'Mission' Tagged Posts
A Mission of Reconciliation and Healing
Last weekend, our diocese met in its annual convention, and we considered the mission plan for the diocese, creating a new relationship with the Diocese of Western Mexico, and a change to the constitution of our diocese that clarifies who are considered clergy on the Standing Committee. We listened to a keynote address on human impact within creation and hosted conversations on ways forward that extend out from our faith in Christ Jesus. In all of the topics that were…
Visible Signs of Inward & Spiritual Grace
It had been nearly seven months. While this would not normally qualify as a long stretch of time in most cases, it has felt like an eternity. It is the amount of time that had passed between our celebrations of the Holy Eucharist at Church of the Epiphany. In seven months, I, as a priest in the church, had not touched a communion wafer, said the Eucharistic prayer, or gathered around Christ’s table with others in order to receive the…
Faith Seeking Understanding: Small Experiments; Big Learning
Over the last year, the vestry was reading a book by Episcopal priest and theologian Dwight Zscheile titled The Agile Church. In his book, Zscheile walks church leaders through a way of becoming more agile in mission and to learn and grow in discipleship precisely because of our willingness to become more agile in what we do as church. In one chapter of his book, Zscheile discusses taking on small experiments to learn new things about the people around your…
Murmurations of the Spirit: Learning from Starlings
Over the last week, I had the chance, the good fortune really, to attend a Zoom call that is on my calendar every week but that I have rarely had the opportunity to join. It is a call filled with innovative and creative thinkers in the church that are wrestling with how to follow the Spirit in a moment in which almost nothing has remained stable. The group often considers the role of chaos and order and how those two…
Being Epiphany
On the evening of January 5, we gathered to celebrate our titular feast day. We gathered to celebrate The Epiphany that is recounted in scripture, and we gathered to celebrate the final scene that is almost always associated with the Christmas creche, although it likely was sometime after the birth of Christ that the magi appeared to see the Christ child. We gathered to celebrate the fact that these strangers from a far away land make a journey to Bethlehem…