Wow – what a busy Sunday! Today was the day that Mike spoke in all three services about the upcoming changes. My first glimmer of things to come was a group of Catholic women outside the chapel crying when we arrived. Father Jim was doing the same at all the masses today. It was a hard day. Change is always frightening and I think even more so when there have been so many changes made so quickly that are totally out of local control. As expected several are not happy. The Protestant side of the chapel lost a total of 3 contracts when AETC cut appropriated funds. For those non-military types….in the chapel it’s usually been expected that the military would pay for the “chapel service” and the tithing funds were used for extras to run those programs. Musicians, Religious Education Coordinators, Parish coordinators etc were paid by the government. This funding ended quite suddenly for our maj com. Tithing must now cover it all – and frankly – in the military many, many continue to tithe to their “home church” because they see the chapel as a “employment bennie”. {G}
We were so impressed with the growth in the contemporary service (student service) in the last few months. Both their chaplains will be leaving in the next month or so. In addition to all the new manning changes the normal PCS season will bring changes to the chapel as well.
I’ve been asking people to let me know when their churches had a service of just worship. I have so missed contemporary worship…who would have believed that this was available all the time at our very own chapel. The service began with *Jesus Freaks* and those kids can rock. Then we went into about 30 minutes of really wonderful worship. Mike preached and he loved the feed back from the students. They closed the service and then they stay and worship AFTER church too! Very fun. After service we went out to eat with another family. Mike was about to order a Chicken BLT for us to split when I told him that I didn’t feel like eating the devil’s meat. :::snort::: We split a chicken salad wrap and it was very good.
Stacia is incredibly stuffed up. I have thrown together a SAGE (co-op) brochure and am now going to go to bed.
