Copyright © 2003 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

By Laila Shahrokhi

A spirit of excitement and energy was readily apparent Oct. 18-19 at the St. Luke’s Day Celebration and Home-coming Weekend.

Saturday was a busy day of good food, good music and fun. The Carib Sound Steel Drum Orchestra provided sweet sounds as people from the community and the congregation gathered.

A yard sale organized by Doris Scott Crawford brought in nearly $750, slated for church roof repairs. Hot items included antique rocking chairs, stuffed animals and Snoopy and Garfield memorabilia. Games and face-painting were among activities planned by Taurean and Teresa Scott-Henry to entertain children. Rick and Carlotta Roach and Frank and Joannie Moore organized a fish fry proclaimed “incredible.” More goodies were available in a bake sale set up by Kara Mayo.

Sunday’s special service of Healing and Holy Communion drew a near-record crowd of 93. Carib Sound and Janet Nelson, Austin East High School choral director, provided music. Ginger Jamrog organized children who played founding and other members during the reading of a brief history of the church in the Children’s Minute, and she set up a display of church history for viewing through the day.

Leslie Roach coordinated a fabulous potluck lunch after the service, complete with chicken, cornbread, every kind of casserole under the sun and homemade pies and cakes.

By Marshall Bright

When my mother offered me the chance to go to Egan, Tenn., to host a Vacation Bible School at the community center, I agreed without much pause. Then later in the fall, the children were booked a weekend of activities in Chatta-nooga. I was excited to see some of my friends again!

As thirty-something tired kids stumbled off the bus, I began to recognize faces. Some of them recognized us, too. I was very touched when a few kids remembered my name.

After a dinner of chicken fingers at church, we trekked across the road to the Mountain Maze playground.

The next morning, downtown Chattanooga amazed the kids. An office building maybe eight stories high made one girl gasp, “A skyscraper!”

An alligator at the aquarium made their eyes grow huge, and they pressed their noses on the glass, two feet away from his gator grin.

A movie at the IMAX theater brought reactions from stunned amazement to doubt. Walking out, one girl simply said, “That … was … sooooo … cool!”

After lunch, we walked on to the Creative Discovery Museum, where at a water-play exhibit, we donned raincoats and hats and splashed in the water, then we romped through the four other permanent exhibits.

The upstairs of the museum is a changing exhibit, and this time it was Winter Won-derland. The entrance was a cozy cabin. Through the back door lay a maze of white walls and dangling sheets of ‘ice’ to brave your way through. There was an ice-fishing hut, a rock wall and a winter habitat.

After the museum, I had to leave to go to a performance of the play I was in at my school.

I look forward to many more opportunities to rendezvous with the children of Egan Community Center in the future and hope to find new ways to strengthen and extend our bonds from mountain to mountain.

By Emily McDonald
South East Area Correspondent

Dave Harmer describes himself as “a winter Methodist and a summer Episcopalian.”

Harmer and his wife, Jan, are among those who, on summer Sundays, gather beside Watts Bar Lake for the reading of Morning Prayer. The Knoxville residents have a home on the lake and join fellow lake dwellers for what has become known as St. Barnabas. Others come from Athens, Chattanooga and even North Georgia.

St. Barnabas was started in 1965 by Dr. John Ewing and his wife Frances at the suggestion of the Rt. Rev. Fred Gates, a retired suffragan bishop of Tennessee, said Jack Ewing, the couple’s son. The bishop spent a week with the Ewings every summer and noted their neighbors weren’t going to church.

“He said they should start having Morning Prayer down at the barn,” Jack Ewing said. Services were held in the old Ewing barn, thus the name St. Barnabas, and they began each year on the Sunday closest to St. Barnabas Day, June 11.

“A lot of people came to honor John and Frances,” said Rosemary DenUyl. “If you weren’t here, she missed you.”

Bishop Gates “called it his congregation,” Jack Ewing said. “It has taken on a life of its own,” added Ewing’s wife, Joanne. “We don’t advertise.”

Many who attend the service are not Episcopalian, but because the Book of Common Prayer is used, the service is considered an informal outreach of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Athens, where the Ewings are members.

The service is held beside the lake unless rain calls the barn into use. People come by car, by boat and on foot, and they are casually dressed – sometimes even in bathing suits.

“I walk across the field from my house,” said Isabel Johnson. Her late husband, Clelland, used to pick people up in his pontoon boat, which was called the Barn-a-Bus.

The service begins at 11 a.m. and is preceded by a coffee and social hour in the barn. Photographs of people who have attended the service through the years are displayed in cases along one wall of the barn.

“We’ve brought two generations through here,” said Hunter Hicks, a regular attendee. His wife, Mary Jack, remembers that in years past children sat on railroad ties in the yard. “After church the grownups played horseshoes and the kids played Twister,” she said.

The ringing of a cowbell signals that it’s time to gather for Morning Prayer. The congregation, which can number more than 100 people on the July 4 weekend, sits facing the lake. The lay readers stand facing the congregation in front of a rustic wood cross wreathed in flowers and inscribed “St. Barnabas.” Shade is provided by a tree that survived a tornado in 1996.

The service is Rite I of Morning Prayer. No sermon is preached nor is an offering taken. St. Barnabas has no budget. “We call it ‘church lite,’ ” Joanne Ewing said.

