holy Eucharist Rite II  

 

Feb 22nd                 Buildings & Grounds Meeting

Feb 13th & 27th      6pm Youth Groups Meet

                                

Feb 2nd & 16th       Keansburg Soup Kitchen

Most of our services are also broadcast on Youtube and can be seen directly from the front page of our website.

Visit our website stmarksbr.org for links and schedules to all upcoming services, bulletins, music offerings, signups, and more.  

I am very excited to announce a new outreach program. St Mark's is now a partner with Home of Somerset County. They are a non-profit agency serving homeless families since 1992. As families enter their program, diverse houses of worship provide emergency shelter, meals and basic needs. Families move between congregations on a weekly basis, receiving counseling and support services at the HOME Flynn Day Center in Somerville during the day, while dining and sleeping in the congregations in the evening. To read more about their amazing work please click on https://homescnj.org.  

What is our commitment? 

For one week we will partner with them to provide their clients with a stable living environment for themselves and their children. At St Mark's we will provide a shelter to sleep and feed their family in a safe, non-violent environment.  During the day, they will go to the HOME center for assistance on their journey to independence and self-sufficiency. Their children will be able to attend school with clean clothes and full bellies.

How do we prepare?

Our goal is to have space to house up to 4 families. We have updated one classroom (fresh paint, clean floors and a new rug), and a second classroom is currently being refreshed. Cots and linens will be provided to us for our week of hosting.  

Our immediate need:

During our hosting week there will be many opportunities for all ages to volunteer. Our guests will stay at St Mark's from 5:30pm to 6am and on the weekend their departure is at 8am. We will need:

More news and sign ups to follow and you can reach me on msurbas@gmail.com. 

Mary Urbas

With the Sunday evening service halted we also stopped the bimonthly Sunday School classes.  We will be posting lessons on the website again until we resume in- person classes, hopefully by the Lenten season.

PIPE BURST

We had a pipe burst sometime during the early morning hours of Monday, January 17th,  in the Parish Hall.  The pipe was part of the baseboard heating unit along the east wIndow “bump out”.  Water seeping through the floor shorted out two fire detectors setting off the fire alarm which led the alarm company to notify us around 6am.  Thanks to Fr. RIck, Karen, Bruce Walker and me,  we were able to get the water turned off and mopped up.  The hall is still usable. We suffered floor tile damage and we lost a few ceiling tiles in the lower level classrooms as well as incurred some repair costs. We will keep you posted with the next steps in getting the floor and ceiling tiles repaired and replaced.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED, HANDY or NOT

One of this year’s goals of the Buildings and Grounds commissions is to complete many items on our “to do” list by volunteers of St. Mark's.   If you have not seen it yet, there is a poster on the Parish Hall bulletin board near the kitchen that lists all the items that we are trying to complete. We also have this same list on line.  We would love to complete all these items this year, but to do so we need your help. So far we have 5 projects completed since November of last year, yippie!

Check out the link below for more information. 

SHORT TERM HOUSING REMODELING

We are on schedule with some much needed refurbishing in several of our older unused classrooms to set them up for temporary housing.  We have a target date of mid- April to have our facility ready.  Our shower room is finished as well as updating Bill’s room.  Work started on Charlotte’s room this past week.  

Please see Mary's Outreach article above for more information.

John Lyga

The internet is wonderful.  I typed in feeding the hungry and found well over 100 bible passages in the New and Old Testaments linked to feeding the hungry.  It is something humans have been doing for a very long time.  One way we fulfill this at St. Mark's is through our Creative Can Event.  Last year we collected nearly 1,000 cans of food that we donated to the Food Bank.  We will hold the Lent-long canned food drive culminating in a “Creative Can Collection” that is built out during Holy Week.  If you ever saw any of the CANSTRUCTION sculptures posted on-line, think much simpler.  We want to focus on participation rather than huge sculptures. Remember that Shoprite has their Can-Can sale going on NOW.  Stock up and start planning your Cansculpture.  THIS YEAR we have 3 other churches participating and may have more.  We haven’t decided if we all work as one large group or have church-to-church competition.  Either way we are sure to get a LOT of food to the needy.  For more info reach out to John Lyga. 

Bernards Township Community Center - 289 South Maple Avenue

Thursdays - 9am-4pm

Make your appointment at:  www.bernardshealth.org (bottom left under "calendar")

Last appointment will be seen at 4pm:  Walk-ins MAY be taken