The congregation of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church is growing and moving down the road to a new building.
The church is moving from 66 N. Saginaw in Lapeer to 1009 N. Saginaw, said Pastor Jack Irvin, who has headed the 100-member congregation for six months.
“We’re going to have more room to grow because now we’re limited to 90 people,” he said. “The new place will be able to accommodate 150-200 people including room in the balcony.”
St. Matthew’s first service in the new church at 1009 N. Saginaw will be at 10 a.m. March 9.
This is an AMiA church. The website is here:
http://www.stmatthewslapeer.org/
The new building looks great. Congratulations.
By the way, the stats for the Diocese of Michigan are [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_34200883704AM.pdf]here[/url]. The diocese shrunk by 31.1 % in the past five years.
Well done, St. Matthew’s.
Hello T19:
It has been more than a year since I posted. I took some time off from blogs to concentrate on our new Anglican church. Today I stopped by St. Matthew’s to drop off a plant, a gift from our Anglican Church in Flint to our brothers and sisters in Christ at St. Matthew’s.
One correction. The parish members primarily came from Grace Episcopal Church in Lapeer, which is part of the Diocese of Eastern Michigan. If you look at their stats it is even worse than the Diocese of Michigan.
St. Matthew’s has met in a Catholic church, it an old office building and is now in a beautiful, if old, church building. I know many of the people and their hearts are focused on Jesus and we all wish them well as they spread the Good News!
They are being blessed in many ways and our community is blessed by them.
# 1 – Judging by the picture, I hope they won’t be the frozen chosen!
Good news – even if their bishop didn’t get a Lambeth invite!
#4
I’m a bit puzzled by your comment. Are you implying that there’s something wrong about actually worshiping in a church building that looks like a church building? Speaking as one who has spent the past three years worshiping in first a theater and now in an elementry school gymn, I rejoice to see them in a proper church building and I pray daily that I will live to see my parish housed in a proper church building that looks and feels like an Anglican church.
St. Matthew’s considered a number of buildings, non-church types by the way, before God sent them to this place.
They were looking for a building not because they wanted a “church” building, but because their growth had them bulging at the scenes in the former office building they occupied.
My Anglican church meets in a community auditorium and I’ve never been to truer worship in my life. But when the day comes we out grow that building we will likely look for something larger, church building or not.
By sticking to rented facilities we have more money to use for mission and outreach rather than fixing plumbing and roofing problems.
That’s what we like, but that likely wouldn’t work for a lot of folks.
Evan, I think that Gordian’s comment just referred to the snow piled high in the picture.
Jim, thanks for dropping in. Congratulations! [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_34200820957PM.pdf ]Here[/url] is the graphic page for the stats for the diocese of Eastern Michigan. [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_34200821019PM.pdf ]Here[/url] is the graphic page for Grace Episcopal Church, Lapeer MI.
And the diocese of Eastern Michigan “only” dropped by 29.7% in comparison to Michigan’s 31.3% drop.
One significant point in Jim’s note: He doesn’t even pay attention to these dumb blogs anymore (sorry Kendall). So much energy wasted. So much aggravation. Get on with working the fields. Imagine that.
robroy:
In case there is some confusion, I don’t attend St. Matthew’s, although I have visited. We are a sister AMiA church (New Wine Anglican Mission) in Flint.
I do stop by here once in awhile to see what’s going on, but I used to post under the initials JLS (my name is Jim Smith but who would believe that).
We have found a freedom and liberation in just moving ahead with mission and not looking back. We pray for our friends and neighbors we left behind in the Episcopal Church and we know that God will sort it all out.
But the fields are ripe for the harvest and that’s what we want to work on.
Last weekend a group of Anglicans from Christ the King in Lexington, Michigan, our church and the new Anglican Church in Livonia met for a wonderful ment’s retreat at St. Johns Retreat Center in Plymouth. We are forging new relationships and support for each other.
I still appreciate the civility (most of the time) on this site, but have found a peace by staying away for long periods of time.
# 7: You are correct: many are cold but few are frozen. I’m sure their worship is very warm. And it must be a great blessing to leave behind those debilitating denominational wars. Ad multos annos!
Well, robroy, you’ve done it once again. Got there the fastest with the most statistics. You never cease to amaze me.
So, between them the two dioceses of Michigan and Eastern Michigan have lost an average of about 30% over the last five years, or almost a third. Can you imagine how the board of directors would be fuming if a Fortune 500 company lost 30% of its sales volume in a mere five years? Heads would roll. But in TEC, according to our leadership, “all is well,” or the setback is temporary and we’ll soon recover.
I took delight in seeing from the parish website that St. Matthew’s is obviously a “PD” or Purpose-Driven church, based on the five biblical purposes for the Church highlighted by Rick Warren, and even using his trademark C.L.A.S.S. system (101, 201, 301 etc.), not to mention displaying the book on the homepage. That’s probably one reason why they are growing (though not all Anglican churches that try it or claim to use the PD model do grow).
Congratulations to Fr. Jack Irwin and this new AMiA congregation. May you continue to be healthy and grow in fruitfulness, maturity, and size! But seeing the picture of all the snow there in Michigan, I can’t help but think it’s puts a whole new meaning on the familiar biblical phrase that “the fields are WHITE for harvest.”
David Handy+