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From the Pastor I was hired as Youth Minister in 1985 by Dr. Dennis Anderson. I worked along-side Dr. Anderson for about 9 years—through some of the most joyous and tumultuous years of professional ministry. We served together in the midst of a church split and attempting to rebuild many foundations. I departed Vestavia Hills Baptist in 1994 (25 years ago) and though separated by time and distance—have remained close friends. Dennis remained at Vestavia Hills— serving over 34 years as Minister of Educa-tion and Administration. Dennis retired Sunday, March 17 and I was honored to participate in various retirement celebrations—a lifetime of service to one household of faith. Here’s what I remember from the weekend: • All that remains in our hearts and memories are joy of relationship. The disagreements on church polity

and bureaucracy fade into distant memory and become (to use a blunt word from Paul) skoobala. The long lines and showering of love on Dennis, though he is an able Administrator, were present because he loved the people of Vestavia.

• Dr. Gary Furr, who became Pastor of Vestavia Hills in 1993 (and remains to this day) has helped build

Vestavia into a beacon of hope, love and forgiveness. Gary preached a magnificent sermon on Dennis’ farewell Sunday and used the phrase, “You Had to Be There”—several times in his presentation. We are a story-telling community—it is in our DNA as a family of faith.

• And when we remember a departed saint or celebrate a life-time of service. It is the power of relation-

ships which remain—particularly those forged by fire and laboring together in times of joy and stress. The entire weekend was overwhelming for Dennis and his wife Karen. Dennis looked upon a group of people— who have served with him for 34 years and stated, “this is what I will remember…the laughter, love and relationships formed during my time of service”. So…as you continue to write your professional and personal story. Remember what people will ultimately remember—how they were treated in times of stress, conflict and celebration.

Dr. Dennis Anderson

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The Carver Conversations

Friday, April 5, 7:00 PM, Third Baptist Church

Theme: Baptizing Our Imaginations: Art and the Divided Church

Speakers: Sho Baraka, Mako Fujimura, and Sara Groves

Register at: https://www.carverstl.org/carver-conversations-2019/

The journey toward Easter sheds away temporary and focuses on eternal matters. Paul, always the tactful one suggests, love is all that remains, and the rest is clanging gongs, cymbals and hot air. Beloved, remember your north star: Be always humble, gentle and patient. Show your love by being tolerant of one another. Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace that binds you together. (Ephesians 4:2-3) I am thankful for my friend, who guided many to look upon this star— in times of joy, pain and cele-bration. Grace and Peace, Tommy

Sho Baraka Mako Fujimura

Sara Groves

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MARCH 31

[Visions of the Crucifixion, 4: Crucifixion by Aaron Douglas (African-American

artist), 1927]

APRIL 7

[Visions of the Crucifixion, 5: Christ of St. John of the Cross by Salvador Dali, 1951]

APRIL 14

Palm Sunday: Meeting Our Destiny in Jerusalem

APRIL 21

Easter Celebration

Upcoming Sunday Worship Services

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Seder Service Wednesday, April 17 6:00 PM Memorial Chapel

Good Friday Service Friday, April 19 7:00 PM Memorial Chapel The Perseid String Quartet will perform a series of pieces by Henry Purcell.

30th Anniversary St. Louis Earth Day Festival April 27-28, 2019 Forest Park on the Muny grounds 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM daily

The St. Louis Earth Day Festival is a community tradition to learn about sustainable products and services offered by local busi-nesses and organizations, meet local area non-profits that share Earth Day values, as well as showcasing local entertainment and local Green Dining Alliance restaurants.

From the Environmental Stewardship Committee

Wednesday Night Discipleship for Adults

April 3 and April 10—Aaron Griffith will lead a study titled American Law and Gospel: Evangelicals in the Age of Mass Incarceration April 17 - Seder Meal, Memorial Chapel April 24—Silent Movie, King of Kings, Sanctuary

