My dear family in Christ,
 
It is with both great joy, and a little sadness, that I share with you the news that Erin Wolf, our Youth Minister for these past ten years, will be leaving that position this year at the end of December.  While this change is significant both for Erin and for us, it is ultimately cause for much celebration:  Erin has been offered the opportunity to step into a new role at the diocesan level as the first Youth Networking Coordinator.  As she will also continue to serve as diocesan Camp Director, the new position—one created jointly by the dioceses of Fond du Lac and Milwaukee—will be full time.  Obviously, therefore, her accepting the new position means that she cannot continue on part-time with us at All Saints.

You may read the diocesan announcement here.

Erin has been deeply involved in the life, worship, and ministries of All Saints Church for more than a decade.  It is impossible to quantify her impact upon our congregation, her guiding presence in the spiritual, emotional, and social growth of our children (and parents), and her contributions to this parish.  Vestries, priests, and even bishops have come and gone during her tenure with All Saints, and her moving into this next, exciting chapter of her life in professional ministry marks, in many ways, the end of an era for us.  It’s perfectly natural for us to be saddened by such a big change…
 
But y’all, I’ve seen the job description for the position the two dioceses have created, and in my opinion it fits Erin’s particular gifts, abilities, and vocation to a “T”; it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that anyone in her place would be wise to take.  God is at work amongst us here in Wisconsin, and great things are afoot.  Please therefore join me in congratulating Erin on this incredible opportunity, celebrating her generous service to our parish, and rejoicing in what the Lord is doing for, with, and within God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
 
We are blessed to have some time, during this season of Advent, to celebrate Erin’s ministry here with us, to thank her for her service, and to share with her in the joyful anticipation of a brand new chapter that’s about to begin.  Advent, after all, is all about reflection and preparation and gratitude for all that God has given us.  So this is a perfect time to give thanks for what we’ve had and to look expectantly to the good things that are to come.
 
Erin, the words don’t begin to cover it, but THANK YOU!  Between now and the end of the year, we will find additional ways to express our gratitude and our congratulations ~ well done, good and faithful servant!
 
Blessings,
Christopher+ & All Saints Episcopal Church ​

UPDATE TO ALL SAINTS COVID POLICIES as of 5 October 2022
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
Since the beginning of “Corona-tide,” we here at All Saints have taken a cautious and conservative approach to Covid safety policies, and we shall continue to do so, going forward.  The Covid pandemic, after all, is most certainly not over.  At this point, however, rather than setting a single set of policies “in stone,” as it were, we will be using the risk levels assessed by medical experts and published by local, county, and state authorities to determine the particular precautions we will require:
 

1. When the official risk assessment is LOW, masking will be optional for all indoor activities at the church.
   
   
2. If the risk level rises to HIGH, we will at minimum require ALL persons in the building to be masked at all times and to observe strictly the recommended six (6) feet of space in between individuals or household units.  Depending upon how high the numbers get, we might once more have to suspend in-person worship.
   
   
3. Whenever the assessed risk is in between those two extremes, we will look specifically at the numbers for Appleton itself and decide (perhaps as frequently as week by week) how strict our protocols need to be.
   
   
4. Air purifiers will continue to be run during ALL in-person church functions.
   
   
5. AT ALL TIMES, if you experience any symptoms of infection (Covid or otherwise), or if you suspect you might be coming down with something, or especially if there is a chance you might have been exposed to infection, please stay home and take advantage of our online offerings.

 
We remain fully committed to providing as many options and alternatives as possible for folks to engage not only with our worship but also with our community of faith in ways that feel comfortable, welcoming, inclusive, and safe.  And we hope that our online/digital ministries will continue to grow and expand, even as we (also hopefully) continue to open up more and more fully for in-person gatherings.
 
If you have any questions or concerns about these adjustments to our policies, please contact me via phone (920-266-9262) or email, or through the church office ~ I will be more than happy to converse with you, and I most certainly want to hear your thoughts as we work together to chart a way forward for All Saints Episcopal Church.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
For the past several months, I’ve been asking you to support your Vestry and me with your continued prayers as we’ve set about the work of envisioning the future (both in the short term, and the long term) of our parish community, and of discerning what God is calling us to do … and more particularly, who God is calling us to be.
 
I invited the Vestry into this process last spring with the questions:
 

• What is “church” to you?
• What is “church” for you?
• What is “church” without you?

 
It was a very useful way to start, it turns out, because we couldn’t really even begin visioning any future for All Saints until we first confronted all of the needs, desires, expectations, and even fears that each of us brings to the table when we start talking about “our” church.
 
Of course, it isn’t our church at all; it is and ever has been God’s Church, and we are blessed and privileged to be invited and called to participate in the work that God is doing through God’s Church.  Even so, every community, every organization, every group of people, whether secular or sacred, has its own unique collective identity, its own traits and characteristics, its own gifts and strengths, its own mission and purpose.
 
Much of our discernment work this summer, then, has focused on exploring who we have been, as a worshipping community, who we are now, and who God is calling us to be, moving forward. 
 
In this so-called “post-Christian” age of our society, it is no longer viable simply to be “that church downtown.”  (For one thing, here in Appleton, we’re “just one of those churches downtown”!)  People no longer attend church merely because “that’s what ya do on a Sunday.”  These days, if folks are going to make the effort to get out and be part of a church community, they want a community whose faith, whose perspective, whose way of being and doing “church” speaks specifically to who they are and what they need.  People “shop” for a church home as carefully as they do for a physical home to buy.  They want to know what is unique and special about us, what sets us apart and distinguishes us from other church communities in the area, and thus what it would mean for them, in their lives, to become part of our parish family.
 
Gone are the days when simply being an Episcopal Church was enough to answer those questions.  How, in what specific, concrete ways, does All Saints embody and express and celebrate and live out our understanding of the Christian faith in the Episcopal tradition as part of the worldwide Anglican Communion?
 
Toward that end, the Vestry and I have discerned three factors, three particular expressions of identity, that we believe God is calling All Saints to embody, that we believe will best express our unique identity as a worship community, and that will speak clearly and concretely to the specific gifts that All Saints has to offer the people of Appleton and the Fox Valley.  Here is what we believe All Saints ought to strive to be:
 
* Theologically orthodox.  We should be a church community that boldly proclaims Jesus Christ and the Salvation he brings through his life, death, and resurrection.  We should be a people of faith who can say the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds without having to cross our fingers behind our backs.  We need not be in uniform agreement about every little detail of the Christian faith—as Anglicans (see below), we should always welcome a range of doctrinal perspectives and interpretations; the basic, foundational tenets of the Christian faith and the Apostolic Tradition, however, we should not be ashamed to proclaim.
 
* Unapologetically Anglican/Episcopal.  We should be a worshipping community that celebrates the liturgies, traditions, and practices of the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion, being informed and formed by the Book of Common Prayer, with the Sacraments at the heart of our corporate worship.  Sacramental worship and Common Prayer have always been the hallmarks of Anglican Christianity, and we should enthusiastically embrace that identity.  That does not mean, of course, that we all must be “high church ritualists,” or that we have to have incense at every service (I mean Easter & Christmas would be nice, but … J).  It simply means that we should lift up our liturgical styles of worship as very positive aspects of who we are, offering an alternative to other styles and formats of worship out there in the larger community.
 
*  Unequivocally welcoming, inclusive, and affirming.  We should be a parish community that really means it when we say "The Episcopal Church welcomes you," whoever “you” are.  That means being not only a truly safe, but also a truly inviting place for everyone, regardless of politics, race, economic and/or social status, etc.  And it especially and particularly means being openly inclusive and affirming of LGBTQA+ folks (and making that official by following the diocesan procedure for doing so, and then including our identity as an affirming church in our parish communications, our website, our “branding”).
 
Friends, my personal thinking on these three points of identity is multi-layered.  Primarily, I believe that the above breakdown is pretty much required of us by Scripture, Tradition, and Reason as we have received the Faith from the Bible, from our Lord Jesus Christ, and from the Episcopal Church to which we belong.  But beyond that, it's a question of finding and renewing and sustaining a source of vitality for our parish, which in my view requires us to develop a clear, concrete, and unambiguous understanding of who we are.
 
Of immediate importance, of course, is our need not only to revitalize but also actually to grow this parish, drawing in people from the community even as we find more ways to serve the needs of the community around us.  Living into the identity outlined above will, I truly believe, position us incredibly well to be attractive to, and of the greatest service to, the people of this area.  If someone is truly seeking to know Jesus, and is yearning not for a mass-media, info-tainment approach to church but rather for an ancient, deeply rooted faith, with Mystery, ritual, and sacraments going back thousands of years, and is also looking for an inclusive and affirming community ... where in the Fox Valley can they go?  My sense is that folks can have one or the other:  either traditional, sacramental worship OR inclusion and affirmation.  All Saints is uniquely positioned to be able to offer both to all.  I fully believe that God is calling us to do just that.
 
But we have a lot of work to do to process such a vision and to discern our way forward in response to God’s call.
 
To that end, we’re going to spend time together studying Scripture, exploring our Episcopal/Anglican theology, sharing all of our individual perspectives, beliefs, views, needs, concerns, fears, expectations, etc., reinforcing our deep connections with each other in Christ, and building new relationships as we move towards the future together.  Look for information to go out in the weeks to come inviting you all to participate in a series of small-group gatherings, which is how we will begin this exciting process.  It is my personal goal to make sure that everyone feels welcome, everyone feels safe, everyone feels heard and valued, and everyone is a vital and valued part of this covenant community, this portion of the Body of Christ in Appleton.  Some of these small groups will meet in person; others will meet via Zoom, so that everyone really does have a chance to participate and to feel safe doing so.
 
If you have any thoughts, concerns, hopes, and/or fears about this next part of our journey together in Christ, please reach out to me by phone or email (or after a service), and let’s connect and explore what’s on your mind and on your heart.  My friends, I am truly looking forward to this next chapter in our lives together.  I am deeply grateful for your prayers and your support, and for the privilege of getting to be part of your parish family.  And I am in awe of the faithfulness, diligence, intelligence, and wisdom of your Vestry ~ they are, individually and collectively, an outstanding group of leaders.  Please continue to keep them, and me, and All Saints Church in your ongoing prayers.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE? … continued
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
As we continue our exploration of our Episcopal Catechism (which begins on page 845 in the Book of Common Prayer), we come to a point that might seem a bit unexpected.  In the preceding section, our Catechism introduced us to God the Father, the First Person of the indivisible Holy Trinity, and gave us some insight into the nature of the God who made us.  We also looked at what the nature of our Creator implies about the cosmos and about us as God’s creations.  Having introduced the concept of God as trinity in unity and unity in trinity, and having spoken specifically about the First Person of the Trinity, we might expect to turn next to the Second Person of the Trinity, yes?
 
Our Catechism, however, now turns in a different direction to address the idea of covenant.  If we take a look back at the last question and answer from the previous section, we can understand the need for this change of direction:
 
            Q.        How was this revelation [regarding the nature of God] handed down to us?
            A.        This revelation was handed down to us through a community
                        created by a covenant with God.
 
We know what we know about God because God has revealed Godself to us, not just individually but collectively, as a community.  And “community” here is defined in a very specific way; it does not refer merely to a random assembly of human beings, lumped together.  No, this community is one that has been created by means of God’s entering into a covenant relationship with the community of God’s people.  Implicit in this definition is that one of the purposes—perhaps even the primary purpose—for which our community exists in the first place is to receive, preserve, and pass on to future generations the revelation of God to God’s people.
 
That is no small responsibility!
 
And the authors of our Catechism rightly recognized that, before we go any further, we need to be clear about what a covenant community actually is.  To do that, we must understand what is meant by the term “covenant,” of course.  From there, we will examine the original covenant God made with God’s people and what God has revealed about God’s will for us as God’s covenant community.
 
Take note of the way our Catechism defines “covenant.”  All too often in our contemporary world, we mistakenly think of a covenant as being essentially a contract.  But a contract is a formal agreement between two or more parties that are, for all intents and purposes, more or less equal in power, status, authority, etc.  But a covenant is not like that.  The parties involved in a covenant are not equal, and they do not enter into the agreement from anything resembling a “level playing field.” 
 
It can be uncomfortable in our tradition to focus on the notion of power (I suspect because many of us have seen the ways in which unscrupulous people have, for centuries, misused and abused religious authority to exercise worldly power over others in extremely destructive ways).  But when it comes to our relationship with God, we cannot ever forget that “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” all belong exclusively to God and God alone.  Any view that contradicts or undercuts that principle is, essentially, idolatry.
 
