1st Annual Martini Night
all proceeds to fund the professional cleaning of the cathedral

Music by: Royce & Jenn Band
…their talent is exemplified by the fact that they’ve performed for ambassadors, governors and U.S. Presidents, all to rave reviews.

Photography by: the PHOTOPHREAK

Tickets: $45 per person $80 per couple
includes: appetizer station, seafood station and much more

Contact Marija at 586.979.5696
or
Stephanie at 248.396.9964 for more details!

Bring your family, friends, coworkers or neighbours for a “swanky” affair!

• Thank you to all the parents and children who participated last Saturday in Holy Communion service & the Sisters Lenten Breakfast.  It was the best attended Saturday communion service Fr. Zivan has had. We encourage all families to partake in holy confession & holy communion during this Great Lent. We had lessons last week for the children on the significance of fasting and communion. If you want more information on Holy Communion and the lesson your child may have missed please see your child’s teacher.
• SVETI SAVA VIDEOS ARE HERE: The videographer dropped them off Monday. Please bring check or cash this Sunday. VIDEOS ARE $10 We have forty videos for sale. Many people have spoken for them. Please email Ruza rosemarybat@gmail.com how many you want. She will put them aside for you.
• We still are missing some St. Sava Costumes. Please return this week. It is important that we receive them for future events
• Thank you to all the boys and fathers who attended the Altar Boy Workshop Feb 26, 2012.
• Thank  you to Aleks Pavlovich, Niko Nickson, Sandra Popadic & Nikki Vulinovic for reading Apostle/Epistle the last couple weeks. They did a fabulous job! If you want your child to read apostle/epistle in church in the next few months please contact Ruza 586.531.1678 or by email rosemarybat@gmail.com
• We have a lot of fun events planned for March, April & May. We encourage you to bring your children each week. Many of the children have expressed that they want to stay for cultural and dance but they have to go home. The other children that stay for cultural then are dissapointed because their friends cannot. In order for your child to experience all the wonderful activities we plan we must have attendance. Many times the activities we plan we cannot execute with the little attendance.
• We have started teaching the two groups (older & younger) 2 new kolos which we are excited to teach them. The children will also be practicing Junior Choir from now until Easter. We have some really great songs that we started teaching them last week. Below is a link to one of them so they can listen at  home!
• We are looking for children who play flute, clarinet, piano or violin. These children need to know how to read sheet music and be able to perform in front of the church school parents/parish on Vrbica/St. Lazarus Sunday.  Please let Julie or Ruza know if your child is willing and able to do so.

Hristos Voskrese – Radost Donese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmu2ck6Ln4

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS BELOW FOR UPCOMING EVENTS our church/church school is planning:

April ? -  Roller Skating Party DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED IT WILL DURING THE EASTER BREAK April 2-April7

April 7- VRBICA (St. Lazarus Saturday) 5pm  This is a very special holiday for our church as well as our CHILDREN. This is the service where the children walk around the church 3x with bells. Following liturgy we will proceed to the church hall for refreshments and desert. The kids will have a small program for Easter. The children will be singing and will recite a small poem for Easter.  Following the program children will color & decorate easter eggs to take home.

April 8- Palm Sunday we will have church school but NO cultural due to strict fast week. The Children will have an important Easter Lesson

April 13 Good Friday Vespers 6pm with Lenten Dinner

April 15 Easter – no Church School

April 22 Sunday- Ladies Tea sponsored by Kolo Sisters. We will have Church School but  No Cultural Program. All ladies, mothers & young girls may attend for FREE. Sandwiches, appetizers and deserts will be offered to enjoy your afternoon. There will be vendors such as jewellery, purses, makeup, bakeware etc will be there for your shopping pleasure. While ladies are having tea,fathers & sons will have pizza, popcorn & a movie on the big screen TV in the small hall.

April 27- Friday Stefan’s Hope Spaghetti Dinner- come out and support our Nesovski Family in raising money for autism awareness.

April 29- Fashion Show – We will have church school that day but no cultural. Our fashion show will be at 2pm.

