My dear family in Christ,
 
The Great Wheel of the Christian year continues to turn, and we find ourselves come round to another fall season.  While it can be tempting to think of Autumn as a time of endings, especially as once-green leaves flare to brilliant colors and then drop to the ground, leaving bare limbs exposed, it is also a time of anticipation and beginnings.
 
A new school year has begun, bringing new patterns & routines, as well as new opportunities and challenges, to students of all ages and their families.  Many folks are now back home after their summer travels, ready to start back to business, and life, as usual (whatever “usual” or “normal” might be, these days…). 
 
And here at All Saints, we’ve returned to full choir & music at our 10:30 Sunday services.  We’ve also begun new Sunday School offerings for children aged 5 and up, in two different age groups, as well as more casual adult-forum style Sunday School opportunity for everyone between services (c. 9:40-10:20) to stop by the Palmer Room and play “stump the priest” with your best faith-related questions.
 
Speaking of Sunday mornings, as we welcome both newcomers and familiar faces into our in-person worship services, let’s of course be mindful of what we say and how we say it; even the best of intentions can result in saying things that can have a different effect than what we intend.  In our genuine delight to reconnect with someone we haven’t seen for a long time, we don’t want to end up emphasizing just how long it’s been and risk accidentally scolding or shaming the person for having not been in church for a while.  None of us does such a thing on purpose, but even unintentionally it can still be hurtful.
 
That said, it has been absolutely wonderful to see our in-person worship participation continue to grow ever since we were finally able to reopen fully after the worst of the Covid restrictions were lifted.  Our 8:30 Rite I spoken service, especially, has not only rebounded but increased its average attendance beyond what it was before Covid.  Thank you to all you regular Rite I folks for your dedication.  The 10:30 Rite II service continues to grow, as well, and I look forward to that continuing now that full choir and Sunday School offerings are back on the “menu,” so to speak.
 
We continue, of course, to encourage online participation in both our worship services and our Christian formation/adult Sunday School offerings, as well.  Many of our faithful members depend upon our online services to take part in our shared parish life and to stay connected with the rest of the All Saints family.  These ministries are vital to the life of the parish and will continue to be a big part of what we do going forward.  At present, our 10:30 Sunday Eucharist is livestreamed each week—huge thanks to our new crew of tech ministers who’ve stepped in to keep our Sunday livestreams going, by the way!—and we continue to offer an online Bible study (Mondays @ 11:30) and Christian formation series, Faith Talk (Thursdays @ 12:30), via Zoom.  I post the Zoom links for each session on the All Saints Facebook page each week, as well as emailing the links to a list of folks who’ve told me they’re interested in these Zoom offerings.  (If you’d like to be added to that email list, please reach out to me via the office and let me know!)
 
Whew.  That’s just the stuff that’s currently going on or coming up in the immediate future.  We’ve got some more exciting ideas kicking around behind the scenes, too—look for future updates with more info as we move further into the fall season.  Before we know it, we’ll be through the liturgical season of the “long green” (the season after Pentecost) and ready to begin in earnest the eager anticipation of Advent, looking ahead to the birth of Our Lord at Christmas.
 
It continues to be my great privilege to get to be part of this incredible parish family.  It’s an exciting time to be at All Saints, and I truly believe the best is yet to come.  God bless you all, and Happy Fall!

Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

Liturgical Note for the Day of Pentecost & the Season after Pentecost
 
One of the seven principal feasts of the Church (BCP, p. 15), The Day of Pentecost takes its name from the Greek Πεντηκοστή (Pentēkostē), which translates as “fiftieth”—the fiftieth day after the Passover.  For Christians, Pentecost marks the day the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon the Apostles like tongues of flame, as described in the second chapter of The Acts of the Apostles. 
 
We acknowledge this event as marking the birth of the Church as we know it, and we celebrate the occasion of its remembrance with red vestments and altar hangings.  It is likewise traditional in many Episcopal parishes for the congregation to wear red, as well, when attending worship on the Day of Pentecost.
 