The Old Covenant
 
Q.        What is meant by a covenant with God?
A.        A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a
            body of people responds in faith.
             
Q.        What is the Old Covenant?
A.        The Old Covenant is the one given by God to the
            Hebrew people.
             
Q.        What did God promise them?
A.        God promised that they would be his people to bring
            all the nations of the world to him.
             
Q.        What response did God require from the chosen people?
A.        God required the chosen people to be faithful; to love
            justice, to do mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.
             
Q.        Where is this Old Covenant to be found?
A.        The covenant with the Hebrew people is to be found in
            the books which we call the Old Testament.
             
Q.        Where in the Old Testament is God's will for us shown
            most clearly?
A.        God's will for us is shown most clearly in the Ten
            Commandments.
 
The Ten Commandments
 
Q.        What are the Ten Commandments?
A.        The Ten Commandments are the laws given to Moses and the people of Israel.
             
Q.        What do we learn from these commandments?
A.        We learn two things: our duty to God, and our duty to our neighbors.
             
Q.        What is our duty to God?
A.        Our duty is to believe and trust in God;
            I           To love and obey God and to bring others to know him;
            II         To put nothing in the place of God;
            III        To show God respect in thought, word, and deed;
            IV        And to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God's ways.
 
Q.        What is our duty to our neighbors?
A.        Our duty to our neighbors is to love them as ourselves, and to do to other people as we wish them to do to us;
            V         To love, honor, and help our parents and family; to honor those in authority, and to meet their just demands;
            VI        To show respect for the life God has given us; to work and pray for peace; to bear no malice, prejudice, or hatred in our hearts; and to be kind to all the creatures of God;
            VII      To use our bodily desires as God intended;
            VIII     To be honest and fair in our dealings; to seek justice, freedom, and the necessities of life for all people; and to use our talents and possessions as ones who must answer for them to God;
            IX        To speak the truth, and not to mislead others by our silence;
            X         To resist temptations to envy, greed, and jealousy; to rejoice in other people's gifts and graces; and to do our duty for the love of God, who has called us into fellowship with him.
             
Q.        What is the purpose of the Ten Commandments?
A.        The Ten Commandments were given to define our relationship with God and our             neighbors.
             
Q.        Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful at all?
A.        Since we do not fully obey them, we see more clearly our sin and our need for             redemption.
 
It has been said that righteousness can be defined as being in right relationship with God, and that justice can be defined as being in right relationship with one another.  The original Covenant that God established with God’s people was never intended to be restrictive, punitive, or burdensome in any way.  We often fall into the trap of thinking otherwise, I suspect because we project our own, human ideas about law (and our often painful experiences with human examples of law enforcement) onto our conception and perception of God and God’s law.
 
But we must remember that the law was given to us by God as a precious gift, a gift designed by God to enable and empower us to live together in community lives that are truly free, healthy, whole, holy, and filled with abundance.  Indeed, measured against that standard, it is frighteningly easy to see where we, as individuals and especially as communities, sin and fall short of the glory of God.  We shall take a closer look at our sinfulness and our need for redemption next time.
 
As always, if this column sparks any questions, concerns, ideas, curiosities, or any other kind of response in your hearts and minds, please reach out to me via email or phone—let’s talk about it!  And if you’d like to explore these things in a safe and engaging group setting, please consider joining our Faith Talk formation series on Thursdays on Zoom.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE? Continued…
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
Continuing our journey through our Episcopal Catechism (which begins on page 845 of the Book of Common Prayer), we move from human nature to the nature of the divine ~ the nature of God.  As Christians, we (the Church) believe that there is one God whose nature we understand to be triune (three-fold).  We speak, thus, of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit … yet we are not polytheists but monotheists.  In keeping with the ancient Councils of the Universal Church (the Church before the split between East and West) which gave us the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, we affirm one, single God, existing as an eternal Trinity.  In the words of the Athanasian Creed (the third creed in our BCP, found in the “Historical Documents” section):  “. . . we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance (p. 864).
 
A few thoughts on gendered language, before we proceed further:  the Catechism refers to the Persons of the Holy Trinity using the traditional terminology that derives directly from the Bible and has been established by centuries of use in Christian worship and practice.  This usage may well be problematic for some Christians in the modern era; along with centuries of tradition, women have also experienced centuries of exclusion, exploitation, and abuse at the hands of men empowered by patriarchal power structures in many cultures where Christianity took hold ~ and often the Church itself has been the patriarchal power structure that enabled and even encouraged such toxic behavior.  These historical facts must be acknowledged.  Not everyone, moreover, has had positive, nurturing, healthy experience with human fathers in this mortal life, and that fact absolutely affects the impact of the term “father” in a religious context, no matter how hard we try to separate theology from individual experiences.
 
We ought also to acknowledge the numerous examples in both Testaments of the Bible of feminine language, imagery, and terminology used for, of, and about God.  Jesus even paints a picture of himself as a “mother hen,” spreading her wings over Jerusalem to gather God’s people to “her breast” like a “brood.”  It’s important, likewise, to note that the Church Fathers and Mothers were adamant, in antiquity, that the use of the term “Father” for the First Person of the Trinity must only be understood in its relational sense, and that in no wise could any concept of gender be applied or ascribed to God.  Lastly, our Lord Jesus Christ repeatedly refers to God as his “Father” (abba, in Aramaic; ho pater, in Greek).  So whilst we have rich, biblical material from which to expand our vocabulary for talking about (and praying to) God, we can’t really ever get fully away from the so-called traditional terminology, either.
 
That said, our Catechism introduces us to the First Person of the One, Undivided Godhead thus:
 
God the Father
 
Q.        What do we learn about God as creator from the
            revelation to Israel?
A.        We learn that there is one God, the Father Almighty,
            creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and
            unseen.
             
Q.        What does this mean?
A.        This means that the universe is good, that it is the work of
            a single loving God who creates, sustains, and directs it.
             
Q.        What does this mean about our place in the universe?
A.        It means that the world belongs to its creator; and that
            we are called to enjoy it and to care for it in accordance
            with God's purposes.
             
Q.        What does this mean about human life?
A.        It means that all people are worthy of respect and
            honor, because all are created in the image of God, and
            all can respond to the love of God.
             
Q.        How was this revelation handed down to us?
A.        This revelation was handed down to us through a community
            created by a covenant with God.
 
Notice that there is a subtle but extremely significant point that is implied, rather than stated outright, in the first question and answer.  The section is labeled with the heading “God the Father,” but the first question asks “What do we learn about God as creator …?”  The substitution of “creator” for “father” might seem like mere poetic license; it might even seem like an error of sloppiness.  But I contend that it is actually telling us something important about the First Person of the Holy Trinity:  namely that “father,” in this usage, primarily means “creator.” 
 
That is not at all to say that the act of creating is solely or even primarily the provenance of the male gender (an absurd proposition!).  It is, rather, to say again that the emphasis we are supposed to take from the term, and thus to associate with the First Person of the Trinity, is the nature of God as Creator, and the Will and Love and Intelligence by which and through which and because of which all of Creation comes into being and has reality and existence.
 
We also learn from the first question and answer that we have this understanding of God because it was revealed by God directly to the people of Israel (into whose family we as Christians are adopted through the sacrament of Holy Baptism).  Our understanding of God, then, comes not only from our own thinking and theorizing, our own attempts at theology and/or philosophy, but also (and primarily) from direct revelation as experienced by people just like us:  God revealed Godself to God’s people.
 
The revelation to Israel makes it clear that God created not only the entire Cosmos, but humanity in particular, out of sheer love.  In that act of loving creation and even more loving sustaining, by which God made all things and keeps them (and us) in existence, we discover the basis for a proper understanding of who and what we are, and of our proper relationship to God, to God’s Creation, and to each other.
Lastly, from this section of the Catechism, we learn that this ancient revelation has come down to us through the medium of community.  It is in community that we first learn about God, and it is through community that we continue to experience God’s presence, grace, and power.  That is not, of course, to deny that each of us individually has a personal relationship with our Creator ~ obviously, we do.  But we do not experience God, relate to and with God, worship God, serve God, or seek after God alone, in the isolated vacuum of our own, individual, subjective experiences.  We do all of those things as individuals living together in community.  Our individual experiences inform and shape the community, and the community in turn informs and shapes our individual spiritual lives and journeys.  In the Christian tradition (and in the Jewish tradition out of which Christianity arose), it has ever been so.
 
God created community in order for us to receive, and then to guard, preserve, and transmit to future generations, God’s revelation of Godself.  The very nature of God as revealed to us therefore calls us again and again into loving community with God and with each other.  And the way that God does these things is through covenanting with us.  What is a covenant?  Excellent question ~ one that we’ll take up next time!
 
As always, if this column sparks any questions, concerns, ideas, curiosities, or any other kind of response in your hearts and minds, please reach out to me via email or phone—let’s talk about it!  And if you’d like to explore these things in a safe and engaging group setting, please consider joining our Faith Talk formation series on Thursdays on Zoom.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

The Episcopal Church, as part of the Anglican Communion and tradition, has historically emphasized our common worship as one of our most important defining characteristics.  We do not, as a rule, require people to sign their names and give their formal assent to a long list of doctrinal statements in order to join our Church.  Rather, we invite everyone to come pray and worship with us, for we pray our beliefs.
 
But that raises a crucial question:  what exactly do we believe? 
 
It is fairly well known that, generally speaking, if you ask five Episcopalians to give their views on a particular theological topic, you’ll likely get seven or eight different answers.  In many ways, that is a great strength of our tradition—we create room and space, within our fellowship, for a range of perspectives, interpretations, and beliefs.
 
We have, over the years, focused so much on the idea that Anglicanism is a “big tent” that it sometimes surprises people, both inside and outside of The Episcopal Church, to discover that there are a few specific things that the Church claims and believes and teaches as being true.  Although it’s not necessarily our defining characteristic, we do have doctrines; we even have a small handful of dogmas.  The dogmas are pretty basic—Christianity 101, if you will.  (There is one God known to us in Three Persons; Jesus Christ is God’s only Son, both fully human and fully divine; Jesus became incarnate in the flesh, lived and died as one of us, and was raised from the dead to save us and make atonement for our sins … basically the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds—that’s our dogma.)
 
Our doctrines are only slightly more involved.  In many ways, our doctrines are simply interpretations of and commentaries on the Creeds.  The Creeds are the distilled statements of what we believe; the Catechism explains how we hold, understand, and practice those beliefs.
 
For the next several months, we’ll be taking a look at the various parts of the Catechism in order to explore what it is we, as a Church, actually believe.  With that goal in mind, let’s begin at the beginning.
 

From An Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism (BCP 845 ff)
 
Human Nature
 
Q.        What are we by nature?
A.        We are part of God's creation, made in the image of
God.
             
Q.        What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
A.        It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to
            create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation
            and with God.
             
Q.        Why then do we live apart from God and out of
            harmony with creation?
A.        From the beginning, human beings have misused their
            freedom and made wrong choices.
             
Q.        Why do we not use our freedom as we should?
A.        Because we rebel against God, and we put ourselves in
            the place of God.
             
Q,        What help is there for us?
A.        Our help is in God.
             
Q.        How did God first help us?
A.        God first helped us by revealing himself and his will,
            through nature and history, through many seers and
            saints, and especially the prophets of Israel.
 

This first section of our catechism might seem a bit out of order.  Why are we talking about human beings before we talk about God?  But upon reflection, I think it makes the most sense to start here.  How can we talk about our faith if we don’t first figure out who we are?  Or, as Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3:  if I’ve told you about earthly things and you don’t understand, how can I tell you about heavenly things?
 
So we begin by asking that most primordial of questions:  who are we?  And the most immediate answer is that we are creatures (creations) of God, not only part of God’s entire Creation but also especially created “in God’s image.”
 
As the outline goes on to explain, that doesn’t mean that we look like God (ceilings of certain Italian chapels notwithstanding!).  Being made in God’s image has little to do with appearance, because we’re not talking about something so superficial.  We’re talking about nature, or better yet, essence.  Who and what are we, on the inside?  It is inside, in our essential natures, that we bear the stamp and imprint of our Creator.  As the outline says, it is the fact that our natures reflect and bear the image of God’s nature that we are able to love, to be creative, to use reason.  Perhaps most importantly, because our natures are images of God’s nature, we do have the capacity to live in harmony with God and each other.
 
Why don’t we, then?
 
