Dear friends in Christ,

God has been so gracious to Corpus Christi Anglican Church in 2024. We have had a full year in our new sanctuary and we are so thankful for it. We are grateful to Prince of Peace Lutheran Church for their continued generosity in letting us rent from them to do the kingdom ministry God has called CCAC to do. We had more Formation Groups this year, we had our first marriage in the church, and our first church-wide marriage seminar that lasted 8 weeks. We had fun community-building activities (like cookouts and selling Christmas trees) along with community service opportunities. We tried out new opportunities for worship (like a sung Good Friday service and the blessing of the animals on the Feast of St. Francis).

We said goodbye to some of our staff and members and sent them on their journey with a blessing while also welcoming in new staff and members with a blessing (including several house blessings). We voted in two new members of the Mission Vestry and prayerfully considered where God is taking us in the next year as we passed next year’s budget together. Keep reading below and you’ll find more details about the programs and the stories of what God has done this year (and great pictures!). You’ll also find a summary of our financial data as we begin 2025. As you consider your year-end giving opportunities, please prayerfully consider a gift to Corpus Christi Anglican Church. Perhaps you would like to begin a new recurring gift or a one-time gift. Every gift is a blessing both for you and for God’s kingdom work at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. As you are generous, God will use it to further His work in and through this church. And as God works, you are a real participant in the ministry and you will get to share the joy of God’s work with CCAC. If you would like to make a gift, visit our Giving page. Keep reading below for fun pictures and stories about the year…

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Adult Formation

There were several contexts last year which were set up to form our adults in the faith of their baptism. Some of these contexts had more explicit teaching (reading groups and marriage seminars), while many others happened in the context of life together.

Catechesis and Confirmation

Over the course of this year, we began to offer regular studies on writings from the saints who have come long before us. We began with a reading of St. Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise, which helped us picture how God is saving a people. We shared dinner in one family’s home, the kids played, and the adults had the opportunity to discuss theology. The overwhelming sentiment was surprise at how the church had framed life and salvation in previous generations (in contrast to the post-Reformation west). Beauty begins to adorn the Gospel when we begin to see salvation as a return to the Garden of Paradise and to frame that theology through poetry. This was a unique time where some who had not been able to be in a Formation Group now participated in a great discussion group outside the Sunday gathering. This also gave us a framework to consider why God is saving us, to what end He is saving us, and why we experience trials and suffering in the life of faith. There is a hunger to read more patristic literature (i.e., writings from the mothers and fathers of the faith).

In the Fall we offered a class on Baptism, Eucharist, and a life of ministry that looked at the Lectures on the Christian Sacraments by a 4th century Father of the Church named Cyril of Jerusalem. This allowed us to dig more deeply into our catechism (To Be A Christian) and ask how the sacraments enable us to follow Jesus. This class was designed to continue the formation for adults who may have been confirmed already but want to go a bit deeper in their understanding of God and the church.

The Bishop visited us in October and there were several people who had gone through our confirmation class earlier this year and were confirmed or reaffirmed their baptismal vows when the Bishop came in October. The Bishop laid hands on each person to pray for them and along with the liturgically appropriate prayer, added an additional prayer for each candidate. It was amazing to see how the Holy Spirit spoke through those prayers — it was as though the Bishop knew each of their stories (though he actually did not).

FORMATION GROUPS

This year, we held several rounds of Formation Groups. We had a few in January, a few in April, then a few in October. These continue to be a great way for people to connect, pray for one another, study Scripture together, and pray in community. Relationships are formed slowly over time and with frequency of getting together; therefore, Formation Groups have been crucial contexts to form deeper relationships. It is great to see the young and young at heart, single and married, kids and adults, men and women, all gathering together in these groups and growing together.

