Dear People of St. John's,

This Sunday, the Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King. The last Sunday of the Church year and the final Sunday we will be with you as your long-term supply clergy. The time since our first Sunday on August 3rd seems to have flown by. Yet what good work you have all done in these nearly four months. You have been preparing for your future. Your vestry has done exceptional work finding a new priest. 

The Feast of Christ the King is a day we realize who is in charge. We may cooperate with God's good work, but we are citizens of a heavenly Kingdom and together we look to that day when Christ will be all in all. It is the culmination of the story of salvation we tell and retell, beginning in Advent hope, through the incarnation at Christmas, through Jesus' ministry, his death, resurrection and ascension.

How appropriate then as we begin to tell the story again, to start a new year, that we send you into that future with our prayers and hopes for God's good work begun and continuing in you. What a blessing and privilege it has been to walk beside you during these crucial days and to say farewell as a new season is on the horizon for the life of St. John's. We remember St. Paul's words to the early Christians in Philippi, we give thanks to God for you, remembering you with joy in our prayers. We are confident that "the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

With all our blessings for the future,

Fr. Mark Kowalewski and Fr. Dan Ade