The Catechism says that we have misused our freedom and made wrong choices.  But that is, I think, the result, rather than the cause.  What this part of the outline is telling us is that, as part of the inherent nature God gave us in creating us, we bear the gift and the curse of free will.  This trait distinguishes humanity from the rest of the created order that we can observe.  We are not animals, merely acting on instinct; we are not plants, growing according to environmental conditions; we are not minerals or chemical compounds, reacting mindless according to the laws of physics and chemistry.  We have the capacity to love … but we don’t have to.  We can create … but what we choose to create is up to us.  We can choose to live in harmony … or we can choose to live in strife, conflict, and disharmony.  And for so much of human history, we’ve chosen the latter.
 
The last part of this first section of the Catechism offers us hope in the face of that history.  God, our Creator, is neither neutral nor ambivalent towards God’s wayward creations.  God loves us—always has, and always will.  So God has never left us orphaned, has never merely abandoned us to our bad choices.  God yearns after us and sends us help, specifically in the forms named in the outline.
 
And that tells us something about the nature of God.  Which is a good segue, because that’s the part of the Catechism we’ll be exploring next time!
 
As always, if this column sparks any questions, concerns, ideas, curiosities, or any other kind of response in your hearts and minds, please reach out to me via email or phone—let’s talk about it!  And if you’d like to explore these things in a safe and engaging group setting, please consider joining our Faith Talk formation series on Thursdays on Zoom.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Last Sunday, I announced that we’d be making an adjustment to weekly practice:  namely, that instead of alternating between using Rite I for both services one week and using Rite II for both services the next week, for the next little bit we’ll be using Rite I consistently for the 8:30 service and Rite II consistently for the 10:30 service.  At the time, I did not provide any additional information about this change, so I’d like to correct that omission now and let y’all know “what’s up.”
 
The decision to make this change had come from our brand new Worship Support Ministry Team, which had just met the previous Thursday.  I wanted to update folks on the activities of this new ministry team as quickly as possible, partly to keep everyone informed, but also because we’ve been working hard to put together all of the various ministry teams I pitched  the parish back in January at our Annual Meeting.  So I wanted y’all to know about the progress we’re making towards getting these new ministry teams up and running.  Worship Support had a productive and engaging initial meeting, and I think the work of this team will be good for us in both the short and the long term.
 
Unfortunately, the docket for Pentecost Sunday was already overfilled not only with announcements, but with music and liturgy and a sermon that probably went on a little too long as it was, and a very important pause to recognize the gifts and extraordinary contributions of Matt K. and Carol J. to our music ministry and to the overall quality of our worship, as we’ve worked to recover from the worst of the pandemic shutdown.  I didn’t go into any detail about the liturgical change because I was trying desperately to get everything in that needed to be gotten in ~ it was already a long service, and I didn't perceive that there was time for an in-depth explanation for the change, beyond mentioning that what we had been doing (alternating between both rites) was "experimental" from the beginning, and that there was an established practice of different rites for each service on Sunday, going back to  before I got here.
 
So, that raises the questions:  why make this change?  What’s the reasoning behind it?  And is Fr. Christopher trying to blame the new ministry team, in case the change is unpopular? :p
 
Well, no, to that last.  To be clear, the responsibility and ultimately the blame for any aspect of our liturgy and worship must fall on me and me alone.  According to the canons of the diocese (and of TEC), the rector or priest-in-charge is the “chief liturgist of the parish” and is the arbiter and overseer of all worship services within the parish.  But even more to the point, I was the one who suggested the ministry team consider making this change.
 
So much for blame; what about the thought process behind the change?
 
There are several reasons for now experimenting (and this next phase will be every bit as experimental as alternating rites has been) with different rites for different services.  For one, I have received some complaints about using Rite I at 10:30 ... and about using Rite II at 8:30.  It's quite symmetrical, actually:  as soon as I made the previous change, I immediately got complaints.  As soon as I made this change, I immediately got complaints.
 
And that’s perfectly okay in both cases, by the way!  It’s the nature of living in community together with each other.  In both cases, I have to say, the complaints have come from folks who care deeply and passionately not only about their own experiences in worshipping at All Saints, but also and I think even more so about the overall life and health and vitality of this parish (and The Episcopal Church on the whole).  For my part, I find it deeply inspiring to see so many people taking their faith lives, and the faith of their church, so very seriously.  I hope y'all really hear me when I say that, because I mean it with the utmost sincerity.
 
So, yes, I've had complaints in both directions, both founded on solid, valid arguments & rationales.
 
But that's not the only, or even the primary, reason for experimenting now with discrete rites for each service.  One other reason is a concern about accessibility for newcomers who walk in off the street, largely without prior experience with liturgical worship at all, much less the long and rich heritage of the Anglican tradition.  Even in the comparatively short time we've been reopened for in-person worship, we've actually had a number of visitors of just such backgrounds (or lack thereof), for whom this whole way of doing things is very new and strange, even in Rite II.  Add in the beautiful but less-immediately-accessible language of Rite I, and the learning curve becomes steeper.  Most of these visitors (though notably not all) have visited the 10:30 service.
 
There have also been logistical concerns to arise from our experiment with alternating rites.  It's made for more work during the already busy week, in terms of preparing bulletins for each service, because of having to shuffle back & forth between different templates every single week.  Concerns have also been raised about the length of the 10:30 service, when Rite I liturgy is combined with service music, anthems, and hymns.  (I'll add on a personal note that doing two Rite I services back to back does take more stamina on the part of the Celebrant than I'd anticipated, but that was *not* a factor in this decision!  Just something I've noticed.)
 
All that said, please let me offer all of you what I hope will be some assurances...
 
First, as I said on Sunday and as I've said frequently in this letter, this change is just as experimental/temporary as the previous change was.  We, collectively, are learning what works, and what works best, for us as a worshipping community.  And I am still very much learning & getting to know this community, having lost nearly 2.5 years of time that I'd otherwise have spent doing just that.  So, in my mind at least, nothing is etched in stone at this point.  Any change we make must be made and held lightly, seen as experimental, and understood to be subject to further change subsequently.  In other words, this change (no change, really) is "for all time"; rather, it is "for the time being."
 
Second, I still want to integrate the two services more fully ~ or rather, the two communities that organize themselves around the two service times.  My sense is that, before Covid, All Saints had been, in this regard, like many other Episcopal parishes, with two pretty distinct worshipping communities (the Early Folks and the Later Folks), with not a whole lot of overlap or cross-pollination happening between the two Sunday services.  Getting these two groups to integrate a bit more with each other was one of the reasons for alternating rites week to week, to begin with.  I’d be very curious to hear from y’all as to whether, and to what degree if at all, that has happened over the past several months.
 
Third, I'm open to the idea of using Rite I for both services during specific seasons; I understand that that has been a practice here in times past.  While I am reticent to use it for Lent and Advent (I'm aware that that's been done here before, and it's not an uncommon practice in our denomination), I am open to experimenting with that, too.  I say I'm reticent only because I don't believe that Rite I is inherently "more penitential" than Rite II ~ I think that's a misreading of both rites, actually.  (Yes, Rite I has the Prayer of Humble Access, but just look at all that stuff about sin and the need for a Redeemer in Prayers A, B, and C.)  But again, I remain open to experimentation.  Let's see what works, "boots on the ground," yes?
 
Fourth, I have some more or less ambitious notions about what we might eventually be able to do with our Sunday mornings, especially if we do find ways to invite more new folks into our parish community.  I would love, down the road, for instance, to have two full-blown, full-choir, fully-sung services each Sunday ~ one Rite I and one Rite II ~ and not have the Rite I service be relegated to a small, spoken service always.  I think the opportunities that doing so would open up for us would be truly astonishing.  I have some notions about those opportunities and possibilities, but I’ll save them for later columns … I don’t want anyone to get too worried just yet! :)
 
Fifth, as I hope I've made clear with the above, Rite I is NOT going away or being removed from the liturgical practice of All Saints!  Not on my watch.
 
Lastly, I want all of you to know that the full range of Episcopal worship is dearly important to me, and it always will be.  We are the inheritors of a glorious tradition, and I want to ensure that All Saints offers everybody as many ways to connect and engage with, and to experience first hand, our sacred tradition as possible.
 
Yours always in Christ,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Maranatha.        Come, Lord Jesus.
 
Kyrie eléison.      Lord, have mercy.
Christe eléison.    Christ, have mercy.
Kyrie eléison.      Lord, have mercy.
 
Amen.
 
This is not the column I intended to write for our newsletter today.  Then, yesterday, Uvalde happened.
 
What more can we say?  There are no words to name the depths of violence, tragedy, and loss that, once again, darken our world.  That, perhaps, have come to define our world.  It is difficult not to yield to such a conclusion.
 
Once again.  That little phrase multiplies the horror of yesterday’s attack.
 
For we now live in a society ~ and have for some long years now ~ in which, if I were to refer to “the mass shooting at that school,” you would have to ask me to clarify exactly which mass school shooting I was talking about.
 
We have been accustomed for far too long to having to say “In the most recent school shooting…”
 
After the unspeakable horror of the Sandy Hook massacre, things were supposed to change.
 
Nothing has changed.
 
So what more can we say?
 
And yet … we cannot remain silent.  No faithful follower of Jesus Christ can remain silent, inert, passive, in the face of such evil.  But what, then, do we say?  What, then, do we do?
 
Last night, I saw a post on social media in which the commenter was demanding to know “CLERGY WHERE ARE YOU?” [all-caps in the original] and informing all priests and ministry leaders that “WE’RE ALL HURTING,” so “SPEAK TO US AND GIVE  US COMFORT!”
 
Of course, I cannot speak for all clergy and all ministers, but I can tell you where this priest is:  I’m hurting, too.  I’m terrified, also ~ for my own children, and for yours and everyone else’s.  And I’m angry.  I am angry beyond the capacity of the English language to communicate.
 
Nineteen more children slain in Uvalde.  Two more teachers killed.  The worst school shooting since Sandy Hook.  Sandy Hook was supposed to be the turning point.  It was supposed to be the moment when things changed.  When we decided to change things, so that these atrocities stop happening every other week.  (We’ve had, what, upwards of 30 mass shootings thus far this year, alone?)
 
So, yes, I’m angry.  I’m angry that so many other things seem to be so much more important to so many other people in this society than making sure that the scariest thing our children have to face at school is a pop test.  I’m angry that so many people seem to be so willing to throw hands up in the air and say, “Well, what’re ya gonna do?  It is what it is.  It’s not like it’s ever gonna change.”
 
Well, why not?
 
People used to say the same thing about slavery in this country, about Apartheid in South Africa, about the Berlin Wall and the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, etc., etc.  But slavery ended, Apartheid was abolished and destroyed, the Berlin Wall came down.
 
The question isn’t whether or not we can do anything to change this evil.  The question isn’t whether we should ~ we are absolutely obligated and commanded so by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as expressed in our Baptismal Covenant.
 
The question, again, is not whether we can do anything.  The question is:  what are we going to do?

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
Happy Easter, y’all!  The Great Fifty Days continues, and I hope that this Eastertide has brought you all many blessings and at least a little peace in the midst of these continually “interesting” times in which we live.  I hope that you all were able to connect in some way or another with at least some of our Easter liturgies, and that you experienced our shared worship to be as comforting, as rejuvenating, as inspiring as I did.  If so, then ALLELUIA, indeed!
 
It’s “been a minute,” as we say down South, since I had a chance to connect with y’all via this Newsletter column.  My apologies!  The first part of the calendar year, from a church & ministry perspective, always seems to be pretty intense.  We come off the high of the twelve days of Christmas, and we immediately encounter the Feast of the Epiphany.  For us, just after Epiphany comes our annual parish meeting.  From there, it’s never very long until Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season which brings its own particular kind of spiritual intensity to all the other intensities we already have been experiencing.  Then, before you know it, it’s Holy Week, and then Easter, and it hain’t gwine be (oh, excuse me ~ that’s Southern for “it is not going to be”) long at all before we’re at Pentecost and are celebrating the birthday of God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church!
 
Whew!
 
So in the midst of all that ~ not to mention the complex lives we’re all leading and the intricate web of relationships that tie us all together as a parish family ~ it’s good to pause for a moment and reconnect.  And before too long, we will have more tangible ways to do just that.  There’s already a team of folks planning and organizing a renewed coffee hour for Sunday mornings, to be held outdoors to take advantage of the long-awaited change in the weather and allow us to fellowship more safely, even as the Covid pandemic still refuses to set us completely free.  Our Youth Minister, Erin Wolf, is already planning a number of parish events to bring us together over the summer.  And I will continue to expand our mid-week worship offerings, continuing (and growing) our Wednesday evening healing Eucharist and also (very soon) adding a Tuesday morning Eucharist, as well.
 