Marriage Seminar

This year, we utilized the material from the Gottman Institute Marriage Course both for for premarital mentoring and to offer a Gottman marriage course. We had several of the married couples in our church go through the course. The kids looked forward to being together every week and the 8 weeks gave people a great opportunity to set aside time to have conversations with their spouse that they wouldn’t normally have. We want to help people follow Jesus in all ages and stages of life — for those who are married, growing in a healthy, Christian, marriage is so foundational for seeing the love of Christ sacramentally present in marriage. We want to be a church that supports people in singleness and in marriage and does so in a community of grace and prayer.

Men’s Ministry and Women’s Ministry

The men continue to meet monthly on the first Sunday of each month. They had several months of meeting in diners and peoples’ homes for breakfast. Each month there is an opportunity to eat together, do family morning prayer together, and pray for the needs of one another. For one of these gatherings we did a hike around Hidden Pond Park. These are continuing to grow traction and provide a relaxed space for the men to be together and lift one another up in prayer. The December event was an opportunity to serve together as we got our rakes, leaf blowers, and shovels, and got the kids involved in a church cleanup day. It is so healthy to have a place where the kids observe the men praying and serving.

The women’s monthly gatherings have begun to gain good traction as well. From back porches to dining rooms, the women have been gathering each month to study Scripture, eat together, and pray with one another. I keep hearing from different women how much this time means to them and how much they’d been longing for connection. This month, they made wreaths together and focused on Advent. I’m so grateful for the women who are leading this ministry and seeing how it has helped women connect.

Community

Our mission is to become a common people in common prayer for uncommon transformation. All of our ministries help our church build rhythms of hospitality, prayer, relationships, and service which work together to accomplish the mission. We value intergenerational ministry, and because of that value, a lot of our events are geared toward incorporating people of all ages and stages.

fun

We have a lot of fun together. Play builds trust and in our culture there are not a lot of spaces for adults to play together. Therefore fun and play are imperative. We held a summer cookout at Lake Accotink (with the new and wonderful playground!). We had another cookout following our Pentecost service at Pohick Bay Regional Park. We went on a hike in Harpers Ferry, WV and later in the summer we had a pool party. To at least one of these events we had an unchurched family attend and get to know people in the church. These times of fun build this church’s capacity for hospitality and friendship and allow people to belong even before they believe. We kicked off the Fall season with a potluck and in October went out to a farm together. In December, we went ice skating together and I’m looking forward to having a cookie exchange after our Christmas Eve service. These times of rest and play are so important to building good friendships for the sake of the kingdom of God.

My favorite event this Fall was our Fall Retreat. We went out to Camp Highroad in Middleburg, VA for a weekend and shared meals, had times of teaching, time for rest and fun, and celebrated the Eucharist together. It was such an amazing experience to see the adults spend time with one another and the kids join in — it felt like one big family. My prayer is that the content of this retreat and the time together continues to bear fruit as our church grows together. Mark your calendars now for next year’s retreat! We will do our Fall Retreat 2025 Friday through Sunday, October 17-19.

SERVICE

We want to serve our community and our neighborhoods together. In the last year, we have had some great opportunities to do that. We began the year making dinner on New Year’s Eve for about 40 people experiencing housing insecurity at the church property. We will do that event again this year on December 30 and we look forward to welcoming people in this way.

The youth got involved in serving as well. Last February, the students cooked together and made a lot of chili for a local ministry that serves nursing and pregnant teen parents. It was a great chance to help the kids learn how to cook and teach them the importance of serving our peers locally. The students really bonded as they worked with each other and it was a joy to see them all build friendships. On December 1, the students sold Christmas trees for a good cause: The proceeds were donated to the Ecumenical Community Housing Organization which serves those in need in the central Springfield area.

