The Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist in Aptos, CA serving Santa Cruz County

 

St. John’s is currently seeking a Volunteer & Youth Coordinator. For more information on this position, click on this link.

Welcome to St. John’s

We invite you to get to know us and discover your place here among us. We are a  community that looks to the life and ministry of Jesus to better understand and enter into the heart of God. Jesus spoke out against injustice and poverty, Jesus healed friend and foe, Jesus broke bread with the rich and poor, Jesus points to the wideness of God’s compassion.  Our membership and leadership is comprised of the young and the old, the old-timer and the newcomer, married, partnered and single, gay and straight, rich and poor.   We celebrate the wonderful diversity of human kind and we seek to do that in faithfulness to the baptismal command to respect the dignity of every human being.   We strive to include a place for everyone around God’s table and believe there should be no outcasts in the Episcopal Church

 

The Season of Pentecost

Pentecost is the great festival that marks the birth of the Christian church by the power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost means “fiftieth day” and is celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday. The Day of Pentecost is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year in the Episcopal Church (BCP, p. 15), and is identified by the BCP as one of the feasts that is “especially appropriate” for baptism (p. 312).

The season after Pentecost, according to the calendar of the church year (BCP, p. 32), begins on the Monday following Pentecost (19 May), and continues to 28 November. It may include as many as twenty-eight Sundays, depending on the date of Easter. This includes Trinity Sunday which is the First Sunday after Pentecost. This period is also understood by some as “ordinary time,” a period of the church year not dedicated to a particular season or observance.

Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, the twelve apostles, Jesus’ mother and family, and many other of His disciples gathered together in Jerusalem for the Jewish harvest festival that was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover. While they were indoors praying, a sound like that of a rushing wind filled the house and tongues of fire descended and rested over each of their heads. Hence the wearing of red on Pentecost Sunday. This was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on human flesh promised by God. The disciples were suddenly empowered to proclaim the gospel of the risen Christ. They went out into the streets of Jerusalem and began preaching to the crowds gathered for the festival. Not only did the disciples preach with boldness and vigor, but by a miracle of the Holy Spirit they spoke in the native languages of the people present, many of whom had come from all corners of the Roman Empire. The apostle Peter seized the moment and addressed the crowd, preaching to them about Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. The result was that about three thousand converts were baptized that day. The account can be found in the Acts of the Apostles 2:1-41.

 

 

  • May 2014

    I would normally be writing about the parish goals we are currently working and praying so hard to create, or about the experimental after-school program we are doing to explore the needs of the community.  But at the moment there is something more urgent to discuss:

    On May 10th twelve of us (names below) joined the thousand or so in the 10K “Human Race” from Natural Bridges to the Santa Cruz Lighthouse and return, to raise funds for Hope with South Sudan.  It was, as always, a delight to do, and we usually send the proceeds to our partners in . . . → Read More: May 2014