The Union Chapel opens this Sunday with the Rev. Dr. Dorothy Watson Tatem as the guest preacher. This is her third visit and the beginning of the 140th season of Union Chapel. The chapel is located in Oak Bluffs at the south end of Kennebec and Circuit avenues. An organ prelude by Garrett Brown begins at 9:40 a.m.; the service is at 10 a.m.

The 2010 summer season at Trinity Episcopal Church begins this Sunday, June 20 at 9 a.m. with the Rev. Deborah Warner serving as celebrant. Reverend Warner is the rector of the Church of the Messiah in Woods Hole where she has served since 2008.

Alden Besse to Preach

Trinity Episcopal Church in Oak Bluffs welcomes the Reverend Alden Besse as preacher and celebrant this Sunday, Sept. 11.

Rev. Besse retired to the Vineyard in 1990 from his parish in Whitinsville. For fifteen years he served as Pastoral Assistant at Grace Church in Vineyard Haven. For many years Rev. Besse has been active with the Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council, as chairman and now as co-chair. He is also well known on the island for his long-time participation in the annual CROP Walk.

Cliffe Knechtle, pastor for Grace Community Church in New Canaan, Conn., will be preaching at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs this Sunday, August 28. Reverend Knechtle has spoken on university campuses around the country since 1980. He is the author of two books, Heaven Can’t Wait and Give Me an Answer. In 1990 he began the television program Give Me an Answer, which airs in portions of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India and England. Cliffe’s parents were the founding members of the Presbyterian Church in New Canaan, where he grew up.

Flashback a bit more than a decade ago to Union Theological Seminary in New York city where Cathlin Baker and Raphael Warnock were a couple of seminary students, studying and playing pool together at the seminary pub. Today they are, respectively, the pastors at the West Tisbury Congregational Church on Martha’s Vineyard and the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former home church of Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., “Daddy King,” and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The hall was filled with people, the message from the minister powerful.

“Go and testify to the way God works, for that is what Jesus’s life, ministry, death and resurrection is all about,” said the Rev. Cathlin Baker to conclude the Easter service last Sunday morning. “Jesus showed us the way God works. And so now we know — life overcomes death, and love conquers sin. We are Easter people, people who are to bring hope to the world, to bring light from the shadows. So go and tell, go and tell.”