In July and August, we gathered school supplies and helped fill backpacks for the August Angels program which is sponsored by the Koinonia Foundation. These backpacks were then gifted to local area students who were in need of school supplies. Along with one-off service opportunities, we regularly lead a Eucharist celebration at Greenspring Senior Living in Springfield. This service happens on the first Wednesday of every month. There is a growing contingent in that service of people who attend regularly and they remind me that they look forward to it every month. After the election, the woman told me that my reminder about Jesus being Lord over all moved her from a place of despair to a place of hope. This is a really neat ministry and it is because of the generous support we receive that we are able to carry on this monthly outreach with those who may not be able to offer financial gifts to the church.

prayer ministry

This year we began offering after service prayer with trained prayer teams on Sundays. This is a confidential space for people to bring their needs to the Lord in communion every week. Each Friday we now have a prayer newsletter that goes out to parishioners who have opted in. We also created a prayer page to take prayer requests. It has been so good to get the church praying about the needs of the church. Originally there were about 5-6 people who were on the team of those who did after service prayer, but in our most recent training there were over 15 people who either wanted a refresher, or to be trained for the first time. I am so encouraged that the Holy Spirit is cultivating a desire in people to have a ministry of praying on behalf of others in the church.

liturgy

This was the first full year in the new space! Even though the turnaround is quite tight for setup and teardown, the church that we rent from has been quite kind in allowing us to install some features that cut down some of the setup processes. This year, one of my goals was to delegate some of the liturgical roles on Sunday mornings to others. We raised up a group of leaders who can lead the teams that are necessary for Sunday morning to happen. They are doing an excellent job with things like altar guild, after service prayer, pre-service hospitality, etc. These leaders are now improving the roles, rewriting the instructions, and implementing the training for each role. It is exciting to see!

Lent came pretty early this year and we held our Shrove Tuesday at one family’s home on Fort Belvoir. We ate pancakes (well, actually it was waffles, but close enough), painted rocks with “alleluia” on them in order to bury them, and burnt the palms from the previous year and ground them up to use the next day for Ash Wednesday. I loved seeing the intergenerational fellowship in the room and the joy that the kids received from pounding up the ashes. Everyone had a role to play in preparing for Lent! The next day, we celebrated Ash Wednesday in the evening and kicked off our Lenten season together.

Holy Week was stunning. There were several people for whom this was their first Holy Week (either their first at CCAC or their first ever!). We celebrated Maundy Thursday for the first time in the new sanctuary. For me it was special for two reasons: First, some people told me that they learned something of the love of God in the sacrifice of Christ when the altar was stripped and we ended in darkness. Second, the foot-washing had an impact on a lot of people as they considered how Jesus came to serve and this was redemptive for them. On Good Friday, we held a Stations of the Cross service at noon. The images were chosen by someone in the congregation and the liturgy was a great hour of reflection on the crucifixion of Christ. This was the first time doing this service for some of our people. That evening we celebrated our Good Friday service from the Book of Common Prayer. It was a beautiful and reflective service and we were able to chant a lot of it for the first time.

The Easter Vigil is always my favorite service of the whole year (if I’m allowed to have one). We gathered outside with a firepit and lit the Paschal Candle. This year, we baptized one of our 11-year-old students which was incredibly moving. The evening ended with a wonderful celebration. The next day, we had our Sunday morning Easter service followed by a potluck and easter egg hunt to get the community outside the church involved. One of my neighbors attended the egg hunt. I love how excited both the kids and adults get for Holy Week and Easter each year. My son is already asking about the easter egg hunt next year. These are memories that all of us will treasure (and I hope the kids treasure into adulthood).

Tom and Esther Bream joined the staff team as our music directors in May and have built a wonderful culture of music ministry at CCAC. They have created opportunities for kids to get involved in unique ways on Sundays and have built a team of musicians that can assist and rotate, and who love to play together! We have also begun the rhythm of a monthly Evensong (evening prayer with lots of music). These have been great opportunities to teach new songs and hymns, to help the kids to engage with evening prayer, and to create spaces for formation in worship for folks who may not be able to attend a formation group.

This year, we held our first blessing of the animals service on St. Francis of Assissi’s feast day. It was a wonderful exercise to pull this liturgy together and write a sermon that tied together the Gospel’s power both in individuals and in all creation. It was a great trial run and I am already looking forward to next year’s blessing of the animals service.