On occasion a visiting priest has celebrated Eucharist. The Very Rev. Ward Ewing, dean of General Theolog-ical Seminary in New York, did a baptism at St. Barnabas while he was a parish priest.

Betty Ewing, who is married to Jack and Ward Ewing’s brother Art, remarked, “There are people who have become Episcopalians because of St. Barnabas.”

By Della Kurtz

Slow-roast 400 pounds of pig overnight. Set up a yummy sauce bar. Slice 150 pounds of potatoes, add 25 or 30 pounds of onions and peppers and fry ’em up over a wood fire. Pile mounds of cole slaw and fill big old roasters with rich-tasting beans. Check what the ladies have baked for the dessert tables and to sell. Listen to the sounds of fellowship, music, and laughter. Add a clear blue sky decorated with white puffy clouds, a golden sun and accent with a soft breeze carrying the perfume of wood smoke. ... you know, one of those autumn days that remind you that East Tennessee is on God’s “Top 10 Beautiful Places” list.

What have you got? Pig Roast time at St. Joseph the Carpenter in Sevierville! Thanks to lots of hard work by wonderful folks, 600 + meals were served at the Annual Mountain Festival and Pig Roast, held the third Saturday in October.

Kids enjoyed activities just for them; a Christmas booth featured local area artisans and the work of talented parishioners; the Silent Auction overflowed with wonderful things provided by many generous local businesses and individuals; and an expanded community outreach area offered information and informal networking.

The Pig Roast is St. Joseph’s primary source for community outreach funds with at least half of net proceeds going directly to support local efforts. The 2002 event garnered more than $3,500; the tally won’t be available for 2003 until year’s end.

Plan to attend the 10th Annual anniversary event next year: Oct. 16, 2004. See you there!

By Bill Wilcox

The first Episcopal worship service of St. Stephen, Oak Ridge, was Evening Prayer, held October 3, 1943 – 60 years ago – in the U.S. Army’s just-completed Chapel-on-the-Hill. The current congregation borrowed the chapel, which is still in active use, for Evening Prayer on Oct. 4. Bishop William E. Sanders, who came from Nashville especially for the celebration weekend, led the service. Our rector, the Rev. Craig Kallio preached.

The 1943 service was led by the Rev. Eugene Hopper, then rector of St. James, whose members during the next year took turns getting “badged in” to the Secret City every Sunday, and who brought along the needed prayer books and hymnals. The little Episcopal group’s first Communion Service was held at Christmas that same year.

After the commemorative service on Oct. 4, the congregation of 90 – compared with the 15 who attended that first service – moved to St. Stephen’s for a bountiful barbecue supper, which was followed by a retelling of the story of the St. Stephen community’s faith journey. Seven parishioners described significant events and their memories in each of the church’s seven decades: Dr. Lewis Preston (1940s), Fred Manneschmidt (’50s), Judy Kidd (’60s), Will Allin (’70s), Joe McGrory (’80s), Rob Steele (’90s), and Dan DiGregorio (current day).

Sunday, Bishop Sanders celebrated a glorious Festival Eucharist and preached for a service of the whole congregation – the highlight of a weekend of remembrance, thanksgiving and looking toward the future.

The annual Blessing of the Animals at St. Francis of Assisi in Ooltewah is open to the community, and about 40 people brought animals to the church on Oct. 6 to be blessed. There were the expected dogs, cats and horses, but other creatures included earthworms, a writing spider, a grasshopper and an unidentified bug – tentatively identified as a Colorado Potato Beetle.

Donated pet snacks, pet shampoo and animal crackers were given away, and the church awarded a certificate of participation and a St. Francis medal to each animal.

The Rev. Buckley Robbins reports that the most fascinating creature to show up was a golden retriever who was waiting alone at the church entrance early that afternoon and who took part in all the activities. “Buddy,” as he was affectionately dubbed, followed the church’s 5th-graders around as they set up tables outside and greeted new arrivals with a friendly wag. He joined the procession of animals that traveled around the church building and up to the log house on the church grounds, and he received his blessing. He sat for a while with a wheelchair-bound participant on the porch.

Sometime during the cleanup phase, he disappeared, and he’s not been seen since.

One theory is that ‘Buddy’ felt in need of blessing and heard about the event through the canine grapevine. Or there’s the theory that this was a visitation of the church’s patron saint in the guise of a dog – and what else but the gentlest and friendliest of breeds?

“I accept it as part of God’s surprise,” Robbins said. “You go along, and you never know” what will happen.

Bishop’s Deputy for Program Carolyn Dicer led a recent workshop at Diocesan House on enhancing Christian Formation in parishes. Sixteen parish educators attended the session: four from the Upper East area, and six each from the South East and Middle East areas of the diocese.

Highlights of the day included a resource fair, provided by the diocese in conjunction with Chapter & Verse Bookshop, and a presentation by St. Joseph, Sevierville, rector the Rev. Rob Henley about the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and its resources for children and adult studies.

Several participants came looking for adult resources, and they went home loaded with curriculum, books and ideas. In an illustration of serendipity, one new Christian Education director who was searching for a Christmas pageant idea was showered with three perfect solutions.

“People came looking for something, and they gave it to each other,” Dicer said.