MONTHLY ONLINE CONCERT SERIES

2nd Wednesday Night of the Month – 7pm via Zoom — LIMITED SEATING AVAILABLE

ZOOM link will be sent out via email a few days before the show.

Tickets will be on sale through 6pm March 10, 2021 or until we run out of Zoom seats.

March 10, 2021 @ 7PM ET – featuring

JEN ALDANA

– http://www.jenaldanamusic.com/

$10/FAMILY TICKETS

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Jen Aldana is a Boston based singer-songwriter and worship leader. She is most known for winning Season 5 of “The Voice on Snapchat” on Team Adam and working with Noah Cyrus.

Jen started writing and playing music at the age of 7. Through years of performing, touring, and singing at special events and concerts (such as at The Apollo Theater), she quickly realized she was meant to be an artist. By college, she received a full-tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music and eventually graduated with a degree in Songwriting.

Did you know that the Vermont Bible Society, a fully funded ministry within the VECNCC, helps Vermonters and Vermont-based ministries get FREE bibles to distribute throughout Vermont and the World?

For the vocations director for the Diocese of Burlington, Father James Dodson, “it is a joy to welcome” three seminarians for the Diocese of Burlington from Vietnam. “It is always a great blessing when young men hear and respond to God’s call for their lives with faith, hope, love and a lot of prayerful excitement,” he said.

The new seminarians are Khoa Nguyen, An Dinh and Loc Vo.

They currently are living at St. John Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, and studying English at Boston University.

The Diocese covers the cost of tuition, room and board and other miscellaneous expenses during their time of formation.

“God-willing, and upon successful completion of their formation, they will be ordained priests of the Diocese of Burlington and serve in Vermont for the rest of their lives,” Father Dodson said.

An was born in 1995 and has one younger sister. He graduated from Lac Hong University with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering in 2018. While in Vietnam, he served in parishes as a catechist, altar server, cantor and volunteer in hospitals and shelters for the less fortunate.

Loc was born in 1994. He is the youngest in his family, which includes four older brothers and three older sisters. He graduated from Hue University in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in literature. While in Vietnam, he was a vocational team leader of a group of Catholic students studying in Hue while serving Mass and teaching catechism.

An and Loc both arrived in the United States on Dec. 29, 2020.

Khoa was born in 1994 and has two younger sisters. He graduated from Medicine and Pharmacy University in Saigon with a bachelor’s degree in medicine in 2017. He worked in a children’s hospital in Vietnam for one year before coming to the United States in 2018 to study English at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.

“There is an abundance of seminarians in Vietnam and a need for more seminarians and priests in the United States,” Father Dodson said. “It is in light of this reality that An, Loc and Khoa discerned God’s call and have come to Vermont as the first step in answering His call.”

The commitment to faith and family in Vietnam is strong, he noted: “The Vietnamese seminarians bring with them this lived experience, which can help to inspire, reignite and recapture a fervor for the faith in our families throughout the Diocese.”

The Diocese already had two seminarians from Vietnam, Luan Tran and Giang Vu; both are in their second year of pre-theology studying at St. Meinrad Seminary in Meinrad, Indiana.

“Please keep An, Loc and Khoa and all our diocesan seminarians in your daily prayers as together we pray for an increase in vocations throughout the Diocese of Burlington,” Father Dodson said.

I write to you today with the heavy heart that we all must have after yesterday’s riot at the U.S. Capitol. As Wednesday’s events unfolded, I found myself moving from incredulity to astonishment to fear for people’s lives to anger and disgust and finally relief — relief because it could have been a lot worse. As the evening moved into early morning, Congress moved back into session, our democratic process worked, and the election of former vice president, Joseph Biden, to become our next president was affirmed.

Today we stand amid the detritus of the “morning after,” not so much asking, “Did this really happen?” but rather “How did this happen?” Lots of commentators are offering opinions about what happened.  One phrase I hear repeatedly is “We are better than this.”  These words propose that this is not who we are as a country.  Sadly, though, we are not “better than this.” To quote one football coach, “You are what you are.” When your record is 4-11, you can’t say, “We are better than this.”  You are a 4-11 football team. Right now, we, as a country, are not “better than this.” We are what we are – divided, angry, sick – both figuratively and bodily, fear-filled and lost.  We may become “better than this” and I know we can be “better than this,” but right now, we are not “better than this.” We are what we are.

