St. James' Episcopal Church

The third meeting of the 150th Anniversary Planning Committee was held on Saturday February 21, 2009.

Meeting attendees read the meeting notes from the January 24th meeting.

The theme for the First Friday on August 7th is the “Doors of Goshen”. Steve will work on contacting the organizer of the First Friday event to discuss publicity. Apparently there isn’t a separate brochure for every First Friday event, but we can see about getting mentioned in the event’s media article in the local papers when the August event is publicized. Steve will also look into what it takes to set-up, etc. and more general information about it. The Goshen Historical Society will also be contacted to see if we could set up a booth in front of the museum or if a theme could be coordinated with the St. James’ celebration.

Steve looked into the idea of handing out free bottled water at the First Friday event with Hawkins Water Tech and Hawkins suggested he directly contact Bill Wade at Whispering Springs in Pierceton. 1,700 bottles of water (one pallet) would be approximately $650.00 depending on the how much color would be on the bottles’ label. Father Larry will follow-up on this and get the ball rolling what the next step is to determine artwork.

Father Larry contacted the Bishop and he will be out of the area during the time of the 150th celebration. Canon Silla will be here on both Saturday and Sunday. The Bishop will record something to display at the openhouse with the slide show.

Five sub-committees were proposed as well as their proposed chairperson’s. The committee’s will be responsible for various tasks before and during the 150th celebration. The proposed committees and chairs are:

• Tours, chairperson: Chuck
• Food, chairperson: Sandy
• Mailing and Publicity, chairperson: Katie
• 1st Friday, chairperson: Steve
• Decorating, co-chairpersons: Cecelia and Wanda

The sub-committee responsibilities are as follows:
• The Tour committee will be responsible for giving tours of the Church at the openhouse.
• The Food committee will be responsible for snacks and finger foods for the attendees of the openhouses on Friday night and Saturday.
• The Mailing and Publicity committee will be responsible for forming the guest list, making and mailing out invitations and also for the local media publicity for the 150th event.
• The Decorating committee will be responsible for decorating the Church for the openhouses.

Janet will put out a sign-up sheet for Church members to volunteer for the sub-committees.

Steve and Janet will work on the history of the Church along with the help of Father Larry.

The idea was brought up to see if the display case at the Goshen Library would be available for the month of July to put a historic display together for St. James and to also promote the openhouse. Cecelia will check with the library if it is available.

Father had a letter from Norma, Father Mosier’s daughter, who sent old photos and slides she had for the Church. Steve and Janet will work on them. Katie also turned a folder over to Steve and Janet with information on the welcome flyer.

Father Larry reported he has been going through the Priest Records and shared with the group some of the interesting things he found such as how many people attended Christmas Mass in one of the years in the 1930s – over 500 people. He will continue to work on searching through the records and write down more as he finds them.

Next meeting will be Saturday March 21st, 2009.