It’s an exciting time for All Saints.  If you feel the Spirit moving you perhaps to get more directly involved in this renewing and reinvigorating of our parish life, please reach out to me, directly, or contact the church office ~ several existing Ministry Teams would love to have your ideas, energy, enthusiasm, and service … and there are a number of Ministry Teams that don’t exist yet but very much need to!  There are more ways than ever to get involved now, so let’s do it, y’all!  Here’s to a blessed and beautiful summer ahead.
 
Peace & blessings to you all,
C+

My Dear Friends in Christ,
 
Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!
 
Happy Eastertide to you all!
 
Well, I suppose that technically that’s a tad premature.  We’re at the moment in the midst of Holy Week.  Even so, as the bearers of Christ and as the embodiment of two thousand years’ worth of witness to the resurrection of Jesus, we know that the victory is already won!  That it has been won for all time by the One who lived and died and rose again for us.
 
The past few days have offered us a welcome respite from what has been, thus far, a rather windy, chilly, rainy, and ~ just to make sure I don’t forget that it’s Wisconsin ~ snowy springtime.  Bright sun, blue skies, temperate weather … even when the next snow hits, which it is sure to do at least once more before finally receding for spring & summer, I will remember feeling, in a day like this, the promise of new life to come.
 
And it will.  It is absolutely inevitable.  That fact is as true for the changing of the earthly seasons as it is for the eternal promise of God Almighty that, having died with Christ in our baptism, we are raised to new life with him in his resurrection.
 
This time last year, I was reflecting on where we were, as a parish, after “13 months of Coronatide.”  Guess we need to update that to read “the first 13 months of Coronatide,” huh?  I went on to write:  “Indeed, in many ways, it still feels like Lent began in March of 2020 and still hasn’t quite ended.  The pandemic is still with us, and it will take time, perhaps years, to recover fully.  Even then, things will never be quite the same as they were before.”
 
Unfortunately, that observation continues to hit very close to home, even another year further along.
 
But so does the next thing I wrote last year:
 
“And yet …
 
“And yet there is light.  There is hope.”
We’ve come a long way from our first Easter Sunday together, when I packed up my ancient MacBook Pro laptop (vintage 2013 technology!), drove over to the empty church building, set up my computer on a stack of prayer books on the altar, and livestreamed a service of Spiritual Communion in celebration of the holiest day in the Christian year … mainly because I couldn’t stand the thought of trying to livestream anything for Easter from my dining room table at home.  It just didn’t feel right.
 
Truth be told, our celebrations this year may still not feel entirely right.  Covid, after all, is still with us, requiring us to continue to modify our shared worship in order to mitigate as much risk as we can.  But we are together, both online and in person.  We are singing together again, as a congregation.  And, as of Easter, I’m delighted to announce that we will once again have the option of sharing the common cup as part of our celebration of Holy Eucharist.  Yes, the wine is coming back!  Of course, it will be optional ~ no one who is uncomfortable with the small but not non-existent bit of extra risk will need to drink from the cup.  Remember that for nearly two millennia, the Church has understood that the blood is inherent in the flesh, so that to receive only the bread in Communion is to receive Communion fully.  But for those who wish to drink, the cup will be available, at last, this Easter.
 
And so life returns, in ways small and great.  Life in Christ is renewed, rekindled, reborn, as Creation itself is made anew through the Mystery of the Cross, by the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  What that means for All Saints Church, as indeed what it will mean for each one of us in our individual lives and spiritual journeys, will unfold before us over the coming weeks, months, and years.  This time last year, it was difficult for me to imagine that we would be where we are now, this Easter.  I don’t know what awaits us over the next horizon, but I feel renewed and re-energized … and I hope y’all are as eager as I am to see where our Risen Lord will lead us next!
 
Have a happy and most blessed Easter this year, y’all!  God has blessed us richly, for the Lord is risen, indeed.
 
Alleluia!
 
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
As y’all know, with the beginning of Lent this year, we have added a service of Holy Eucharist with healing on Wednesday evenings at 6:30, with an opportunity for anyone who wants to make an individual confession to do so in the hour beforehand.  These services have, thus far, been small, quiet, contemplative, and ~ as far as I can tell ~ especially meaningful to the folks who’ve been able to come out and take part.  Thanks to all of you who’ve helped us get this new worship time going … and for those who haven’t come by yet to check it out, here is your renewed invitation to do so, if you’re able.
 
There has, however, been some confusion about the new service, and so I wanted to offer a few words of clarification in this week’s newsletter, in hopes of clearing things up a bit.
 
So, the question I’ve heard the most over the past few weeks is:  “Why did you replace the Wednesday morning service we used to have with an evening service that the folks who used to come on Wednesday mornings cannot attend?”
 
Well, the short answer is:  “We didn’t.”
 
Please forgive me … I do not in any way intend that answer to sound flippant or dismissive. 
 
But it is important, I think, to be clear that the evening service that we’ve added this Lent was never, ever intended to be a “replacement” for the morning service that we used to hold in the chapel prior to the Covid pandemic and shutdown.  Replacing that service was never, ever the purpose of adding the service we’ve recently added. 
 
The new Lenten service was added because I was going to be here at that time, anyway, in case anyone wanted me to hear a Confession (a wonderful Lenten practice, by the way!), because it wasn’t going to require any extra work from anybody else but me, and because between the ongoing Covid situation, the ongoing strife in our society and in our lives, and the now-ongoing violence and open warfare in our world, a little extra healing during Lent is especially appropriate.  The added benefit of the service time’s coinciding with the in-person weekly meeting of our Youth Group was exactly that ~ an added benefit, ensuring that there are enough adults in the building whilst children are present to satisfy our Safe Church requirements.  Plus, an invitation to Eucharist is an incredible gift to be able to offer to someone who has just been through the Rite of the Reconciliation of a Penitent.
 
Again, there was never the least thought of “replacing” the pre-Covid morning service with an evening one “instead.” 
 
In hindsight, however, it is very easy to understand why a number of folks thought otherwise.  After all, the new services began at the same time that the morning livestream of Spiritual Communion on Wednesdays went away.  But that wasn’t because the one replaced the other.  It was simply because, with the extra time commitment required on Wednesday evenings, I had to let the Wednesday morning livestream service go.  A tough call to make, but when we’ve only got one priest, we sometimes have to make choices like that. 
 
(The best I had been able to tell, not that many people had been tuning in to those Wednesday livestreams ~ although since I stopped doing them, I have had to wonder if perhaps a lot more people were tuning in than were showing up either in the comments or the Facebook metrics that I could see.) 
 
So since I stopped the Spiritual Communion service in the morning at the same time as I started the evening Lenten service, it’s easy to see why it seemed as though the latter was designed to “replace” the former.  It wasn’t ~ I just wasn’t able to do both in the same day. 
 
That was the initial thinking behind the recent schedule changes.  I do sincerely apologize for not doing a better job of sharing all of that information with all of you more clearly and more thoroughly beforehand.  I could have done much better about that ~ and I should have.  It likely would have cut down on some of the confusion.
 
Another objection I’ve heard lately to the Wednesday evening service is that it’s a problem to have the service in the evening because many of the folks who used to attend the previous Wednesday morning service either can’t or don’t go out in the evenings at all.  This objection is also based on the idea that the new evening service was meant to be a replacement for the old morning service, which it wasn’t.  But it also raises a separate point that I think we all ought to think about:
 
There are some folks who are part of our parish family who cannot attend evening services.  We cannot ever forget that fact.  We have to make sure that we make worship available to everybody in the parish, one way or the other.  Let’s not ever forget that fact.
 
But let’s also consider the fact that there are folks who are part of our parish family who cannot attend mid-week services in the morning or at noon.  So we’ve also got to make such worship available to these folks, as well.  We must not forget that fact, either.
 
Now, here’s the really tricky question:  which group is more important to All Saints?
 
Well, “tricky” isn’t really the right word.  I should rather say:  “here’s the trick question…”  Because it is a trick question:  Which group is more important to our parish?  The answer is a resounding “yes!”
 
The goal is, and always has been, to get to a point where we’ve got two mid-week Eucharist services going every week ~ one in the morning and, on a different day, one in the evening.  (And eventually, we will need to arrange to have both of those services livestreamed, as well.)
 
Unfortunately, again with just the one priest here, the process of reopening and moving towards a post-Covid “new normal” (including adding extra services like these) has to be a matter of increments, baby steps, rather than our being able to do everything all at once.  For the reasons I mentioned above, it made sense to add the evening service when we did.  That does not mean that the morning service isn’t important, or that the people who would attend a morning service don’t matter.  Everybody here matters!  As soon as I’m able to add a morning service, we’ll get one up and running.  My hope is to get one going later in the spring or over the summer, so that both services are well established by the time our fall program year gears up to start in September. 
 
So stay tuned for more news and announcements about that in the hopefully-not-too-distant future!  And thank you for everything y’all do to support our shared worship at All Saints.
 
In the meantime, please do continue to contact me directly with any questions, concerns, fears, hopes, delights, or any other sorts of thoughts and feelings you have ~ let me know what’s on your minds and on your hearts.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

What is Church? … to me? … for me? … without me?
 
Recently, the Vestry and I met together on a Saturday for a retreat, the purpose of which was to begin a process of discernment and visioning that will continue throughout this year and beyond.  With a little bit of luck, and a lot of grace from God, All Saints will continue to move towards a post-Covid “new normal,” and now is the time to be asking what that will mean for us as a parish community.  To be asking:  what will All Saints be in the next three years, five years, ten years, twenty years?  And to be listening faithfully and prayerfully for God’s answers to those questions.
 
It’s an exciting time, to be sure!  Especially on the heels of two-plus years of pandemic shutdown, when we’ve had to focus almost exclusively on what we couldn’t do.  And when we’ve had to work so hard just to hold onto the present and preserve as much as we could of our past.  Now, at last, we get to begin looking ahead, towards what’s to come, towards what we might become.  Towards what God has in mind for our future.  Exciting, indeed!
 
Folks, I’m happy to report that your Vestry is dedicated to this discernment process, is motivated by a deep love for God and for All Saints Church and you, its people, and is filled with fantastic ideas and great energy for moving All Saints enthusiastically into the next chapter of our lives together in our shared walk with God.  The whole retreat was incredibly inspiring to me, and I am eager to continue this work of discernment, not only with our Vestry folk, but also with all of you.  I have to say, it feels wonderful to be looking ahead.
 
As a way of bringing us all to a common foundation and starting point, one of the questions
I posed at the retreat was:  “What is church?”  We filled and erased and refilled several chalkboards’ worth of ideas from our brainstorming in response to such a seemingly simple question.  I’m attaching a photo as a small taste of just one tiny piece of those conversations, to give you a sense of what it was like. 
But my main reason for mentioning this part of our retreat to you is to invite you all to explore this same question, both for yourselves individually and also in conversation with your fellow parishioners.  What do you say church is?
 
As the Vestry and I explored that question, we discovered something that I’d like to share with you all.  In asking the question over and over again, we realized that, at different times, we actually heard different questions, even though the words didn’t change.  Sometimes, we heard “What is church … to me?”  Sometimes, it was “What is church … for me?”  And at times, it was even “What is church … without me?”
 
I draw your attention particularly to that last question, because it’s one we absolutely need to face together.  Intellectually, we all realize that growth means change.  Emotionally, however, we usually experience some sense of fear at the prospect of change.  That can be true even if, at the very same time, we also feel excited about the opportunities!
 
This fear can be even more powerful when it comes up in a parish setting.  Why is that?  I suspect it’s because we all, at one time or another, have likely worried about whether or not there is, or there will be, truly a place and a home for us in a shifting and changing parish community.  “I’m all for growth and trying new things,” we might say, “but what about the things that I need from my church, to feed my soul?”
 
It’s a very important question.  One that we need, I believe, to explore together as a church family.  Because we probably will not all answer that question exactly the same way.  That’s perfectly natural ~ we don’t all need exactly the same things.  But we need to be able to name the things we need … and we need to be able to talk about such things with each other (and to feel safe enough in our community to do so).
 
Because on the one hand, if we can’t figure out what we need and what our fellow parishioners need, it’s going to be hard to build a thriving future for our parish where we all feel truly nourished by our shared church.  That would make evangelism tough, because “you can’t share what you don’t have,” and if we’re going to invite people to our church, it would be good to have an uplifting answer when they reply, “But why should I come to your church?”  And on the other hand, if we can and do experience our needs being met here in the abundance of God’s grace, then we will feel freed and empowered to go out and see to the needs of the people in the communities around us ~ which is the work of the Gospel.
 
So, what is church, to you?  What is church, for you?  What do you fear might become church, without you?  And perhaps most importantly, how does church transform you, empower you, equip you, and send you out into the world to seek and serve Christ in others?

