Hello Friends!

You may or may not know, that Fr. Kenny and I work at two, yes, TWO churches.  I’m the Priest in Charge of Emmanuel in Great River, but also the Curate (basically an assistant priest) at St. Mark’s in Islip.  So, most Sundays I am at Emmanuel, but on the last Sunday of the month I head over to St. Mark’s and Fr. Rick (the Rector at St. Mark’s) heads over to Emmanuel for a “pulpit swap.”  Of course, priests don’t only work Sundays, as some people think, so I am out and about during the week going between the parishes doing all sorts of other things.  Hey I can’t give too much away, or I won’t have any future posts, haha.

This is a popular style of ministry these days, because often smaller parishes cannot afford to have a full time Rector, but most priests can’t afford to only be half time.  So it is a win-win!  And we get to have more joint events and work together as Christ’s body in the world, which is way more important than anything else.

Anyway, on March 30th, I brought Fr. Kenny along to St. Mark’s and took some pictures. Pictures of Emmanuel will be up soon, along with a discussion of east vs. west facing altars.

St. Mark’s is larger than Emmanuel, built in Norwegian Gothic style.  It has microphones (sadly on the fritz right now) and two altars.  The older, east-facing altar is against the back wall (behind me in the picture below-priest facing away from congregation) and then the west facing altar (priest facing the congregation) that we use for Eucharist.

Looking over Rite I before the 8:00am service….

Here is Fr. Kenny standing at the east facing altar to get the reserve sacrament out.

I don’t think he will be able to open that door…

There are also many great helpers at both churches, here is Pat with Fr. Kenny in the pulpit, making sure everything is all set.

testing, 1, 2, 3….

Finally, we have Fr. Kenny practicing his orans position (how he holds his hands during the service) while Dave lights the candles.  You can see our little viking ship up there in the middle.

We had a great adventure at St. Mark’s, and look forward to the next Sunday there, April 27th, when there will be an Easter bonnet parade.  Fr. Kenny has been working on his for weeks!