A few years ago, we made a shift in our worship patterns at Epiphany, and we did this in an effort to host our Sunday formation classes at a time that was convenient for people that attend both services. The desire was to create spaces of exploration of our faith lives for children, youth, and adults that were somewhat convenient to the largest swath of the parish as possible. 

Of course, in the very year that we made that shift, we also had the dawning of a pandemic. We did not quite know how much change that would bring to our parish and just how agile we were going to have to become if we hoped to continue some pattern of worship, prayer, and formation! 

Now, we have made it through two years of the pandemic and two years of attempting a new worship pattern for the sake of hosting formation classes at Epiphany. After two years of living with this new pattern of worship, it is important for us to review where we are and to ask if the shape of Sunday mornings is meeting the needs of the majority of the parish.

The nature of an experiment is to test something in order to learn if this change in variable x or y will result in a new outcome than we had prior to the change. And, it is part of what it means for us to be agile, to be flexible enough that we are able to shift with the shifting needs of the parish as they present themselves. We begin this learning with small experiments and move forward from those experiments as we refine and grow. 

But, it is also important for us to recognize that part of what we need to learn is how to be a learning community. The church, in the United States, has assumed Christian identity to be generally accepted within the community as a whole. As we all know, the landscape has shifted fairly drastically over the last 20-30 years, and we have seen more and more folks drift away from being involved with and engaged in the life of the church. We are in a moment in which the church’s learning is about learning how to be in conversation with our neighbors in order that we can host courageous, learning moments within our parish. 

In his book The Agile Church, Episcopal priest and theologian Dwight Zscheile helps us to lean a bit more into what it means to be an agile church that is hungry to follow the Spirit into innovations that allow us to share the Gospel with even more people in our surrounding neighborhoods. Of course, we also need to recognize that when we enter into learning conversations we also are inviting change in the life of our parish. Perhaps by its very nature, change is something that makes us feel vulnerable if for no other reason than change can bring with it loss. 

Zscheile helps us to move along the path of becoming a learning community as an act of discipleship and of following Jesus. He writes, “To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a student, learner, or apprentice in a community of mutual growth in love. It means collaborating together, using all the spiritual gifts which God has equipped us. It also involves mutual support, accountability, and encouragement.” (Zscheile, 10) 

All of this leads us to a new change that we are making with our worship schedule beginning the Sunday after Pentecost. We tried an experiment with moving our formation programs to between the services. We learned that for our families it is better for us to have formation after our main worship service. We could not have had that learning without trying a new pattern and without risking something in the process. 

Thus, beginning on Sunday, June 12, 2022, we will move our Choral Eucharist from 10:30AM to 10:00AM. Our full summer worship schedule will be:

8:00AM - Contemplative Holy Eucharist

9:00AM - Coffee and Conversation

10:00AM - Choral Holy Eucharist

11:00AM - Coffee, Conversation, and Formation

As we move forward together in this journey of faith, we will continue to be invited by the Spirit to try new experiments and to get out into the neighborhoods with listening hearts, eyes, and ears. We will continue to learn and to be invited to change for the sake of the Gospel. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we will have to reckon with our encounter with the risen Christ and how Christ is encouraging us in our own discipleship by being a place of mutual support, accountability, and encouragement. 

In Christ,

Hunter+