UPDATE TO ALL SAINTS COVID POLICIES as of 15 MARCH 2022
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
Little did we know, at this point two years ago, that we had just experienced our last normal week.  It was the middle of March, 2020, when the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic came to Appleton.  In those early days, there were no vaccines and no hope of developing usable vaccines for more than a year, at the soonest.  Between that fact, and the fact that large portions of our society (both within and beyond the Church) openly opposed some or all of the protocols recommended by experts in the science of infectious disease control in order to contain (or at least slow down) the spread of the virus, and given the risks especially to the most vulnerable members of our community (children, the elderly, the chronically ill, the immuno-compromised), the institution of the church had no choice but to take the burden upon itself to craft policies to protect everybody.  We were forced to shut down all in-person worship and gatherings at All Saints, closing our treasured church building for, at the time, the foreseeable future. 
 
To say that doing so was hard would, of course, be the understatement of the decade.
 
But nothing stays the same forever.  On Palm Sunday of 2021, we were able to return to in-person worship, albeit under a number of restrictions and regulations, some set by the Diocese of Fond du Lac, and others that we set for ourselves.  Both the diocese and our local parish have, since the outbreak of the pandemic, sought to be guided in our responses and policies by the best available data and the consensus of the scientific community.  Recently, both the CDC and the Diocesan Task Force on Covid-19 have updated their recommendations.  In response, your Vestry and I have spent the past two weeks in close conversation, exploring whether it might be time for us to revise our policies for All Saints, as well … and, if so, in what ways.
 
Since the beginning of “Corona-tide,” we have taken a cautious and conservative approach to Covid safety policies, and we shall continue to do so, going forward.  The Covid pandemic, after all, is most certainly not over.  At this point, however, I believe we can make the following small adjustments to our Covid protocols.  As of now ~ and for the time being, presuming that current trends in the data continue:
 

1. Masking is required of everyone at all sung/musical services (Sunday 10:30 a.m.).
   
   
2. Congregational singing is now allowed at musical services (Sunday 10:30 a.m.) with masking being required.
   
   
3. Masking is now optional for spoken services (Sunday 8:30 a.m. and Wednesday 6:30 p.m.) with six feet of social distance between household/family units; All Saints will continue to be “mask friendly” and strongly to encourage anyone who wishes to mask to feel comfortable and welcome to do so.
   
   
4. Air purifiers will continue to be run during all in-person church functions.
   
   
5. Masking is still required, for now, for in-person meetings of small groups within the church building.
   
   
6. Maintaining 6+ feet of social distance between household/family units during in-person gatherings is still required.
   
   
7. Extended in-person conversation and fellowship between and/or after services are still at this time strongly discouraged inside the building.
   
   
8. If you experience any symptoms of infection (Covid or otherwise), or if you suspect you might be coming down with something, or especially if there is a chance you might have been exposed to infection, please stay home and take advantage of our online offerings.

 
We are also fully committed to expanding our online/hybrid offerings until we reach the goal of simultaneously live-streaming any and all services that we hold in-person.  In other words, we will work to provide as many options and alternatives as possible for folks to engage not only with our worship but also with our community of faith in ways that feel comfortable, welcoming, inclusive, and safe.
 
Finally, we must continue for now to distribute Communion only in one kind (bread).  At present, the diocese does not allow the sharing of the common cup, so we don’t have any choice on this one for the time being, y’all.
 
Please understand that these policies are, as they always have been, provisional.  As the situation around us continues to change and evolve, we will continue to review our policies and protocols and to make adjustments as new information comes to light.  All Covid protocols are thus temporary and for the present moment; they remain subject to change as needed.  Hopefully, we will continue to be able to expand the ways that we can be together at church, but should the numbers spike again as they did in 2021, we may well have to return to a stricter set of policies again.
 
If you have any questions or concerns about these adjustments to our policies, please contact me via phone or email, or through the church office ~ I will be more than happy to converse with you, and I most certainly want to hear your thoughts as we work together to chart a way forward for All Saints Episcopal Church.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

Continuing my series of messages about ministry teams, in this column I hope to begin providing some slightly more concrete details about what I have in mind.  In the first two installments, my goal was to express the overall concept and to define some important terms, as well as to give a broad, general description of what I think this system of ministry teams can do for our parish.  Today, I invite you to dig in a little deeper with me—below, I have drafted Vision and Mission Statements for teams to oversee each of what I’m calling the “Principal Ministries” of the Church.  The idea here is that a vision statement describes what a particular ministry will (with God’s help) “look like” when it’s fully up and running and functioning in a healthy, sustainable manner; a mission statement, on the other hand, denotes the specific work the team will do in order to bring about that vision.  That said, one more note about Principal Ministries:
 
Principal Ministries ~ To Preach, Teach, Heal, and Make Disciples
 
I am labeling the ministries of worship, Christian formation, pastoral care, and missions as “principal” because these ministries must be first and foremost in priority for us ~ not so much for us as All Saints Episcopal Church, specifically, but for us as baptized Christians.  These ministries comprise the “Gospel imperatives” of preaching, teaching, healing, and making disciples.  They encapsulate and embody the very essence of our baptismal covenant, the disciplined work (i.e., discipleship) to which each and every baptized Christian is called when sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own, forever. 
 
To be clear, these ministries are not things we are commanded to do in order that we be saved.  That is not how grace works!  No, these ministries are the specific ways we are both inwardly compelled and outwardly called to express our overwhelming gratitude for the grace that God has freely given us in baptism.  These four ministry areas, thus, represent the core ~ the very heart and soul ~ of what it means to be Christian.  To the extent that any committed community is actively doing these four things, that community is a church, an assembly of the Body of Christ.  If ever a church ceases to do these things, it ceases to be a church at that point, no matter what other good works it might support.
 
In other words, these are the ministries that are, for the Christian, not negotiable.  These are the “must haves” and “gotta do’s.”  That’s why I’m writing about these four first.  It’s not that other ministries are not extremely important; it’s that these four are foundational, making all the others possible.
 
To help kickstart this process of (re)organizing ourselves along the lines of the ministry team model, I’m proposing the following vision and mission statements for each of our ministry teams.  As a reminder of the difference between the two, a vision statement is oriented towards the future ~ what we would like to see the ministry in question grow into ~ whereas a mission statement seeks to capture what the team in question actually does in the present moment.  Put another way, our vision expresses our hopes and aspirations, while our mission defines our work and activities.
 
WORSHIP
 
Vision:  Worship at All Saints will be a lively, welcoming, engaging, and communal experience of prayer, praise, and sacraments, rooted in the tradition of the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer.
 
Mission:  The Worship Ministry Team shall work with and assist the clergy of All Saints in their work of planning services and of deciding the details of weekly, monthly, and seasonal observances for the shared worship of the parish.
 
CHRISTIAN FORMATION
 
Vision:  Christian formation at All Saints will provide an integrated program of instruction in the Christian faith, across all age groups, as understood in the Anglican tradition and received by The Episcopal Church, including Scripture and catechism as well as Christian discipleship.
 
Mission:  The Christian Formation Ministry Team will work with the clergy and staff of All Saints, under the direction of the rector, to plan and implement Christian education curricula and formation opportunities for the parish, recruit and oversee volunteers for Sunday School and Youth Group classes and events, and foster inter-generational educational and formational activities for the parish.
 
PASTORAL CARE
 
Vision:  Pastoral care at All Saints will embody the healing, nurturing, and nourishing presence of Jesus Christ in the lives of our parishioners in times of joy and celebration as well as in times of loss and suffering, in response to Jesus’s call to “feed my sheep” and to “love one another as I have loved you.”
 
Mission:  The Pastoral Care Ministry Team will coordinate with the rector/clergy of All Saints to discover and assess the pastoral needs of the congregation, to determine appropriate responses to those needs (i.e., to discern opportunities for lay ministry and specific needs for pastoral care from clergy), to implement those responses, and to recruit, train, organize, and oversee volunteer providers of pastoral care within the congregation.
 
MISSIONS
 
Vision:  All Saints Episcopal Church will strive to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ, embodying both within our congregation and in the larger community around us the healing and teaching ministries of Jesus, in order to proclaim the Gospel, to bring others to Christ and make disciples, and to promote truth-telling, justice, and reconciliation amongst everyone.
 
Mission:  The Missions Ministry Team will seek out and create opportunities for evangelism within the parish and especially within the larger community, coordinating All Saints Church’s efforts to proclaim and demonstrate, in word and action, the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Working with the clergy and staff of All Saints, the team will identify and respond to the needs of the community through events, programs, workshops, etc., that call and invite people to new life in Christ.
 
To conclude for today, if you feel any curiosity about or interest in any of these four major ministry areas, please contact the church office or contact me, directly, and let’s talk about it.  We need to recruit members especially for Worship, Christian Formation, and Missions as quickly as we can; Pastoral Care is already up and running, and we need to get the other three going soon, as well.  Remember, no particular expertise is required ~ just a sincere desire to live out your baptismal covenant and to grow in your walk with Jesus Christ.  I look forward to hearing from y’all!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

MORE ABOUT MINISTRY TEAMS
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
In the last newsletter, I began to elaborate on the Ministry Team model for parish organization that I originally pitched to you all at our Annual Meeting in January.  Over the next few newsletter columns, I will continue to expand on the basic concept.  Hopefully, what will come out will offer a clear and at least somewhat coherent proposal for helping our parish to thrive and grow into the future. 
 
In this column, I share with you the overall outline I have in mind for a network of ministry teams at All Saints, along with some explanation of how we might want to organize and prioritize the various teams according to the types of ministries involved.  In future columns, I will offer more details about each individual team, including Vision and Mission statements for each team.
 
But first, one additional bit of explanation about what I’m envisioning these ministry teams will be and how they ought to function:
 
The members of any given ministry team will not necessarily be the same people who are called to perform the duties of the ministry in question.  Rather, the ministry team exists to make sure that a particular ministry of the church gets done.  Sometimes, that might mean the members of the team do some of that work; other times, the team’s job will be to bring specific ministerial or pastoral needs to the priest’s attention; and in other cases, the ministry team may be responsible for recruiting volunteers from the parish (or experts from the larger community outside the parish) to handle a particular task or help with a particular project.  The ministry team is about oversight, management, and coordination; the team is not meant to bear the entire burden for performing its assigned ministry all by itself.
 
 A Proposed Outline of Ministry Teams at All Saints Episcopal Church
 
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore.  Amen.”  (2 Cor. 13:14)
 
I suggest we organize our parish’s ministry teams according to the types of ministries these teams will oversee.  First priority are our Gospel imperatives ~ those ministries which, as a parish in God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, and as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, we must make central to our lives, as they are the very reasons for our existence as a faith community.  These are our Principal Ministries.  In order to be able to maintain those ministries on an ongoing basis, however, we must also provide for a number of supporting ministries ~ I am calling these our Administrative and Organizational Ministries.  In addition to creating a support network for our Principal Ministries, we need also to provide ongoing support for one another as individuals and as a parish family.  I propose we think of these as our Christian Life Ministries.  Here is the arrangement I am proposing:
 
 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ …
 
Principal Ministries ~ To Preach, Teach, Heal, and Make Disciples
 
WORSHIP
 
CHRISTIAN FORMATION
 
PASTORAL CARE
 
MISSIONS
 
 Please note that each of these Principal Ministries corresponds directly to each of the four imperatives from the Prayer for Spiritual Growth that we prayed at our Annual Meeting:  WORSHIP ~ preaching; CHRISTIAN FORMATION ~ teaching; PASTORAL CARE ~ healing; and MISSIONS ~ making disciples.  These are the big ones, folks.  The “must haves” for any group that would call itself a “church.”  These ministries aren’t just good ideas or things to aspire towards; these are the things we have to do because they are rooted in our identity as Christians and baked into our baptismal covenant.
 
… and the love of God …
 
 Administrative & Organizational Ministries ~ For the Good of the Order
 
Vision & Planning
 
Finance & Resources
 
Stewardship
 
Communications
 
All Saints Tech Crew
 
While it would be a bit of a stretch to characterize these ministries as “Gospel imperatives,” a quick glance at the names of these teams makes it apparent that if we don’t provide for these ministries, then we will not be capable of doing the big four Principal Ministries.  If we don’t plan a coherent vision for the parish, if we don’t practice stewardship and diligent custody of the resources God gives us, if we have no reliable way to communicate with each other or the outside world, and ~ especially in this day and age ~ we don’t master and maintain our technology, then we cannot reliably preach, teach, heal, or make disciples.
 
