Friday, October 10, 2014

September Canterbury Report



Canterbury@ULM met every Thursday evening in the month of September. At every meeting, we shared food, continued to plan upcoming events and discussed a chapter in Timothy Keller’s Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions and the Bible stories each chapter is based on.

The Chaplain shared the August report with the Priest-in-Charge and Senior Warden, then in response to a query from a parishioner, posted it on the church’s blog for the entire congregation. This practice will be continued.

In mid-September, a St. Thomas’ parishioner offered to purchase food if the Canterbury group wanted to tailgate. They did, so a banner was made, a canopy borrowed from another parishioner and the group tailgated from about noon until the football game started at 6 p.m. We cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, and served approximately 30 people, including friends and family of Canterbury members and others who happened by. At the end of the afternoon as we were actively giving away our remaining food, we had several great opportunities to explain who we were and invite students. We judged it to be a major success, but we have some new ideas to make it better when we do it again October 25.

We are planning an outdoor Holy Eucharist on campus to raise the profile of the group. Our first choice of date did not work out because Bayou Park is already reserved. Student Life & Leadership has not yet responded to our request for one of two other dates.

When we get the outdoor H.E. scheduled, we will invite GSU and LaTech Canterburies to come and stay for an “after party” in a home.

We have scheduled a mission trip to New Orleans January 3-6, 2015. We will worship with the Spanish-speaking community at St. Anna’s and spend a day doing a work project of some kind. We will also tour the cathedrals and, of course, Bourbon Street.

We plan to have Canterbury t-shirts made with our Canterbury logo on ULM maroon for our next tailgate.

September Statistics:

Individual contacts: chaplain with students & others - ~12
Group meetings – 4
Other activities – Interfaith Pancake Breakfast, Football Game Tailgate
Participants – Adults, including faculty advisor/chaplain, priest, St. Thomas’ parishioners – 4; students – 3-5 per meeting, ~30 at tailgate
Blog posts – 6

Expenditures:
Chaplain stipend - $300.00
Food for meetings - $60.55
Banner - $65.86*
Interfaith Pancake Breakfast tickets - $20.00
Ice for tailgating - $8.22

In-kind contribution of St. Thomas’ parishioner who paid for tailgate food - $219.69


*This is a heavy paper banner; we wanted to test a design. We will be able to use it again, but will eventually replace it with a more expensive vinyl banner.


Respectfully submitted,
Archdeacon Bette J. Kauffman, Ph.D.
Canterbury Chaplain
9 October 2014