Good Things Happening in NE PA Project

The Rev. John Major, Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church of West Pittston and Prince of Peace Episcopal Church of Dallas writes about a wonderful and ambitious project that the Evangelism Commission enthustiastically supports (and, best of all, is not running!):

The Good Things Are Happening in The Episcopal Church in Northeast Pennsylvania project involves the production of three 30-second spots to be utilized on WNEP TV in their Good Things Are Happening segments for one year (if we can afford to run the spots this long).

The spots help to reintroduce our population to The Episcopal Church in our area and reveal

1. The Episcopal Church as a "sacramental" Church,
2. The Episcopal Church as a "Church of diverse people involved in the life of their parish and the mission of the Church" and
3. The Episcopal Church reaching out to one another and caring for neighbors in need".

We are on schedule to launch the spots the week before Palm Sunday. It's likely that the frequency of air time will be heavier before Easter and during the Easter Season, then lighter in the summer and heavier again during Back To School time and before Christmas.

The effort includes the use of a new "The Episcopal Church in Northeast Pennsylvania" logo that will be continuously displayed on WNEP's website. An inquirer will be able to click on our NEPA Episcopal logo on WNEP's site and will be linked to our new "common web page," www.nepaepiscopalchurch.org, which will be up and running in about one week.

This new site will display the names of all the parishes in the north and central region and more. A click on any parish name will take the inquirer diectly to the website of that parish. If a parish in the north and central region does not have a website, the link will take them to general information about the parish and the parish schedule. Various other links are on this site as well, including our diocesan and national websites. All of our parishes in The Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem can be easily found by an inquirer visiting www.nepaepiscopalchurch.org.

A copy of the new logo is available for your use in bulletins, parish publications, postings and newspaper print ads. The TV spots themselves will soon be available for use on your local parish website.

Now is the time to move forward with our parish welcoming efforts and connect our local parish evangelism efforts to a larger effort. Our population will be hearing the word "episcopal" and catching glimpses of who we are in a new way very soon. Please take advantage of this collaborative effort.

As soon as the ads are available for posting on this blog, we will put it up. Stay tuned!

It's not too late to contribute to this major evangelism project by the parishes in the northern half of our diocese! Everyone doing what they can will be a tremendous help. $500 is a wonderful show of support! So is $300. So is $1,000. Everyone's investment, little or great, will make a great difference.

The Evangelism Commission has committed $3500 to the project over two years (2008 and 2009). It would be wonderful if we could duplicate this effort "south of the tunnel." And it would be even more terrific if this could be a collaboration of parish, clergy and lay leaders in the same way. The wide-ranging collaboration at the parish level is also a sign that Good Things Are Happening in The Episcopal Church in Northeast Pennsylvania!

Please make a check payable to The Episcopal Church Northeast PA (TEC NEPA) and send it to St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral c/o The Rev. Daniel Gunn, 35 South Franklin Street, Wilkes Barre, PA 18701.