Thursday, September 15, 2022
FALL KICKOFF! Two for One Presentations!
Join us for the first Mature Ministres event of the season. It promises to be a rich and diverse gathering of learning and fellowship. You won't want to miss it.
Reservations are required. Please Sign Up Here.
11:00 a.m.: Linda Rexer, “The Stratford Adventure!” (Social Hall)
In 1952, the famous theatre director Tyrone Guthrie helped to start a Shakespeare theatre festival in rural Ontario. As the first Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, he cast Alec Guiness as Richard III and Irene Worth as Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well in the opening productions performed under a tent set up in a field. Seventy years later, the 2022 season of the Stratford Festival remounts those two plays again, this time in the new award-winning magnificent facility, The Tom Patterson Theatre, named for the Stratford citizen who came up with this unlikely idea seven decades ago. Linda Rexer, Chair of the Stratford Festival of America, will offer highlights from Stratford’s storied history as well as its stellar current season of 10 productions, performed in repertory, in four theatres. Join us because “The play’s (still) the thing!”
About our speaker: Linda Rexer is a member of the Board of Governors of the Stratford Festival of Canada. She is also Chair of the Stratford Festival of America and previously served as Treasurer and Vice Chair of that Board of Trustees. She is also a member of the Michigan Members of the Stratford Festival Executive Committee. She has attended theatre in Stratford since 1966. Ms. Rexer is a lawyer who began her career managing a nonprofit legal aid program and providing representation for indigent families with civil legal problems. Then she became the first Executive Director of a statewide charitable foundation, the Michigan State Bar Foundation, which she led for 30 years in its mission to provide leadership and funding for access to justice.
Noon: Lunch ($8) - Menu TBD. Hear about our upcoming speakers and travel plans over lunch! (Social Hall)
1:00 p.m.: David Prentice-Hyers, FPC and Rev. Gary Noonan - two friends in Dialogue about the Church today! (Social Hall)
Rev. David Prentice-Hyers was called in May to be the Lead Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, and with his wife Mary Elizabeth, and their boys Finlay and Angus, are beginning to adjust to live in Ann Arbor and getting to know our church. Both have returned after being in Scotland for about 8 years (previously both served on our staff from 2011 - 2013. He will be formally installed on the Sunday following this presentation, 2:00 p.m., September 18, Sanctuary.
Rev. Gary Noonan, who is the minister of Houston and Killellan Kirk in Renfrewshire - who swapped being in the police to being in the pulpit. Get to know Gary before he preaches at our church on Sunday, September 18, and at David’s installation at 2 p.m.