Children & Youth

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd

This has been such an great year for children’s ministry. Ashley continues to build a wonderful program with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) and this year she was trained in atrium level two. We have begun doing a level one atrium for ages 3-5 and level two atrium for ages 6-9. This allows us to minister to kids in a way that is appropriate to their cognitive stages. This also allows for the older youth program minimum age to be ten, which is a lot nicer than nine from a developmental perspective. We were sad to say goodbye to two of our level one catechists who moved because of the military, but God has provided more catechists. We now have three catechists who are fully trained in level one and three more who are being trained to do level one. Our hope is to have two of our level one catechists be trained in level two so that we can have more of a rotation for both levels.

The hours of work that have gone into making all the materials and the lessons (not to mention the training of catechists and assistants) is bearing fruit. The kids are responding well to the material and asking really great questions. The older kids seem to really enjoy having their time to go deeper in their understanding of Christ’s work and in liturgy and theology. I love having them come back in at communion and hear them sing some of our liturgical songs loudly. When you hear their voices there is this palatable sense that this is their church and that has always been our goal. We are so grateful for the ways that Ashley has been leading the leaders and discipling the kids. She is such a blessing to our staff team and our church.

Youth Ministry

For the kids ages 10 and up, we continue to find ways to have them connect with one another and engage with Scripture and the church more deeply. On Sundays, the older kids often serve as acolytes, crucifers, readers, or on the music team. Then following the service, the students will go downstairs where they’ll have pizza, play a game, have some time of instruction and discussion, and end their time in Family Midday Prayer. In Winter and Spring, we used the Eucharist liturgy as our curriculum, walking piece-by-piece through what the liturgy is telling us about God, the Gospel, and what he wants to do in us. In September, we moved into the liturgical seasons to talk about why we celebrate different seasons and feast days. One Sunday per month, the kids play music and worship together in song so that on the 4th Sunday they can sing up front in church (Our little Choristers!). Finally, one Friday night per month we try to schedule a youth fun night where the students gather for the purposes of having fun, playing, and building relationships.

One of the unique characteristics of our youth ministry is the intergenerational nature of it. The adults who help are from different generations and backgrounds and each student has multiple adults who are there as resources for their walk with Jesus. I am so grateful for our adults who invest in the lives of these kids and the ways that the whole church comes around them to invest in the church as “their church”.

Vestry & Staff

We have had several new households join the church this year. I have loved being able to do house blessings for the new families. Blessing homes has been such a great way to help people frame their everyday lives in the context of the kingdom of God.

In the beginning of 2024, I encouraged the members of the church to discern whether God might be calling them to serve on the Mission Vestry. Two of our members, William Sulik, and Peg Peterson, responded to God’s call to serve and were voted onto the Mission Vestry on Pentecost Sunday. I am grateful for our wonderful Mission Vestry. We meet monthly to discuss the organizational life of the church and pray for some of the needs of the church. We approved the new budget and read through the book De-Sizing the Church by Karl Vaters, which prompted excellent discussions about what we are measuring when we think about what success looks like. I am looking forward to the discussions that will be coming up with our Mission Vestry over the next year.

Next year, Carol will be rolling off the Mission Vestry and we’ll start praying for the next 1-2 people that God will raise up to serve 3-year-terms. CCAC has been so generous when it comes to the work of supporting new church planting efforts. Not only is the church giving the requested amount of 5.1% to our Diocesan general fund, but the vestry has approved a gift of 5% of our actual income to be given to the church planting fund of our Diocese. We have always been a church plant with a heart to plant churches and this is the best way for us to do it right now.

Our former music director, Andrew Intagliata, rolled off his musical leadership role in Eastertide and Tom and Esther Bream officially took over the role in May. We are so grateful for the ways that Andrew built the foundation of musical ministry at CCAC and the ways that Tom and Esther have built on that foundation. Tom and Esther have orders from the military to leave next summer, so they wanted to step back to being volunteers in order to let someone else lead. We began looking for a new music director in November. We had several great candidates, and through this search process we discovered that Spike Douglass would make an excellent leader of our music ministry (his wife, Nasya, is also quite talented). Spike is a long-time member of CCAC and it was a joy to discover his ability and his willingness to lead music for us.