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Music at Third During April Worship at Third will be greatly enhanced during April with several unusual performances and compositions. We begin on the 7th with some contemporary European composers reacting to Jesus’ final days. Our morning service begins with a setting of the penitential Psalm 130 that was written for TBC last year by the British composer, Sasha Johnson Manning, and we conclude with a piano solo from a Anglo-Bulgarian musician, Dobrinka Tabakova. During the service our anthem is by the Latvian, Eriks Esenvalds, complemented by the "Passion Chorale" of another British composer, David Bednall. The following Sunday is Palm Sunday, and much of the music that service is specifically written for that day, principally by US musicians. After that, during Holy Week, we feature two unusual musical offerings: on Wednesday evening our meditation begins with a Nocturne by contemporary American writer, Lowell Liebermann, which is followed by the choir singing “All In The April Evening” by Hugh S. Roberton, a famous Scottish choral musician. Then, for Good Friday, as our minds turn to the Cross, the Perseid String Quartet returns to Third’s chapel to offer a series of pieces by Henry Purcell for our Meditation. The sorrow & grief conjured by Purcell is dispelled on Easter itself with celebratory organ music from Bach and Widor, and two wildly different choral pieces – a Gospel arrangement by Russell Nagy - “The Angel Roll The Stone Away”, and a ‘mini cantata’ from Samuel Sebastian Wesley (a great neph-ew of John Wesley!), titled “Blessed Be The God And Father”. This was composed specifically for East-er in 1853, to be sung in Hereford Cathedral, England, where Wesley was Organist. The final Sunday in April, traditionally referred to as “Low Sunday”, will be led not by the choir, but rather by our two ‘heroes of the keyboards’, Brent Johnson and Lansin Lim Kimler. They will play two duets to enhance our worship, the “Cathedral Fugue” by Thomas Attwood (Mozart’s favorite English student!), and a brand new work specially written for Third & these two fine players by Sasha John-son Manning, whose music was heard in our first service in April.

Concert for Palm Sunday Members of Third might be interested in a concert this month conducted by our Director of Music, Philip Barnes, and featuring several of our choir. It will be performed on the afternoon (3:00 PM) of Palm Sunday, April 14, just a little north of TBC, at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. The main piece on the program is the regional premiere of “Passion Week” by Maximilian Steinberg. As the composer was putting the finishing touches to his masterpiece in 1923, the Soviet authorities announced a ban on all religious music, ensuring that Steinberg would never hear his own music performed. However, nearly one hundred years later, his great work for Passion (or Palm) Sunday has been restored, and so this concert offers the first opportunity to hear it live in St. Louis. For tickets & more information, visit www.chamberchorus.org.

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Join us for the

Carol Fleming Pillsbury

Memorial

Tea Party

Saturday, April 6

11:00 AM

Tickets: $5.00

Community

Easter Egg Hunt

Saturday, April 20

1:00 PM

Strauss Park

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Friday Pipes Schedule for April Each concert begins at 12:30 PM and is followed by a reception in Pillsbury Threshold.

5 Rick Burk – Minister of Music, Westminster Presbyterian Church, St. Louis 12 Horst Buchholz – Organist and Director of Music, Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis 19 Josiah Hamill – Indiana University 24 (Wednesday) SILENT MOVIE – THE KING OF KINGS – Mark Gifford, Organist and Director of Music, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Springfield, Illinois 26 Nancy Peterson – Organist, Zion Lutheran, Mascoutah, Illinois

SUNDAY, APRIL 7, 2019 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

St. Louis Community College – Forest Park (parking lot area)

5600 Oakland Ave, St. Louis 63110 Go to: https://earthday-365.org/recycling-on-the-go/

recycling-extravaganza/ for a complete list of items collected by category.

From the Environmental Stewardship Committee

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Global Missions Easter Offering

Adopt a Teacher

Our 2019 Easter Offering will continue to support the “Adopt a Teacher” project, which was the focus for our 2018 Christmas Offering. The Easter Offering is focusing on hunger relief, particularly as it relates to children and families. Our GOAL: $3,500. The TARGET RECIPIENTS of the offering this year are: • A backpack program in Owsley County, Kentucky. Each week 40 elementary students and 40

senior high students—a total of 80 backpacks—are sent home each Friday with food to compen-sate for not having school lunches on the weekend. The food is put in backpacks, which are re-turned to be recycled with food the next weekend. Money is needed to fill these backpacks each week.

• There are 18 FAMILIES in Owsley County that desperately need hunger relief. An example of the

struggles students face in this very depressed Appalachian county is seen in a student who approached our Josie Stamper, the teacher we’re supporting in Owsley County Schools, if she could charge her chrome book because she didn’t have any electricity to charge it at home.

• Jamie Fox, our teacher in Thailand, connected us with Rikky, whose organization PROJECT

JUSTICE works with children affected by human trafficking. They are able to move children away from unhealthy situations as they work on prevention, protection, justice, and restoration issues faced by these children. They need assistance in covering food and living expenses for the rescued girls in their program.

You can assist in meeting these needs by: • Writing “Easter Offering” on a check and placing it in the offering plate. • Using the special envelope in your packet of envelopes and check off “Easter Offering.” • Online: Go to www.shelbygiving.com/tbc and select “Easter World” to designate your offering.

