Welcome Rev. Beverly Moore-Tasy

by on July 15, 2021 with No Comments

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church is pleased to introduce our new Rector!

The Rev. Beverly A. Moore-Tasy was born and raised in Utica, NY. She was educated in the Utica Public Schools and received her BA in Math from Keuka College in Keuka Park, NY. For 5 years she taught Math in junior and senior high school (with dance and gymnastics as extracurricular activities) for the Baltimore City Public Schools. She earned her Master of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA and was ordained to the diaconate. Rev. Tasy was named assistant director of Cornell United Religious Work, the chaplain organization at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. While there she was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop O’Kelley Whitaker of the Diocese of Central NY. Since then, she has served parishes in Michigan, Ohio, Nevada, and New Mexico and was director of campus ministry for the Diocese of Western NY and chaplain at SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia, and Niagara University. She is married and has one son.

Those are the facts, but there is much more to Rev. Tasy. She has served all age groups with her strong pastoral and preaching experience. She has set up a new parish, revitalized an aging parish and doubled the attendance at Sunday worship in her current parish.

Her passion for evangelism has had many avenues of expression. She reached out to college students and staff through chaplaincy programs at Cornell and later three colleges in western NY. She organized multiple types of outreach activities, established the African-American Worship Service in the early 1990’s, mediated campus racial-issue discussions and advised Gospel Choirs.

She is also adept at administration, but her focus is ministry. In recent conversations with the Wardens, she said her priority is getting people back in the habit of coming to church. She feels that when the people of God are together, great things can happen. And she is looking forward to seeing what we can do together. She begins as our Rector on September 1st.

Thrift Shop Volunteering

Thrift Shop Volunteering

by on June 30, 2021 with No Comments

Greetings! In anticipation of reopening the Thrift Shop, the Thrift Shop Volunteer team is hoping you can consider volunteering. Reopening the shop is totally dependent on securing enough volunteers and hours from the congregation and the community to meet our projections. If we cannot secure the hours needed, we will not be able to reopen.

Here are a few key things about the reopening you should know:

  • We have rewritten our business plan, with an emphasis on maximizing sales with the hope of hiring a manager in the future.
  • We are reducing the list of items that we will accept as donations. As such, there are several items we will no longer carry on our sales floor.
  • We have renewed our commitment to stocking the Shop with items that we know will sell, will generate good revenue, and will provide our customers with the quality merchandise they have come to expect from the Shop.
  • We plan to kick off our grand reopening with a big parking lot “blow-out sale”, deeply discounting all items that will no longer be carried in the Shop.

The Thrift Shop leadership team has set some ground rules for the Shop’s reopening. The Shop will be open five days a week, ideally from 11am to 5 or 6 pm. We will ask volunteers to commit to 4 hour shifts. Most importantly, enacting our plan and on-going operation of the Thrift Shop will depend upon how many volunteers we have and the number of hours the volunteers commit to working.

If you have volunteered in the Shop in the past, we are asking you to consider volunteering again. If you have not done so, please consider stepping up to help us at this time. If you would like to volunteer, please let us know how many days and hours you will commit to volunteering per month and what you are interested in doing, by answering the following questions:

Please let us know the following (you can also fill out this form):

  1. In advance of the Shop’s reopening, can you volunteer time to help with clean-up and getting the shop ready for the parking lot “blow-out sale”? Y or N
  2. What type of volunteer work are you most interested in? (Training will be available, if needed)
    • Donation intake
    • Sorting, preparing items, and pricing items for the sales floor.
    • Working on the sales floor (must include cashiering)
    • Helping with media and ongoing communications, as well as the online sales platform
  3. How often can you volunteer? (e.g., # of days per week, # of days per month, as a substitute only, etc.) Which day(s) can you volunteer (e.g., Tuesdays and Fridays, Saturday only, etc.
  4. How many hours can you volunteer per shift? (e.g., 4-hour shift or all day 6-hour shift)

(Please note: all volunteers will get a discount on all items they purchase on the days they volunteer.)

If you know others who would be interested in volunteering, please send us their name and email address/contact information.

Finally, we would love to hear your ideas on how we can make the Thrift Shop a resounding success, so please send us your feedback.

Please contact us at: thriftshopcommittee@saintmargarets.org
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Mary Hendrickson, Carolee Jones, Janet Moore, Pam Nordquist, and Jewel Robeson
Thrift Shop Volunteer Team

Profile Committee Appointed

Profile Committee Appointed

by on June 21, 2019 with No Comments

On June 11, the Vestry appointed seven people to serve on a Profile Committee as we begin the process of calling a new rector: Shauna Backus (chair), Mary Feltrup, Andrea Feist, Ed Leonard, Conrad Lee, Dave Hoffmann, and Davindia Steele. Many thanks to all for participating in this process!

The job of the Profile Committee is to collect information about the congregation and write a new church profile. This work will include updating the church history and neighborhood description from the previous profile. Also, the Profile Committee will conduct a survey to measure changes in St. Margaret’s membership and priorities since the previous rector search. Once the profile is complete, the Bishop’s office will review it for use in the new rector search.

The Bishop’s office has asked Paula Franck to act as a consultant and guide our parish through the search process. The wardens are working with closely with her, and she will meet with the Profile Committee to explain the steps to discern the parish’s future direction. We look forward to including your thoughts for the future of St. Margaret’s in our new church profile.