… and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, …
 
 Christian Life Ministries ~ That We Might Have Life and Have it More Abundantly
 
Parish Life & Fellowship
 
Hospitality, Welcome, & Newcomers
 
Community Engagement
 
Discernment & Vocation
 
 Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly.  These ministries have as their purpose the creation and nurturing of a flourishing, abundant life together, both within our parish, and for our parish as part and parcel of the larger community around us.  In the same way that the Administrative and Organizational Ministries are absolutely essential to the healthy functioning of the Principal Ministries, these Christian Life Ministries are absolutely essential to the healthy functioning of both individuals and interrelationships within our church family.  As such, they are particularly important as we look to growing and expanding our church family ~ the most powerful tool in the evangelism toolkit is a vibrant, life-giving, engaged church community.  These ministries are essential to fostering such a community, one that people will want to belong to.
 
That’s it for this installment, folks.  As always, please let me know your thoughts, questions, concerns, and ideas about this approach to parish ministry ~ I want to hear from you!
 
More to come in the next column…
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
At our Annual Meeting this past Sunday, I spoke to you about the importance of putting together small groups called “ministry teams” to organize and oversee the ministries of All Saints Episcopal Church.  For the next several weeks, I hope to use my allotted space in our parish newsletter to expound and expand upon the ideas that I tried to articulate at the Annual Meeting … and to respond to questions, concerns, and interests that y’all may have as we seek to put these concepts into practice.  So, please stay tuned to this newsletter (and other parish communications), and be sure to contact the church office or me, directly, with any comments, questions, suggestions, and/or ideas that come to you as we go along.
 
To begin, you may have noticed I added an extra prayer in to the beginning of our Annual Meeting this year, a prayer for spiritual growth:
 
Gracious Father, we ask spiritual growth for ourselves, our families and friends, and especially for our family of All Saints.  Grant us growth in understanding and willingness to be your Body in this world.  Empower us to live the mission of Christ:  to preach, teach, heal, and make disciples.  In joyful thanksgiving for the blessing of your presence in our lives, compel us to share you with everyone we meet.  May our numbers increase, our commitment deepen, our lives be joyfully yours.  Make us a God-centered people. In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.
 
Personally, I love this prayer.  One of the reasons I love it is that in each and every line, it calls us back to the center of who we are, and whose we are, as Christians.  Each sentence in this prayer reiterates a portion of what we become, and what we promise, when we receive the sacrament of baptism.  And perhaps most importantly, this prayer makes it very clear that spiritual growth is not only something that happens in the mind or even the heart; it is that, but it is also thoroughly tied up in the activities of being the Body of Christ in the world.  Spiritual growth isn’t mere philosophical enlightenment … it is a call to new life that requires the total transformation of the self, making us into more useful servants of God.
 
Now, what does that have to do with this ministry team thing I keep talking about?  Well, I’m glad you asked! : ) But before I answer that question, let me once again see if I can’t explain what a ministry team is, and why it’s different from a committee…
 
What Is a “Ministry Team”?
 Why am I making such a big deal out of using the term “ministry team” instead of “committee”?  What difference does it make?  After all, no matter what we call it, we are talking about small groups of parishioners who volunteer to help do the work and conduct the business of the church.  That pretty much matches the official definition of “committee,” per dictionary.com:  “a person or group of persons elected or appointed to perform some service or function, as to investigate, report on, or act upon a particular matter.”
 
But All Saints is ~ primarily ~ neither an institution nor an organization; whatever else All Saints may be, it is, first and foremost, a church.  Likewise, a ministry team is more than a mere committee, and serving on a ministry team is both more demanding and more rewarding than simply performing some service or function for the institution or organization of All Saints Episcopal Church.  More important than functions or services are the ministries of the people of All Saints.
 
So what is a ministry team, then?  A ministry team is a small group of people who offer their time and energy to make sure that one particular ministry of the parish gets done. 
 
Each team comprises a chairperson (someone to “take point” and get things organized), a Vestry liaison (a member of the Vestry who is a member of the team and so can actively report back to the Vestry on the team’s needs and activities), and three to five team members.  Note that the ministry team is responsible for overseeing that ministry, not necessarily for doing that ministry.  The team identifies the needs related to that ministry, and the team members then recruit folks from the parish to help do the work that needs doing.
 
Now, why is that important, and what does it have to do with spiritual growth?
 
Simple.  All Christians are called at baptism into the role and identity of being ministers and we are charged with the responsibility of ministering to each other and to the world.  As expressed in the Outline of the Faith, or Catechism, found in the Book of Common Prayer:
 
            Q:  Who are the ministers of the Church?
            A:  The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.
            Q:  What is the ministry of the laity?
          A:  The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.  (p. 855)
 
Serving as a member of a ministry team is an outstanding way to live into your baptismal vocation as a lay minister in God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  It is a wonderful way to offer the specific skills and gifts God has given each of us to the use and service of God’s purposes, to respond to God’s invitation to take up your part in the work of establishing God’s kingdom in our part of God’s world.  However mundane a particular task might seem to be, doing that task as a member of a ministry team is a powerful reminder that each of us is not just a volunteer, but a servant … and not just a servant, but a minister, and that our work in the Church ~ no matter the job or service ~ is meant to be sacramental:  an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace with which God has blessed us here at All Saints.
 
Again, the members of any given ministry team are not necessarily the same people who are called to perform the duties of the ministry in question.  Rather, the ministry team exists to make sure that a particular ministry of the church gets done.  Sometimes, that might mean the members of the team do some of that work; other times, the team’s job will be to bring specific ministerial or pastoral needs to the priest’s attention; and in other cases, the ministry team may be responsible for recruiting volunteers from the parish (or experts from the larger community outside the parish) to handle a particular task or help with a particular project.  The ministry team is about oversight, management, and coordination, not bearing the entire burden for performing its assigned ministry all by itself.
 
In this way, a parish organized around ministry teams continually creates new opportunities to invite individual members of the congregation into the hands-on ministries of the church, yes, but also into networks of relationship that keep the people in our parish family actively connected with each other.  As we live out our baptismal covenant together, in community, not only are we more likely to find our prayers for spiritual growth answered, but we are also more likely to find ourselves seeking and serving Christ in each other and our community, to find ourselves in deeper Communion with each other and with our Lord Jesus, and in that way to be ever more deeply conformed to Christ ~ the very definition of discipleship.
 
Words matter, and names are particularly important.  What we call something becomes, often, what that thing is.  So I believe it is important that we leave the term “committee” behind and commit ourselves to organizing our parish into ministry teams whose work will be to oversee and supervise the important ministries that, taken together, define the mission of All Saints Episcopal Church.

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Our Annual Meeting (January 30 @ 2:00 via Zoom) is nearly upon us once again!  An appropriate moment to pause for a bit of reflection and, perhaps, a bit of intention as we get set to move forward into this new year together.
 
One thing I hope to see this year is the formation of a number of new Ministry Teams to manage and steward the important ministries of All Saints.  The stellar work of the longstanding Finance Ministry Team and of the nascent Online Ministry Team have given us examples and models of how this type of parish organization works well both to sustain ongoing ministries and also to respond to new (and unexpected) needs with new and exciting ministries.  The financial challenges of the pandemic have been, as you might imagine, not insignificant, and the fact that we’re entering 2022 is such comparatively good shape is down to remarkable leadership from our Finance Team.  And as for the Online Ministry Team, well, we didn’t have an online ministry when the pandemic hit ~ now we do.  Can I get an “amen”?
 
Our Pastoral Care and Music Ministry Teams are the latest to come together … or rather, to come back together.  Now, Covid has once again, thanks to Omicron, curtailed for the moment our ability to do home visits safely and to sing together as a congregation.  I’m delighted to say, nevertheless, that both these ministry teams are doing remarkable things despite the ongoing pandemic.  The Pastoral Care Team is off to a fantastic start, reaching out to folks in the parish, making sure that I as rector and other church leaders are made aware of people’s pastoral needs, preparing training sessions for lay Eucharistic visitors, rekindling our Stephen Ministry, and revitalizing (or re-starting, in some cases) the kinds of pastoral care that have been a hallmark of this parish community.  And the Music Ministry Team has worked incredibly hard to incorporate both pre-recorded and live, in-person music back into our shared worship in spite of the extreme difficulty imposed by Covid safety protocols.
 
None of that should be surprising, of course.  I’m told that All Saints has a long and wonderful history before my time here of vital and effective teams (“committees” is the term that’s been commonly used in the past).  But a stretch of time without a rector followed by a global pandemic would take a toll on any parish.  Feels like it’s been a few years now of operating in “emergency mode.”  Now that it’s become more or less clear that the pandemic isn’t so much an emergency we’re going to get through as it is simply a newly redefined reality that’s here to stay, we’ve got to shift our orientation a bit.  We still have the (ongoing) emergency to deal with, but we must at the same time get back to the deeper work of laying the foundations for our future.  In short, we’ve got other ministerial needs that must be met.
 
In particular, I’d like to see ministry teams come together to oversee Worship Support, Christian Formation, Missions, Communications, and … something along the lines of Community Engagement or Presence.  (What we really need is a team to focus on marketing and branding, but it often feels distasteful in Episcopal circles to use such terminology when talking about our churches.  It need not be so, however, if we remember that we are commanded by Christ in the Holy Scriptures to go out into the world to spread the Good News ~ to preach, teach, heal, and make disciples.  Hard to do that if nobody out there can see or hear you, y’know?)
 
There’s a lot to do in the coming year.  If you have any questions about or interest in any of the areas I just named ~ or, perhaps more importantly, if you have an idea for a ministry team that All Saints needs ~ please send me an email (fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com) or shoot me a text or voicemail (920.266.9262).  I would LOVE to hear from you!
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
By now many of you have seen the recent recommendations put out by the Wisconsin Council of Churches.  But whether you’ve seen that document or not, you’ve likely been keeping track of current Covid trends, especially in terms of Omicron, the latest variant of the virus that’s been causing infection rates and hospitalizations to spike yet again.  Questions arise (also yet again) about whether we should modify or revise our Covid mitigation protocols and procedures.  With such questions in mind, the Covid Task Force appointed by Bishop Matt in 2020 met again this week.  Here is a summary of where we are at the moment.
 
Both the bishop and the task force agree that decisions about in-person worship, congregational singing, et al., are best handled at the parish level.  Bishop Matt has not at this time issued any further diocese-wide directives.  That said, some parishes are considering returning to all-virtual worship, suspending in-person services until the current spikes in the numbers start to come back down.  Some parishes are not.  Infection rates, death rates, and hospitalization rates are some of the metrics being used to make those decisions; for my part, one metric that weighs very heavily on me is the saturation of our hospitals and healthcare infrastructure.  While it is true that Omicron ~ in most cases ~ does not seem to result in as severe an illness as Delta or earlier strains of Covid, it is also true that, in our area, hospitalization rates are high ~ back up in the summer 2020 ranges.
 
That’s a real problem, because it means that even if you don’t get Covid, you’ll likely run into difficulty gaining access to the medical care you might need for other illnesses and issues.  People’s chemo treatments, for example, have had to be rescheduled, and hospital beds are not available for other emergencies because they’ve been filled by Covid patients.  One of the reasons we shut down in-person worship in the first place was to give our healthcare infrastructure time and space to “catch up” and not be so over-saturated.
 
All that said, I do not believe that we need to shut down in-person worship at All Saints at this time.  The Covid Task Force agrees:  an hour, more or less, of worship ~ as long as we are absolutely diligent about masking and about maintaining at least six feet of social distance between households/family groups ~ is probably not any more risky than anything else that we’re all having to do to get by these days.  Moreover, I believe that the emotional, psychological, and pastoral risks of shutting down and going all-virtual again, after we’d finally gotten back into our beautiful church and after we’ve worked so hard to be able to worship together safely, are equal to or greater than the risks posed by worshipping together for an hour once a week, masked and socially distanced.
 
There is something that we do need to change, however:  we cannot continue to be as lax as we have been before and after each service.  We’re not holding any coffee hour gatherings for fellowship because of Covid … so we’ve slowly developed a habit over the past several months of congregating in the aisles and hallways after church to fellowship, to reconnect, to see each other and to be seen.  My friends, I know how hungry we are for that contact with other human beings, with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  But these are exactly the kinds of activities that contribute the most to the spread of Covid, and Omicron is more highly contagious than anything we’ve seen so far. 
 
So I am going to have to be much more diligent and consistent than I have been, of late, to remind everyone at the end of the service that, as the famous pop/rock song from the ’90s goes, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”  It’s particularly hard now that we’ve gotten into proper Wisconsin winter (that 20 degree stuff weren’t nothin’, am I right?) because we also can’t gather in the parking lots to fellowship there ~ not when it’s 3 degrees or colder outside.  Other than simply holding out till the weather breaks towards spring, I’m not sure what we can do.  But what we cannot do is continue to clump together after the Sunday services and spend another half hour close together, talking and breathing each other’s air.  It breaks my heart, but we can’t keep doing that, y’all.  Not right now, with the numbers being what they are.  We have to love each other by doing our best to keep each other as safe as possible.
 