Early on in the life of CCAC, we created an operations role that would help us move from being a startup to becoming an organization with sustainable processes and procedures in place. We reached that goal at the end of last year with the help of a wonderful operations and communications manager. In January, we moved from having an operations and communications manager to hiring for a church administrator who could maintain the processes we started and build upon them. We hired Ivory Mae Casten back in March and she has quickly become part of the CCAC family. She has helped refresh the website, has done a great job with keeping a regular advertising schedule on social media, has done a ton of graphic design, payroll, and so much more. She is an absolute gift to CCAC.

Finances

Our fiscal year began in September 2023 and ran through August 2024. We ended the year with a deficit, though that deficit was only 39% of the deficit we had budgeted for. In the charts below we give the percentages of income and expenses with an explanation.

income

Our income this year had a different trend than in years past. About three years ago, our income consisted of about 33% offerings from within the congregation, about 33% of offerings from outside the congregation, and about 33% from grant income. The numbers have shifted in a very encouraging pattern.

Almost 60% of our budget has come from within the congregation (represented in green). That is really great news and a sign that people in the church are growing in generosity towards God’s work at CCAC. Roughly 29% of our income came from offerings outside the church (represented in red). We are so grateful for the many donors who want to see God’s kingdom work done at CCAC. One of those outside donors includes one of our partner churches: All Saints’ Church in Woodbridge, VA. We are so grateful for their continued support and generosity. There is still a need for those outside donors as we work towards moving away from grant income. We have never had a “parent church” and therefore the generous gifts of those outside the church is crucial for the long-term sustainability of the church’s life.

Roughly 11% of our income came from grants. These grants were given by the Great Commission Committee of our Diocese (which oversees the process of church planting) and from Restoration Anglican Church. We are so grateful for our partner churches and our Diocese who support CCAC in seeing lives transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and fulfilling our mission of becoming a common people in common prayer for uncommon transformation.

expenses

One of the gifts of not having a building in this season is that CCAC can spend money on people and programs. CCAC has a wonderful staff team that is discipling people through music, children’s ministry, Sunday worship, and conversations beyond Sunday mornings. The staff team is training the church how to become those who do the ministry. The total payroll cost is not anticipated to change in the next year. During 2023-2024 there were staff transitions and some overlap that made the personnel costs higher than originally budgeted.

CCAC continues to give 5.1% of its budget to the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA) and it gives an additional 5% of its actual income to the church planting fund of DOMA. This percentage shows up as 3.9% for DOMA (general and church planting fund) in the graph above because the actual income of CCAC does not include the grants received. Therefore, the percentages are based on the total income (which includes the grants). It is a joy for CCAC to give toward the church planting fund of the diocese because in this generosity we get to participate in the Gospel being lived out in new regions. It is exciting to be a part of.

The worship expenses include rental costs along with liturgical items, AV equipment, and supplies for hospitality. Sunday morning is the best time and place to welcome newcomers. This is where people are formed in worship and connect for community. We are grateful for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and their open-handed posture of generosity in letting us use space to bring people of all ages into this church to be formed by Jesus.

One area for growth in next year’s budget is to use some of CCAC’s funds to subsidize outreach opportunities. This could be cookouts and bounce houses, neighborhood cleanup days, weeknight groups that target the unchurched or other similar activities. We want to encourage people to begin praying for their neighbors and take down any barriers (especially financial) that would keep people from coming to know Christ through the members of CCAC.

It has been a great year. Peoples’ lives are being transformed by Christ in community. They are finding healing, going through life’s challenges together, and being formed in worship and prayer together. Through all the different rhythms of hospitality, prayer, relationships, and service, people are becoming a common people in common prayer for uncommon transformation. Thank you for lifting up CCAC in your prayers and supporting it financially. If you would like to make a special donation or support the work of CCAC on a regular basis, visit our Giving Page.