May 20 – Kumovi Day / End of year Celebration (last day of Church School & Cultural) A LOT OF FUN ACTIVITIES PLANNED THIS DAY.. DETAILS TO FOLLOW!

See You Sunday,

Julie, Zoran & Ruza

On Sunday, confession will begin at 9 am for those wishing to take holy communion.  If by chance you arrive late, and still wish to take holy communion, you may and Fr. Zivan will take confessions after church.  The best thing to do is make sure you arrive with plenty of time before Divine Liturgy begins promptly at 10:00 am.  We’ll have our weekly lunch in the hall (lenten style) after church as the children work on their cultural programs.

Honors
Michael Falzon

On the occasion of his retirement
And many years of dedicated service

Saturday, February 25, 2012

American Serbian Memorial Hall
19940 Van Dyke
Detroit, Mi. 48234

$35.00 Per Person

Dinner, Dancing and Program

Advance tickets ONLY

Cash Bar

Doors Open 6:30 Dinner 7:30

Commemorative Booklet

$20.00 Per Message

Text only, no logo or ad space available

For more information contact

St. Lazarus office at
313-893-6025 or
churchoffice@ravanica.org

Make checks payable to
St. Lazarus Serbian Orthodox Cathedral

Banquet R.S.V.P

Tip: If you would like to filter out which calendars are in view, you can click on the arrow next to “Agenda” in the top right corner to choose your calendars of interest.

Sunday,
February 12, 2012

at 1:00 pm in the Church Hall

An old story from 4 years ago, and becoming more and more true every day!

Greg Mencotti worried he would never find a spiritual home.

The Sunday school teacher grew up Roman Catholic, lost his faith and became an atheist. Eventually, he returned to Christianity, this time as a born-again Christian, spending years worshipping in a Methodist congregation. Still, he felt his search wasn’t over.

That led him to the Holy Spirit Antiochian Orthodox Church in Huntington, W. Va., a denomination with Mideast roots that, like all Orthodox groups, traces its origins to the earliest days of Christianity.

Today, Mencotti is one of about 250 million Orthodox believers worldwide — and among a significant number of newcomers attracted to this ancient way of worship. The trend is especially notable since so few in the United States know about the Orthodox churches here.

“I was like most Americans,”

said Mencotti, who was urged by his wife to explore Orthodox worship.

“I didn’t understand anything about Orthodoxy.”

Orthodoxy was born from the Great Schism of 1054, when feuds over papal authority and differences in the liturgy split Christianity into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox halves.

In the United States, Orthodox Christians are a fraction of religious believers, numbering about 1.2 million, according to estimates by Orthodox researchers.

In the past, their growth had been largely fueled by immigration, with churches forming mainly along ethnic lines. Some converts came to Orthodoxy through marriage to a church member.

But now about one-third of all U.S. Orthodox priests are converts — and that number is likely to grow, according to Alexei D. Krindatch, research director at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif.

A 2006 survey of the four Orthodox seminaries in the country found that about 43% of seminarians are converts,

Krindatch said.

There are no exact figures on the rate of conversion across the 22 separate U.S. Orthodox jurisdictions. But when Mencotti began attending Orthodox worship, the church was packed with converts, including the church’s pastor, the Rev. John Dixon.

The Rev. John Matusiak, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Wheaton, Ill., part of the Orthodox Church in America, said his parish has grown from 20 people in the early 1990s to more than 600 today, with the overwhelming majority of new members younger than 40.

Krindatch’s research found that one-third of the more than 200 U.S. parishes in the Antiochian Orthodox Church were founded after 1990.

Matusiak said growth is especially apparent in suburbs and commuter towns.

“People in Wheaton weren’t flocking to Orthodoxy, because there was never a church here,” Matusiak said.

Many converts credit the beauty of the liturgy and the durability of the theology, which can be a comfort to those seeking shelter from divisive battles over biblical interpretation in other Christian traditions.

Dixon, who was raised an Old Regular Baptist, an austere faith of the Southern Appalachians, said his conversion grew from his studies about the origins of Christianity as an undergraduate at Marshall University. The turning point came when he first attended services at an Orthodox church.

