News

Monday, August 27 2007
:: peacemeal has a public space! we've made arrangements with covenant presbyterian church to rent their manse (the large home next to the church where the pastors previously lived). this makes our weekly gathering much more accessible to university of scranton students and, hopefully, to our friends that come to FreeSpace. we're closer to the heart of scranton, where we feel a strong call and desire to serve. the address is 816 Olive Street, Scranton, PA, 18510. click there for google maps; it's near the corner of madison ave. and olive st., and there is plenty of parking in the church lot. you should definitely come join us! we're currently meeting:

fridays
5:30-6:30 p.m. - community dinner
6:30-7 p.m. - clean-up and set-up for worship
7-8 p.m. - eucharist
8-8:30 p.m. - tidy up

the manse allows us to keep the intimate, relational feel of meeting in people's homes (this one being a rather large, rather beautiful one at that!) while alleviating some of the pressure for one family to prep their house each and every week. it has a large kitchen and a large dining room, which are important to us, too (i mean, come on, we are peaceMEAL, right? would you expect less?).

finally, there are 2 rooms we hope will be cleaned and renovated in the near future to accommodate the growing number of young children in our midst. people are stepping up to provide care and faith-growing activities for the kids during the first parts of our worship time, and we look forward to seeing that part of our community life blossom.

Monday, April 23 2007
:: we're coming off a great retreat weekend where we did some re:visioning and discernment. from the outside looking in, not a lot will have changed. we'll still be:

what is changing is our approach to it all. we're looking to each member of the community to identify their gifts, passions, and energy as gifts of god's grace, then looking for ways for them to give those things to build up the life of the community.

:: keep your eye on the calendar to stay on top of when/where we're meeting and for special, one-time events.

:: i'll be making some renewed efforts to update the website and keep it fresh. content changes will happen bit by bit over the next 2 weeks; i am feeling inspired to think about a new design, too - that will be a bit longer in the making.

Monday, December 18 2006
:: It's been WAY too long since I've posted any news! It's not because we have been inactive; on the contrary, a lot has been happening for our small community. Here's the scoop:

:: Check out our blog from December 17-23 for daily postings of the traditional Advent antiphons. We're trying to use these brief prayers to connect even while we are separated by distance in the run-up to Christmas. Please join us in this practice, and let us know if you do by leaving comments at the blog.

:: Peacemeal was recently awarded the Diocese of Bethlehem's Social Ministries Grant for 2007 to help fund FreeSpace.

:: Speaking of FreeSpace, our December 9th offering served 50-60 people! The cold weather is settling in, and we are seeing the need for a safe, warm, comfortable place to just BE increase. With the acceptance of the diocesan grant, we are committed to making FreeSpace happen each month. We are currently on the calendar at St. Luke's for the 2nd Saturday of the month for the foreseeable future. Let us know if you'd like to help out.

:: Our community has slowly been growing, bit by bit, as more relationships are formed. We now have around 20-25 people connected in some way to our community. This past Friday we had 2 new visitors! We're excited about what is happening. Let us know if you'd like to get to know us!

Thursday, October 26 2006
:: Welcome Sunday Times and Electric City Readers! If you're checking us out after reading about us in either publication, we're glad you're here. Grab a cup of coffee, or a quality pint of your favorite brew, and browse around. Head over to our blog and leave us a comment or look around there for interesting musings.

If you haven't seen us in print, both articles/interviews are available online: Scott Bader-Saye interviewed for the 10/15 Sunday Times here; and Josh Frank interviewed for this week's edition of Electric City here.

Wednesday, October 18 2006
:: FreeSpace is this Saturday, October 21 at St. Luke's in downtown Scranton from 1-6 p.m.

:: We're hosting a U2charist on Saturday, October 28 at Test Pattern in downtown Scranton.

Wednesday, September 20 2006
:: We now have a calendar available online, thanks to Google!. It has some great features, so go and check it out. If you want to be uber-dorky like me, here is the RSS feed. I've added it into my toolbar in Safari (my awesome Mac web browser), so that whenever a new event is added or a change is made, I get an update. Technology is so cool, eh?