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Call for Proposals – Urban Ministries Projects The board of the Des Peres Baptist Church Endowment for Inner-City Ministries at Third Baptist Church is seeking proposals for financial support toward delivering “compassionate and relevant ministries …that address spiritual and physical needs” of our neighbors here in the center of the St. Louis area. A bit of background: Des Peres Baptist Church (DPBC) was established in 1955 with financial assis-tance and manpower support provided by members of Third Baptist Church. As all earthly bodies have a life cycle – even churches – in 2008 the membership of Des Peres Baptist Church recognized it was time for them to disband. Appreciating their historic linkage to TBC and valuing our strategic location, DPBC Church chose to distribute $550,000 to us from their remaining assets. They asked that we use their gift to establish an endowment fund to be known as The Des Peres Baptist Church Endowment for Inner City Ministries, the net proceeds from which was to support inner-city ministry programs. And we do that. And we now have up to another $10,000 available to grant to TBC Ministry Teams and other spiritual and social service providers and individuals who serve our mid-town neighbors. (Our next round of funding – of an amount currently projected to be another $10,000 – will come this autumn.) Please apply! Application forms, with guidelines, are available by contacting endowment board chairperson Peggy Pittenger (peggypittenger@sbcglobal.net) or Maria Stinnett (mstinnett@third-baptist.org). Deadline to receive applications will be May 1, 2019. The board will then make its fund-ing decisions and inform all applicants by May 31. Questions? Contact any endowment board member or Maria at the TBC office. With great appreciation for your service to God through you membership at Third Baptist Church, Your Des Peres Baptist Church Endowment Board for Inner-City Ministries: Peggy Pittenger, Chair Greg Martin Tena Thompson Richard Stevenson Sally Stevenson

mailto:peggypittenger@sbcglobal.netmailto:mstinnett@third-baptist.orgmailto:mstinnett@third-baptist.org

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Youth Camp July 14-20

Lake Springfield Baptist Camp Chatham, IL

Thank You! Thank you to Dzunus, Simons, Littlejohns and Jacobs for hosting a wonderful night of fellowship for our Youth.

Youth Sunday School Aaron Griffith will lead through Easter Sunday, April 21 April 28- Youth Pancake Breakfast in Sunday school May will be facilitated by Pastor Poems, Prayers and Promises

Graduate Recognition: Sunday, May 5 High School Graduate, Jonathan Watson, will be recognized in Morning Worship

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April Events

Sunday Schedule

9:30 AM Doughnut & Coffee Fellowship 9:45 AM Sunday School 11:00 AM Worship, Sanctuary Noon Fellowship, Pillsbury Threshold

Wednesday Schedule 3:15 PM Third Readers 5:00 PM Fellowship Dinner 6:00 PM Adult Bible Study, Children’s Activities, Youth Activities 7:00 PM Choir Rehearsal

2 WMS, Staff Meeting

3 Regular Wednesday Schedule

5 Friday Pipes, Carver Conversations

6 Ladies Tea

7 Regular Sunday Schedule

9 WMS, Staff Meeting

10 Regular Wednesday Schedule

12 Friday Pipes

14 Palm Sunday, Deacon’s Meeting, Regular Sun-

day Schedule

16 Staff Meeting

17 Seder Service, Regular Wednesday Schedule

19 Friday Pipes, Good Friday Service

20 Food Pantry, Easter Egg Hunt

21 Easter, Regular Sunday Schedule

23 WMS, Staff Meeting

24 Regular Wednesday Schedule

26 Friday Pipes

28 Regular Sunday Schedule

30 Staff Meeting

3 Etornam Dzunu, Alexis Fay, Sue Haverman, Caren Simons 7 Sylvia Barnes 11 Mary St. Clair, Virgil Thomas 20 Colton Simons 22 Ella Banks 27 Margo Herendeen 30 Donna Turpin

April Birthdays

In the city for good!

620 North Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103

Church Office: 314.533.7340

third-baptist.org

Dr. Tommy Simons

PASTOR

Rev. Maria Stinnett ASSOCIATE PASTOR FOR

CHILDREN & COMMUNICATIONS

Dr. Edem Dzunu ASSOCIATE PASTOR

Philip Barnes DIRECTOR OF MUSIC

Ella Banks RECEPTIONIST/OFFICE ASSISTANT

Byron Greer BUILDING SUPERVISOR

Timothy Harrison CUSTODIAN

Karen Stewart & Linda Freiburghaus CHURCH HISTORIANS

Brent Johnson ORGANIST

Tom Kurtz BUSINESS MANAGER

Lansin Lim Kimler PIANIST

Christine McCarthy FINANCE

Raymond Murphy CUSTODIAN

Sally Stevenson PARISH NURSE

Staff