Invitation to Outdoor Worship

   
We hope you will be as excited as we are about a new summer worship opportunity at Mount Calvary! Our online worship services will continue every weekend, but we also would love a chance to see you face to face. We are planning a series of outdoor worship services that will be held at 5pm and 7pm on six designated Wednesday nights throughout the summer. Our hope is that everyone will have the chance to attend one of the services.
 
Of course, we’ll be considerate of social distancing recommendations. Health and safety of parishioners, staff, and others continues to be of paramount importance. In order to maintain distancing guidelines, we’ll keep the attendance at each service limited 100 people. To coordinate this, we’ve developed a system that will allow everyone to reserve a spot at one of the services. Take a look at your calendars and pick the one date that works best for your family, then make your reservation. You will be assigned to your own, physically-distant space in the parking lot.

Each service will be a traditional Mount Calvary worship service with Liturgy, Sermon, Communion, and the singing of some of your favorite hymns. To ensure the safety of everyone in attendance, we’ll ask you to bring along your own lawn chairs (if you are able), communion supplies (crackers or bread and juice) and anything else you might need to be comfortable sitting outside. If you have any questions, please email Trina Volbrecht. We can’t wait to worship with you!

    Reserve Your Spot Now

Mount Calvary Outreach Response to Minneapolis

Dear Friends, 

Like many of you, I watched heartbroken over the last week as our city has torn itself apart in response to the murder of George Floyd. As the crisis escalated, it quickly became apparent that communities in and around Minneapolis would soon be in great need of basic resources. With stores closed and transportation shut down, thousands of individuals and families have been left stranded in a food desert. 

Ever present champions of social justice, our brothers and sisters of Gethsemane Lutheran were some of the first to identify need and organize aid. Amidst looting, rioting, and daily drug trafficking, they set up their grill and established a secure food distribution on the corner of W Broadway and Lyndale Ave N late last week. Pastor Jeff Nehrbass reached out to Mount Calvary asking for us to walk alongside them in this mission, to step outside our circle and into a potentially uncomfortable space most of us do not experience daily. 

Often in crisis scenarios, we find ourselves without the luxury of time to ponder the perfect solution or provide a comfortable lead time to plan and execute. This was certainly true this weekend as hundreds of people lined up at Gethsemane’s distribution site. However, last Friday, through an amazing and generous response, Mount Calvary was able to provide 720 lbs of charcoal to keep Gethsemane’s grill cooking brats and burgers throughout the next several days. 

Then, on Sunday and Monday as the need grew, you responded. A call for aid went out, and within hours, we filled 9 vehicles with food, supplies and volunteers (3 on Sunday and 9 on Monday). Volunteers who arrived on site Monday afternoon were immediately put to work filling boxes and distributing supplies to the long line of people. 

Moving forward, we have established a sustainable system for supplies and volunteers that will hopefully bring a bit of stability to these communities. 

Donations 
Donations will be received at Mount Calvary Monday-Thursdays, 9:00am-4:00pm and Fridays, 9:00am-12:00pm. Click here for the list of requested items. 

Volunteers 
Every Thursday Mount Calvary will send a team of volunteers to the distribution site (Cub Foods parking lot on the corner of W Broadway and Lyndale Ave N) from 12:00pm-5:00pm to help organize and distribute donations until the local stores reopen. Interested in volunteering? Look here for more information and the volunteer sign up. 

To everyone who has called, emailed, donated, shopped, delivered and prayed, THANK YOU. You are making an incredible difference. Please continue to respond as an allied voice to demand justice and equality. Change must come. 

Peace, 

Heidi Busch 
Director of Outreach and Global Vision 

Our Prayer

Gracious and heartbroken God, we hurt and we are feeling a range of emotions today. Hear our prayers, both vocalized and silent, for help, guidance, comfort, and courage.

For the family, friends, and loved ones of George Floyd as they live with their unspeakable loss; the pain of seeing his life taken over and over again as the video airs; and their grief, that is personal, visceral, and real. 

For all who live daily with the anxiety and fear created by systems that and people who disrespect, devalue, and diminish people simply for the color of their skin, religion, or their country of origin.

For the relationships between our communities and those in law enforcement, we pray for healing and change that reflects our best selves and serves all. We pray with gratitude for those who commit to daily risking their own safety for the public good and do it with great integrity and courage. We pray for the identification and removal of those who violate and disgrace their oath to serve and protect; and for efforts to support, train and equip all who serve with systems and leadership that bring out the best of who we aspire to be.

For our nation, that we would be able to heal divisions rather than deepen them; that we could listen to, and act upon, the injustices and indignities being called to our attention yet again. That we would be honest about the rigor mortis that personally, and collectively, keeps us from a willingness to acknowledge our complicity in the racial, economic, and spiritual divisions that infect us.

For your Church, your world, and for this congregation, that we would grasp tightly and live out your great command: that we love one another as you have loved us and our neighbor as ourselves. We pray that this would be our moral, political, social and community compass in this and all times. Heal us where we are broken, guide us where we have lost our way, and open us to hear where we need to be broken so that we may be fully healed and made new.

Lord in your mercy, please, hear our prayer. Amen.