This is the weekly bulletin insert from Sermons That Work.
Episcopal Service Corps – Servant Year
Young adults joining Servant Year commit to a year of volunteer local service, as well as a common rhythm of life, spiritual companionship, and asking big questions.
Spiritual Life
Community life is shaped by a daily round of prayer. Each community has its own regular pattern for this prayer, established at the start of the year. In addition, worship is a central charism of the Servant Year community. As such, Corps members actively participate in the larger worshiping community of nearby Episcopal Churches: Saint Mark’s or St. James School.
For eleven months, Servant Year members form a community within the community of either Saint Mark’s or St. James School, which is larger and more dispersed. It is home to others who live there, and in some ways a home for the people who work, learn, pray, and have fellowship in its broader community. A home is a safe place by definition, and we commit to safeguarding one another’s safety in every reasonable way, primarily by taking responsibility for ourselves and our own actions.
Volunteering
Through Servant Year, corps members embody the idea that Christian service begins with the recognition that we are called to service through our baptism, locating all work in response to the echoing command of Jesus to his disciples to “go” and do something! Servant Year members serve either at St. James School or St. Mark’s Church, according to their gifts discerned during the interview process.
Servant Year members receive housing at either St. James School or St. Mark’s Church, in individual rooms. Members also receive a $600 monthly stipend, and are encouraged to participate in a retirement savings plan in which the program matches member contributions up to $1,100. Members receive health insurance with no charge to themselves, and the program covers all co-pays for care. A $5,000 education award to help with student loans or continued education after the program is available to all members. The program also covers travel costs for arrival and departure for the year of service and one trip during the service year. The program also supplies each member with a $500 clothing allowance at the beginning of the year.
Applications for the 2024-2025 Corps will open December 1, 2023. Visit ESC’s website to learn more about Servant Year or to take the ESC Discernment Quiz, EpiscopalServiceCorps.org.
Published by the Office of Formation of The Episcopal Church, 815 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017
© 2023 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. All rights reserved.
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Church of the Redeemer
Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.
Church of the Redeemer is at 6210 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.
The Episcopal Church welcomes you.