:: Speaking of technology, for now we've decided to take down the Visual Prayer page because, well, we simply haven't been able to get into the rhythm of updating it. I hope to bring it back sometime down the road as we continue to experiment with new ways of engaging our faith as a community and with the use of technology.

:: And speaking of experimenting with new ways of engaging our faith as a community, HUGE props go out to Karen Ward, Lacey Brown, and Thomas Knoll of the Church of the Apostles (Seattle) Praxis Center, along with Bob Fisher from the Southeast PA Synod of the ELCA, for leading a great day-long Emerging Church Learning Party this past weekend.

If you're looking for some great music to bring into your worship setting, we were blown away by Lacey leading that part of worship on Saturday. You can buy COTA's full-length recording, Ordo (which includes at least 1 or 2 songs they used Saturday), on CD at their online store or as a MP3 download at LuLu. Listen to a few tracks at COTA's Myspace page. Keep an eye out for their upcoming recording of Morning & Evening Prayer, which will include much of the music from this past weekend's worship times.

:: It's been almost 3 months since we've updated the News here at peacemealcommunity.org! If you've been following our blog, you'll know it's NOT because we've been doing nothing; it's just easier to update the blog with new items. However, we have some exciting news and want to make sure it's seen wherever we have a presence online.

Peacemeal, along with our local Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, is sponsoring an Emerging Church Learning Party led by Karen Ward, a leading voice in the emerging conversation both here in the US and abroad. The day-long event on Saturday, September 16th at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre is being presented by Praxis of Church of the Apostles, which is the emerging Episcopal-Lutheran joint church plant in Seattle where Karen is the Abbess. Praxis is an effort of COTA to "companion congregations and leaders in emerging church and mission." Also giving a talk is Philadelphia-based emergent leader Robert Fisher, from the SE Penn Synod of the ELCA.

Online registration is available here. If you'd prefer to register by mail, you can send a check ($25 prior to Sept. 4; $30 Sept. 5-15) to:
The Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem
c/o Barbara Lewis
Diocesan House
333 Wyandotte St.
Bethlehem, PA 18015

For more details, see our Events page, our blog, or the online registration site.

Please help us promote this event! Wilkes-Barre is within easy driving distance of Bethlehem, Allentown, Philadelphia, New York City, Binghamton, etc. Flyers are available for download as a PDF file or as a .doc (Word) file.

:: Updates have been made to the Home, Events (including Weekly, Monthly and Special) pages.

Tuesday, May 16 2006
:: After meeting for Stammtisch (our weekly, informal, come-as-you're-able night for conversation and hanging out) last week at the Aroma Cafe, we learned their hours have changed and they now close at 9.

As a result, we'll be meeting on Wednesdays at 8 at Northern Light Espresso Bar, which is open until 10. See our weekly events for more info.

:: Also, due to guests, weddings, and other such things, our weekly Friday night potluck, planning, and worship will be moved to some alternate nights over the next month (some Sundays, a Friday, and a Saturday). See our events page for the dates and times.

Wednesday, May 10 2006
:: Our events section has been updated to fill you in on our weekly, monthly, special, and past events. For a small community, we have a lot going on. We'd love for you to join us!

Friday, March 31 2006
:: We have added a great resource we're calling visual prayer to the website. Please check it out!

:: To conserve space in our location bar, we moved our contact page inside our about section.

Monday, March 27 2006
:: Our about page can now tell you more about us. Check out "Who We Are" and "What's in a Name?"

:: Our first public event has been planned! Please join us in the Parish Hall of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in downtown Scranton on Friday evening, April 7, for a free, simple community meal and alt.worship in preparation for Christ's Passion shown to us in Holy Week. For more info, go to our events page.

Wondering what it means to be an emerging church in the Episcopal tradition? What is alt. worship? What does it mean to be a community of peace built around Christ's welcoming table? Come and find out!