This is where you and I, my brothers and sisters in Christ, can rise up to be beacons of hope, encouragement and healing.  A bishop sometimes serves as a type of spiritual doctor.  I have obviously made a diagnosis of what is unhealthy and destructive in our culture. Now, as a good physician will, I offer one part of a prescriptive course back to wholeness and health. It is the way of Christ in the Catholic faith. You and I as Catholic disciples are not separate from our culture and our country. We are part of it just like everyone else. If our country is broken and in need of healing, we must ask ourselves, “What part am I playing in all of this?”  Am I living as a citizen of this country first and foremost as a disciple who is striving to love God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and my neighbor as myself? In other words, am I living and encouraging others to become “better than this” or am I part of the problem that has brought us to where we are now?  My prescription then for myself and for all of us is to do some serious soul-searching, to excise what is not of God, what is not of the good, and to become the healing cells for the body politic of our country.

We do not do this alone nor do we do it without help.  We do so in communion with the Church and with one another. We have the gift of the Holy Spirit which we received when we were first baptized, we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the forgiveness of sins, and we have the incredible gift of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Cross and the food for the journey.  Finally, in our daily prayer as well, let us offer prayers for our country, that we may live as brothers and sisters, not in silos of resentment and anger, but as “one nation, under God … with liberty and justice for all.”

May God bless America.

Bishop Christopher Coyne,
Diocese of Burlington VT
January 7, 2021

It was high summer when the Rev. Angela Emerson became interim rector at St. Peter’s Church in Bennington. The COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, complicating her desire to undertake a hospitality initiative. Still, the congregation had certain assets at its disposal.

“One of the things that struck me was just how beautiful the church was,” Emerson says. “It’s a very large facility. It was hot and there was a lot of shade and breeze, and I started telling them about Montpelier, and how, before the pandemic, the courtyard at Christ Church, Montpelier was the place to have lunch in Montpelier.”

Brainstorming with parish leaders ensued, and eventually the conversation drifted toward putting out a box into which people could submit prayer requests. That’s when a little parish history became relevant.

More than 15 years earlier, Bill Harrington, the church’s junior warden, had built a miniature stable for the Christmas pageant, constructing it using bolts, rather than nails so the structure could be put up for the family service and taken down before the more formal Eucharist later that morning.

“I didn’t know if we even still had that down in the cellar,” Harrington says. But he took a look, and there it was, stacked in pieces on the floor.

The tiny structure had originally been constructed for children, and Harrington had to prop it up on blocks so it would accommodate adults. And, being a proud workman, he didn’t want the blocks to be visible, so he covered them with the good boards he had saved when the congregation took down an old fence behind the parish hall.

But all of that was easily accomplished, and a good day’s work later, St. Peter’s was the home of Pause Place, a sliver of a place in which passers-by can submit prayer requests on index cards, pick up some of the prayers that the church makes available, peruse a community bulletin board, or just stand out of the elements if the weather is unfriendly.

The church sits at the corner of Pleasant and School Streets in what was once a toney part of town with opulent homes that were divided into rooming houses and apartments as the local economy declined. In this sometimes melancholy townscape, the hut quickly became an opportunity for conversation. “If we are there putting up a prayer or something, somebody will inevitably stop and say something to us,” Emerson says.

St. Peter’s provides copies of prayers for grief, healing and peace in Pause Place, as well as copies of the Serenity Prayer. It incorporates the prayers of passers-by into its Sunday service. On occasion, those prayers offer a window into the difficult lives of the church’s neighbors.

“The last one I saw on Saturday was ‘Dear God help me,’” says John Terauds, the church’s community missioner. “There was no name on it. It was just a scrawl on an index card. It’s like a cry from the heart. It’s like something straight out of a psalm.”

Emerson believes Pause Place constitutes the first step into a deeper engagement with the neighborhood. Regardless of the pandemic, she says, the congregation will continue to explore ways to use the gift of its lawn and building to reach out to the community.

“It’s a way of saying, ‘We want to be a part of your life,’” she says. “’And we want you to be a part of ours.’”

VT Christian Music is NOW holding a monthly Christian Music Online Concert Series.

2nd Wednesday Night of the Month – 7pm via Zoom — LIMITED SEATING AVAILABLE

ZOOM link will be sent out via email a few days before the show.

Tickets will be on sale through 6pm January 13, 2021 or until we run out of Zoom seats.

January 13, 2021 – featuring

DAVE PETTIGREW

– https://davepettigrew.net

$10/FAMILY TICKETS — PURCHASE HERE

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November 17, 2020 | 1:00 p.m. ET

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As we are faced with challenges, uncertainty, and division, we turn to God for guidance, counsel, and encouragement. Our foundation as individuals, families, and as a country have been tested mightily, and we know our strength starts with a solid core. Let’s reflect on God’s example, His grace and love for others, and recognize that we are all a part of His higher plan.

Join Dr. Evans as he illustrates how living the biblical principles of stewardship within the realm of God’s kingdom is key to strengthening each other and healing our communities. Through His gifts of time, talent, and treasure, God empowers us to spread His love, light, and hope. As we serve others, we serve and honor the Lord.