“As soon as I came in that day,” he says, “I knew I was home.”

Convert-fueled growth, though, has its challenges.

Like converts in all faiths, the newly Orthodox bring a zeal that can be unsettling for those born into the church, who tend to be more easygoing in their religious observance. Parishes run the risk of dividing between new and lifelong parishioners,

Krindatch says.

“Converts to Orthodoxy form their own little quasi-seminary and it’s almost a closed group,”

says the Rev. Joseph Huneycutt, associate pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Houston, who was raised Southern Baptist then became Orthodox.

And some worry about converts’ impact on the churches. They are entering the parishes at a time when many lay activists across Orthodox denominations are pushing church leaders to let go of ethnic divisions and pool resources so they can better evangelize in the United States.

Huneycutt, author of One Flew Over the Onion Dome, a book about conversion, and the editor of OrthoDixie, a blog about Orthodoxy in the South, said he was drawn to the faith by the beauty of its rituals and its teachings.

On his first visit, he said the church was filled with the smell of incense and the sound of the chanted Divine Liturgy. The altar was largely concealed by the iconostasis, a large screen or wall hung with icons of Christ, Mary, angels and Apostles. And worshippers received Communion from a chalice and spoon.

“I had become convinced that the Eucharist was the center of Christian worship — ancient Christian worship,”

Huneycutt says.

“Once I had reached that point in my personal walk with Christ, there was no going back.”

Source

© 2011, Journey To Orthodoxy | The Orthodox Christian ‘Welcome Home’ Network for Converts. All rights reserved. On republishing this, please provide a link to the original post. Thank you and may God richly bless you.

Read more: More Americans Join the Orthodox Christian Church : Journey To Orthodoxy | The Orthodox Christian ‘Welcome Home’ Network for Converts

Our Church is in great need of professional cleaning.  We have quoted several companies for the job and have a good idea of the cost.  Over the next few months, the Serbian Sisters of Ravanica will be sponsoring fundraisers and collecting donations to fund the cleaning of our church.  The first fundraiser will be a fashion show scheduled for April 29, 2012.  Please support us in our effort to restore our Cathedral to its original pristine beauty.

Ravanica Valentine’s Day Youth Dance:  The Serbian Sisters will be hosting another dance Friday, February 10, 2012.

Donation envelopes for 2012 are available in the Church Office.  Please pick yours up when you come to Church on Sunday.  New numbers were assigned so be sure to look for your name and address on the box.  We have envelopes for everyone who has completed a Stewardship Commitment Form for 2012.  If you will not be submitting a Commitment form for 2012 but would like donation envelopes, please call Sheryl in the office at
313-893-6025.

Thank you for your support of our Church.

Sunday January 8 at 10am is Church School as usual. This week all classrooms are learning about who St. Sava was and the importance of this holiday. We will be doing art work to be displayed at the Sveti Sava Program. After lunch we will be handing out Deklamacija/Poems to all grades. Please attend, we will start rehearsing the poems during cultural time.  We will be also rehearsing the 4 new songs we are learning for Sveti Sava & kolo dancing.

Letter reassigning Fr Rade

The Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America has posted a news briefing about our conversion to Stewardship on their website. You can see it at www.serborth.org/12212011a.html.

You will be receiving your 2012 donation envelopes near the end of January. The Church will be updating our record keeping system and new numbers will be assigned. Parishioners in good standing who have submitted their 2012 Stewardship Commitment Forms will automatically receive new envelopes. If you will not be submitting a Commitment Form, but would like to receive your 2012 envelopes, please contact Sheryl in the Church office. The phone number is 313-893-6025.

There will be blank envelopes available at the candle stand and in the pews for you to use until your new printed envelopes arrive. Simply print your name on the envelope and it will be credited towards your 2012 Stewardship Commitment. Thank you for your generosity and support of our Church.

Also, thanks to everyone who helped plan and execute our Sveti Nikola program…it was great and the kids had a wonderful time!