Otherwise, unless things take a sudden turn for the even-worse, we don’t need to change anything else about what we’re doing.  We will continue to hold two in-person services on Sundays, live-streaming the later service, which will also include limited choir singing (though still no congregational singing just yet) and music.  We will continue to share Communion in one kind (bread only).  As for other business beyond worship, most of our committees and ministry teams ~ including the Vestry ~ have been meeting virtually all this time, anyway, but I strongly encourage all of our church groups to meet via Zoom for the duration.  The more we can keep the foot-traffic in the building down during the week, the better.
 
None of this news, of course, is what we want to hear.  We want to hear that the pandemic is just about over, that a combination of masking, distancing, immunization/vaccination, and other protocols have gotten us through the worst of it, and that any day now, we’ll be able to get back to life as “normal.”  And, two years in, we are weary, weary to the depths of our bones. More than merely tired, it’s an ongoing, constant fatigue that saps a little more of our strength each month, each week, each day.  But we are just not there yet.  So we must endure.  And we will, with God’s continual help.
 
If you have questions or concerns about All Saints’ Covid policies, or if you just need to vent your weariness and frustration with the whole, entire thing, please send me an email or give me a call.  I’m more than glad to listen and talk.  So are your wardens and your Vestry members.  Let us know how you feel and what you’re thinking.  We’ll do the same.  After all, we’re all in this together.  Always have been.  Always will be.
 
Peace & blessings, y’all,
 
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
Our secular calendar has now caught up with our sacred one, so for the second time in as many months, I say to you:  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  And, as I said in my 2021 rector’s report for our last Annual Parish Meeting, WE’RE STILL HERE!
 
I do not mean to be coy; to the contrary, I begin with these two particular observations because I sincerely believe they are worth celebrating, and I wish for us to enter into this new year from a place, from a foundation, of celebration.
 
Because, let’s be honest, 2021 was a tough one, in so many ways.  Especially in its final few weeks.  Many of us, myself certainly included, are still reeling from sudden loss upon sudden loss.  Many of us, as well, are still facing difficult and painful challenges right now and in the months to come.  It’s especially important ~ crucial, even ~ at such times as these that we take time and care to center ourselves in God’s overwhelming love, mercy, grace, and peace.
 
I know.  So very much easier said than done.
 
It might even seem somehow inappropriate to spend time reflecting upon such “abstract” pleasantries, when there is so much pain and hurt, so much loss, so much violence and injustice and evil to deal with here in the “real” world.
 
Well, as fate would have it, even as I was in the midst of composing this message, our good bishop just happened to forward to me some passages of C. S. Lewis’s writings, and this one struck me as especially timely for our world, and for that matter our own parish family:
 
“A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.
 
“It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.
 
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.
 
“The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.
 
“It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
 
“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
 
– from Mere Christianity
 
As with so many of the deep truths of our faith, the point seems at first glance to be counterintuitive, if not outright contradictory.  And yet I believe that Lewis is one hundred percent correct here.  What’s more ~ forget about leaving our mark on history in this mortal life; I would argue that we can scarcely bear the hardships and pains of this life if we do not keep at least one eye focused on the life to come that is promised us in God’s gift of Jesus Christ, and him crucified and resurrected.
 
The Christian hope … in point of fact, the Christian experience as lived by countless generations of the faithful for two millennia … has never consisted in the wishful notion that baptism would somehow magically prevent us from ever again experiencing pain or suffering.  The stories of the martyrs put the lie to that very idea. 
 
No, the Christian hope is never so fanciful or deluded as all that.  Our hope rests in the fact, the concrete reality, that this mortal life, even unto death, is not the sum total of our existence.  This mortal life, for us Christians, can never be the whole story.  And, as Lewis points out, focusing our minds and hearts on the life to come, the reality of God’s heavenly, peaceable kingdom of which we get a taste each time we share the sacrament of Holy Communion together, is not escapism.  For escapism relies on fantasy, on denying or ignoring actual reality.  But for the Christian, life everlasting in God’s kingdom is reality, the ultimate, absolute reality, the foundation of all being.
 
So.  Where does that leave us, here at the brink of a brand new year, still here, living our real lives in the real world, with all the real hurts and real burdens we have to carry?  How do we live our real lives from the belief ~ from the knowledge ~ that the kingdom of God is real and had indeed come near to us in Christ?
 
We should recognize, I think, that our answers to those questions may well change from day to day, or even hour to hour, as the circumstances around us change.  By now, maybe we’re beginning to get used to the fact that reality changes more frequently than we’d like.  What doesn’t change is God’s enduring presence with us, in both our joys and our sorrows, and God’s unfailing, overwhelming love for us, each and every one of us.  Meanwhile, we do what Christians have always done:  we pray; we worship; we love each other; we forgive each other; we do what we can to help carry the burdens of those around us, making the load each one of us must bear just a little lighter.  And we look, and expect to find, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the people in our lives, every single day.
 
I realize that this message tends rather strongly in the direction of abstract language and poetic theology ~ well and good, I think, for the start of a new year.  Subsequent columns will get a little more concrete and specific, as the opportunities arise.  But for now, at this time of beginning, maybe it’s not such a bad thing to lift our minds, our hearts, and our spirits to things eternal, to set aside just briefly the thousand specific, pressing, practical concerns of this particular day and center our souls in the unchanging vastness of a loving God who has wonderfully created, and more wonderfully redeemed, each one of us … to catch a breath of Spirit before we start off again on the next leg of our journey.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
If I remember correctly, I’ve joked with y’all once or twice about the ancient curse that says:  “May you live in interesting times.”  The joke being, of course, that in your average history class, the “interesting” parts of the textbook are the chapters covering dire, cataclysmic events—wars, plagues, famines, the collapse of empires, et al.  Interesting to read about … but not so much from the perspective of anyone who has to live through such times.
 
That latter perspective is better expressed by the protagonist, Frodo, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, when it sinks in that he has been fated to play a critical role in what might actually be the end of the world:  “I wish the ring had never come to me.  I wish that none of this had happened.”
 
The wizard Gandalf—the embodiment of wisdom in the tale—responds to Frodo’s lament with words that might just resonate with us today:  “So do I.  And so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
 
His answer doesn’t solve the problem, of course.  It doesn’t resolve much of anything.  Yet, it does manage to reframe Frodo’s (and our) perspective, and perhaps to reorient our priorities.
 
My friends, I love this parish.  I love being part of it, and I love that God called me and my family here to be among you.  It’s not really possible to express in words the gratitude that I feel that this is the parish I get to serve as your priest.  Your faith, as a Christian community, is so deep, and your grace so freely shared, that it is truly a joy to be here.
 
That said, we have been living in “interesting times” for a long while, now.  As many of you know, I arrived at All Saints on the first of December (Advent 1), 2019, and it felt like I was here for about twenty minutes before Covid hit and the whole world came crashing down.
 
I exaggerate, of course.  A preacher’s prerogative … or at least, a preacher’s typical bad habit.  Even so, the year and a half that I should have—would have—spent visiting with you, sharing meals, enjoying with you the sights & sounds of Appleton, and just generally building relationships, we instead had to spend scrambling, together, to figure out how even to do church at all in the depths of a global pandemic.  Everything had to be re-visioned, re-imagined.  The word “daunting” hardly covers it, yes?
 
But this amazing parish did so much more that merely weather the hardships.  This congregation, from what I saw, basically said:  “Okay, another crisis.  Guess we’d better get on with it.” : )  I cannot tell you how utterly inspiring it has been to watch the way all of you came together in order to make sure that we stayed together as a parish family.  To say “thank you” hardly covers it, indeed.
 
That said, I have to admit that, as inspiring and uplifting as it has been to be with you all through these interesting times, as your brand new rector (can I still say that after almost two years?), I have also found it extremely challenging.  And lately I’ve begun to notice some signs of burnout.  And a burnt-out priest is neither good nor healthy for any congregation.
 
So, despite the fact that it is an absolutely terrible time to do so … and despite the fact that I was only just able, last Sunday, to be back with you after having to quarantine for ten days prior … and at the urging of our Wardens and Vestry (and especially my wife, Anne!) … I have realized that I need to go ahead and take the rest of my allotted vacation time for 2021 now.
 
I will be “gone” for the next two Sundays, as I go on retreat in order to recharge, refresh, and reorient myself in order to be stronger, healthier, and better prepared to serve this wonderful faith community into the new liturgical year.  It had been my hope to do that prior to the start of Advent, but those ten days of Covid lockdown threw a spanner into those works, unfortunately.  As always, in the event of any serious emergency, I will be reachable, and I will not be too far away to get back if anything major happens.  But I’ve hit a point where I just don’t have a whole lot left in the tank, as we say down South. 
 
It is my deep desire—and indeed, at my installation I swore a solemn oath before God and all of you—to serve you as diligently and as faithfully and as fully as I can, offering you everything I’ve got as your priest and rector.  To be able to do that, I need to take this time of retreat and restoration.  My heartfelt thanks to the Wardens and the Vestry leadership of this parish for your support and encouragement in making sure that I do what I need to in order to be healthy and strong for all of you.  And my thanks to all of you, who make All Saints the incredible home that it is for us.  I very much look forward to completing the journey of Advent with you in a couple weeks, and moving together into the blessed season of Christmas.
 
See you soon! 
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,
 
It has been too long since my last column here.  To say that the past couple of months have been “full” would not be to do justice to the reality.  Our incremental process of reopening continues apace, with all the busy-ness that such an undertaking brings.  And particularly in the past few weeks, we have had some extraordinary events in the life of our parish.  Most recently, we held our first real parish-wide celebration together since Covid first shut us down in March of 2020:  we had a formal Celebration of New Ministry, and y’all got yourselves a “new” rector officially installed.
 
So I am writing today to express my deep, abiding, and truly heartfelt thanks to all of you who worked so very hard to make that celebration so amazing.  So many people in this parish stepped up and came together to plan a perfect evening … and then y’all showed up on the day to make sure it actually happened.  It was a phenomenal amount of work with, I think, equally phenomenal results.  Thank you all so very much—on behalf of my family, who were made to feel warmly and fully welcomed here all over again, and on my own behalf.  I am truly delighted that God called me here to become part of your parish family.
 
In the message I sent out before the Installation, I mentioned that this celebration came at a turning point in our lives together.  This parish is no stranger to such turning points, I suspect—at least from the history I’ve learned so far.  So perhaps to call this moment, now, a turning point seems a bit pedestrian … like, “Yes, Father, we know.  Turning point.  We’ve got it.”  But a turning point doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly cataclysmic to be important.  For so long, during Corona-tide, we have reflexively looked over our shoulders to the past.  We’ve had to!  When Covid shut us out of our buildings, we had to figure out how to “do church” in new ways, and one of our main goals (certainly one of my personal goals) was to find a way, during the pandemic, to hold onto as much of what we had, as much of what we’ve always loved about our church, as possible.
 
I remain in awe of the way the people of this parish stepped up to find creative ways to do just that.
 
Now, even though we’re not out of the Covid woods yet, we are at a turning point nonetheless—for now we can begin to focus our attention and our energy not only on what we want to hold onto from the past, but also what we want to do and create and become in the future.  Please do notice that I say “also” and not “instead of.”  Part of the point of being an Episcopal Church is being part of a truly ancient tradition, being the heirs of through Christ of the Truths revealed in Him by God, and having a rich and abundant heritage stretching back thousands of years.  We are not at a “turning point” of throwing any of that away—and with God’s grace and help we never will be!
 
We are, however, at an exciting new point in the life of this particular Episcopal parish:  a point at which we can begin looking ahead to what All Saints will be like in three years, in five, in 15.  We can start to imagine, and then to implement, new programs, new ministries, new connections with the community and city around us … new ways to be more visible in downtown Appleton, and new ways to invite more and more people to share in our life in Christ here at All Saints.
 
So stay tuned for what’s to come!  There’s a lot in the works behind the scenes at the moment, and we’ll be sharing with you some exciting new opportunities very soon.  In the meantime, thank you all once again for welcoming me and my wife and daughters (once again) to this wonderful city, this wonderful community, this wonderful parish family.  We have already been so richly blessed by you all since coming here.  And we look forward to many more amazing years to come!
 
Blessings,
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,

Here is the final (for now) installment of my Spiritual Autobiography.  As I mentioned in the introduction to Part 1, I’ve been sharing these details of my spiritual journey from childhood to priesthood and to All Saints Episcopal Church not (with all due respect to Walt Whitman) to celebrate myself, but in an attempt to begin (at least) to make up for time lost to the Covid-19 pandemic, time we would otherwise have been able to spend getting to know each other and building the close relationships that are so important to the life and health of a thriving parish. 

If anything here has in any way sparked your interest, if you have questions, or if you’d just like to connect and talk about something else entirely, please let me know at fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com, or at 920.266.9262.  I very much look forward to hearing from y’all!

Conclusion:  Okay, that’s my story … but what have I not told you?
Well, honestly, there is so much I haven’t told you, even in a newsletter column comprising eight installments and spanning several months.  (I mean, in light of those facts, you can’t say it’s for lack of trying, right? :) )  There is too much left out and left over to condense into this conclusion; unlike the illustrious Inigo Montoya, I can’t even “sum up.”  Even in all these entries, it seems there just wasn’t time to tell you about my erstwhile attempts to become a 1970s guitar hero, the years that I served on the board of directors for a professional writers association/conference, my time as a newspaper reporter, a lumber/building supply salesman, a burger-slinger, a telemarketer (yikes!).  Indeed, I’ve even left out most of my time teaching freshman English for various colleges—my life for 19 years, if you include the three years that I taught half time whilst pursuing my first master’s degree.

And even of the things that I have shared with you about my spiritual journey, there are so many wonderful, and wonderfully weird, details and detours, dead-ends and do-overs that have gone unmentioned in the telling.  I assure you, that is not because I’m being coy, much less because I feel like there’s anything to hide.  In part, the omissions were down to limits upon time and space—I don’t mean in the cosmic sense of astrophysics, by the way!  The space-time continuum did not warp or in any way interfere with my writing process.  Rather, there was only so much time I could devote to these column entries, and there was only so much space I could justify taking up in the parish newsletter! 

The other reason, though, for leaving out so much of the story, so much of myself, is that, Covid pandemic restrictions aside, I am still very much looking forward to spending time, face to face, in person, with as many of you in this parish as we possibly can in the coming year.  For the moment, it does appear that the rates of infection are once again forcing us to clamp down on gathering together in person, but this circumstance will not last forever (however much it might feel, right now, as if it might)!  So I’d like you all to know that there’s still plenty left for us to discover together, for us to take mutual delight in as we learn each other’s stories and histories and share more of our own.

If you have never attempted to write your own spiritual autobiography, I strongly encourage you all to give it a try.  The underlying process of trying to write out the story of your journey to, and with, God can be enlightening, transforming, even liberating … whether or not you ever create a completed document on paper.  It is a very good way to prepare yourself to make an account of the joy that is in you, something we Christians are admonished and encouraged to be able to do at all times.

At any rate, I eagerly look ahead to any and all opportunities that will arise for me to hear and learn your stories.  I’ve made a bit of a start, with some of you, so far in this first … is it almost two years already?  Wow.  On one hand, the time has flown by; on the other, thanks to Covid, it feels like nearly two decades instead of nearly two years.  In that time, it has been my great privilege to begin getting to know many of you; I enthusiastically look forward to getting to know the rest of you as we work together to make sure All Saints continues to do its part to serve God’s kingdom here in Appleton.

Peace and blessings to you all!
Christopher+

My dear friends in Christ,

Here is the next installment of my Spiritual Autobiography.  As I mentioned in the introduction to Part 1, I’m sharing these details of my spiritual journey from childhood to priesthood and to All Saints Episcopal Church not (with all due respect to Walt Whitman) to celebrate myself, but in an attempt to begin (at least) to make up for time lost to the Covid-19 pandemic, time we would otherwise have been able to spend getting to know each other and building the close relationships that are so important to the life and health of a thriving parish.  If anything here sparks your interest, if you have questions, or if you’d just like to connect and talk about something else entirely, please let me know at fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com, or at 920.266.9262.  I look forward to hearing from y’all!

Discernment Process, Part 5

December of 2012 saw the birth of our second child.  It was an extremely joyous and extremely stressful time, as I went in for back surgery in January of 2013 and was looking at a long recovery, and Anne was suddenly forced to become a single parent with double the number of children under her care (triple, if you include me in the count!).  The situation was only marginally better after my surgery, as I was now facing a fairly lengthy recovery, with regular doses of heavy medication and a number of restrictions that rendered me unable to be much help with the children.  I was forbidden, for example, to lift more than about five pounds’ weight.

Just as bad, I found myself unable to concentrate clearly enough to work on the long-overdue paperwork for the diocese, as the medications kept me in a constant state of light-headedness.  Time seemed determined to continue speeding onward, yet I seemed to be losing any and all momentum in terms of moving my process of discernment forward.  My discernment process felt like a shambles.  How was I to get back on track?

I started back to work teaching at the end of the spring semester, in March of 2013.  Adjusting to the workload post-surgery was not easy, and it was April of that year before I finally got all of the necessary forms, tests, applications, explications, and documentation completed and submitted to the diocesan office in Columbia.  With my profuse apologies for the delays included.

Over the summer, I had a follow-up meeting with the Commission on Ministry that, in hindsight, did not go nearly as well as I’d hoped—or as I had thought it did at the time.  The impressions of the committee members seemed, from the feedback I later received, quite different from the impressions I had thought I was giving off during the meeting.  In the moment, I thought things had gone well enough, but the committee later expressed several concerns regarding my possible call to ministry.  However, the committee decided to address these concerns by having me meet with two mentors from the committee over a period of a few months, which is where my process stood in September of 2013.

Though the meetings with the two mentors were apparently quite successful both in their opinions and in mine—the experience was, in fact, quite spiritually affirming and uplifting to me—the overall Committee recommended against granting me Postulancy in early 2014.  But at the suggestion of the co-chair of the Commission on Ministry, I scheduled a meeting with Bishop Waldo anyway to discuss what possibilities existed for my continued discernment.  He shared the commission’s concerns that I needed to find a way to view organization and administration not as “necessary evils” but rather as part and parcel of a pastoral call, and he assigned me an essay to write that would require me to explore ways in which I could trigger that shift in my understanding.  I eagerly complied, and after he reviewed what I had submitted, Bishop Waldo granted me Postulancy at the end of March of that year.  After a mad scramble at that late date to get accepted to their program, I enrolled in The School of Theology at the University of the South in the fall of 2014. 

I graduated in May of 2017 and was ordained to the diaconate on 17 June of that year, not quite three weeks after beginning my first call as Assistant to the Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Parish in Clemson, SC.  On 1 February 2018, I was made a priest in God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church—some twenty years since I first found the courage during graduate school to mention to the priest at the small Episcopal church in Carbondale that I wondered if I might be called to be a priest.  In some ways, my ordination to the priesthood marked the end of my discernment process … but in a larger (more accurate) sense, what happened at that point was that the nature of discernment changed.  I had been initiated into the life to which God had called me.  For all that it had taken for me to get to that point, it was in truth only the beginning…

My dear friends in Christ,

Here is the next installment of my Spiritual Autobiography.  As I mentioned in the introduction to Part 1, I’m sharing these details of my spiritual journey from childhood to priesthood and to All Saints Episcopal Church not (with all due respect to Walt Whitman) to celebrate myself, but in an attempt to begin (at least) to make up for time lost to the Covid-19 pandemic, time we would otherwise have been able to spend getting to know each other and building the close relationships that are so important to the life and health of a thriving parish.  If anything here sparks your interest, if you have questions, or if you’d just like to connect and talk about something else entirely, please let me know at fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com, or at 920.266.9262.  I look forward to hearing from y’all!

Discernment Process, Part 4
During the course of my work with the Augusta Committee, Anne received word that funding had indeed come through for the job in Asheville she’d applied for many months before.  At that point, there was no way we’d be moving to Georgia, and I realized that I’d have to cut my time with the Augusta Committee short.  I was anxious about how that conversation was going to go; this group had, after all, invested quite a bit of effort into my discernment.  Yet, when I informed the committee of the change in my circumstances (at our third meeting) they offered to complete my full six-meeting rotation “as our free gift to you,” in the words of a priest on the committee.  I was not only grateful for that, but also quite humbled.  Not only was I moving towards clarity in my work with this committee, but I was also being rejuvenated and restored, as well.  I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d been wounded by some of my previous experiences with discernment until I was confronted with such positive, nurturing experiences as I was then having.  And by the time I finished the six-month period, I once again felt the kind of clarity I’d first felt back in 2001.

However, there were some important differences this time around.  I realized, in hindsight, that seven years previously, without being aware of it, I had made it my primary goal to get into seminary.  I had looked at my time in Spartanburg as a sort of a temporary stopover on the way to seminary.  And when things didn’t fall into place as quickly as I thought they should have, I hadn’t been quite sure what to do.  But coming out of my work with the Augusta Committee, I had developed a different goal—by this point, I simply wanted to serve.  Were I to re-enter the formal discernment process, I knew it would be without the preconceived notions I’d brought with me the first time.   And perhaps, given that difference, the process this time might not only be much less painful, but possibly even downright joyful.
Coming out of that experience in Augusta, I felt convicted that I needed to begin the formal discernment process within a parish once again, and as soon as that thought struck me, I also realized that I needed to enter that process at my home parish of St. Matthew’s.  Stepping outside of that environment for a few months of discernment had made it abundantly clear what a true spiritual home St. Matthew’s had been to me, and for me.  The thought of walking away from the support, the friendship ~ the family ~ that I had there in order to discern my vocation in some other parish had now become unimaginable.  That is why I came back to Fr. Rob in 2010 and asked him if we could meet and begin talking about discernment, vocation, and priesthood again—and that was no easy thing to do, after so many years.  But it was something I knew that I had to do, that I was compelled to do.  As I only vaguely understood when I was thirteen, it was something that’s bigger than any one person; it is certainly bigger than I.
That is what led me to the St. Matthew’s discernment committee in 2010.  It was a very affirming and uplifting time, returning to the work of discernment “at home,” so to speak, and I was grateful for the opportunity to share that part of my spiritual journey with my family at St. Matthew’s.  I was doubly grateful for that support when, in October of that year, our first child was born. 
From my time with the St. Matthew’s committee, my discernment was much more focused than it had been previously, and for the first time, one step on the journey finally seemed to lead to a next step, and a next step.  After being approved by the committee to continue discerning at the diocesan level, I was invited to take a biblical literacy exam and to participate in a newly developed internship program for those discerning a call to ordination, and that placed me in another parish for the summer (of 2012), where I was required not only to design, but also to implement, an entirely new ministry for St. James Episcopal Church in Greenville, SC. 
Following the internship, which my supervising priest considered to be successful despite several challenges, I would have moved to the next step of meeting for three to four months with a pair of mentors selected from the Commission on Ministry, except that I had not completed the 600 pages of diocesan paperwork, including a required psychological screening, by the end of the summer internship.  Somehow, I had mistakenly thought I wasn’t supposed to begin the paperwork until after the internship had concluded.  Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, I found myself horribly “behind” in my process.  I was told that I needed to get the paperwork done as quickly as possible to continue the process, but that if I did so, the delay shouldn’t hurt me to badly.  Unfortunately, time and circumstance made doing so not only difficult, but temporarily impossible. 
By October, 2012, when I received the news about my paperwork, I was nearing the end of that fall semester’s teaching load—classes were wrapping up and I had final grading to do.  It looked like I’d be able to get the paperwork completed and sent off by November without too much difficulty.  But that is exactly when a herniated disk in my lower back began to press into my sciatic nerve, effectively crippling me for the next three months.  After many medications, many chiropractic adjustments, and many doctor visits, I had to accept that I needed surgery to correct the problem.  I scheduled the procedure for January 30, 2013, which was the soonest I could have it done.
Meanwhile, our second child was born three days ahead of schedule on the evening of Christmas Day.  It was an extremely joyous and extremely stressful time, as I was still crippled and Anne was suddenly forced to become a single parent with double the number of children under her care (triple, if you include me in the count!).  The situation was only marginally better after the surgery, as I was now facing a fairly lengthy recovery, with regular doses of heavy medication and a number of restrictions that rendered me unable to be much help with the children.  I was forbidden, for example, to lift more than about five pounds’ weight.
Just as bad, I found myself unable to concentrate clearly enough to work on the long-overdue paperwork for the diocese, as the medications kept me in a constant state of light-headedness.  Time seemed determined to continue speeding onward, yet I seemed to be losing any and all momentum in terms of moving my process of discernment forward.  My discernment process felt like a shambles.  How was I to get back on track?

To be continued...

Peace,
C+