As the final day of the season of Easter, Pentecost fulfills the promise made by the Risen Jesus prior to his Ascension—that, when he went to the Father, he would sent the Holy Spirit to us, to complete his work in the world and to teach us all things, to be our Helper and Advocate.  In our liturgical year, then, the Day of Pentecost is a point of transition; even as on Easter Sunday we move from the season of Lenten fasting to the season of Easter feasting, on Pentecost we move from the time of the Resurrected Christ in our midst to the time of his reign in Heaven, and the time of the Holy Spirit resting upon us, abiding within us … and lighting us up!
 
The segment of the liturgical year which follows the Day of Pentecost is known, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the Season after Pentecost; it is also called “ordinary time.”  That is not at all to suggest that it is a season of bland, pointless, mundane normality.  No, the term “ordinary time” refers to the regular (“ordered”) progression of Sundays from Pentecost to the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin a new liturgical year.  It is time devoted neither to a specific feast nor to a particular season in Christ’s earthly life; green is its traditional liturgical color.
 
Personally, I find it remarkable that, for Christians, “ordinary time” means the time of living our lives in the presence and loving embrace of God’s Holy Spirit.  It should indeed be “ordinary” for us (in both senses of the word) to be continually inflamed and illumined by the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in our minds, our hearts, and our souls.  Is not that the very meaning of one of the names of our Lord and Savior?  Emmanuel, God is with us.
 
(There is, by the way, also a shorter period of ordinary time between Epiphany and the Tuesday--Mardi gras—before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, but the Season after Pentecost is the “long green.”)
 
— Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
HAPPY EASTER!!!  (Alleluia, alleluia!!!)
 
Surely, we’re not tired of shouting that acclamation out, yet, right?  We are now three Sundays into the great Fifty Days of Easter, and I hope that this blessed season is bringing you light and joy as we continue to celebrate our Salvation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that we’ve had a few days of (what this Southern boy would call) actual Spring, in and amongst the lingering cold snaps and persistent precipitation.  Despite the fluctuations in the weather, it is undeniable that light and life are returning once again to our world.
 
In other news of miracles related to the chilly temperatures that continue to nip at our heels, you’ll be pleased, I suspect, to know that the boilers in our building are back online!  Our resourceful parish secretary reached out to the folks who’ve been servicing our boiler system, and in the span of an afternoon, they had us back up and running.  Hallelujah!  (And thank you, Emily!)
 
Meanwhile, the Vestry and I are continuing the work which led up to the two historic votes that came out of our March meeting—the adopting of a new, clearly-articulated Statement of Direction for our parish, and, in keeping with that stated direction, the approval of same-gender marriage.  The next phase of this work is to make sure that everything about us as a parish clearly and visibly and consistently proclaims who we are and the community God has called us to strive to be.  We’re taking a look at signage, our website, our internal and external communications … and also planning events that will bring us together, help connect us with the larger community outside our walls, and give us opportunities to celebrate the grace and the blessings God has given us in this amazing church family that we share.
 
It’s been a long, dark winter in many ways.  But new life is springing forth all around us, amongst us, and within our parish.  It’s a very exciting time!  May God continue to bless you all, and HAPPY EASTER!
 
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed—ALLELUIA!!!
 
Yours always in Christ,
Christopher+

My dear family in Christ,
 
HAPPY EASTER!!!  (Alleluia, alleluia!!!)
 
We walked together through the penitential time of Lent and the intense, often uncomfortable events of Holy Week, into the glorious joy of that first Sunday of Resurrection … And now here we are, four days into the great fifty days of Easter Season.  It’s something I love deeply about our Episcopal tradition:  the highest, holiest times of the Church year, Christmas and Easter, are not merely single days, “one-and-done.”  We get to enjoy entire seasons—twelve full days of Christmas, and 50 full days of Easter!  What a gift.  What a blessing!
 
Speaking of gifts and blessings, as we decompress from the intensity of Holy Week and the Triduum, we need to offer our deep gratitude and sincere thanks to everyone who helped to make our worship together so rich, so powerfully meaningful and beautiful this year: 
 
Matt Kierzek and Carol Jegen in selecting music and leading the choir and playing the organ, Eric Neiswender with the magnificent offering of the Exsultet and Karl Breice with those gorgeous recorder melodies, Ken Bozeman for the wonderful piano music, and the entire All Saints choir … all of y’all straight up outdid yourselves this year.  The music you provided not only enhanced our worship but also shaped it.  Indeed, your music, and your voices raised in song, were acts of worship.  Thank y’all so much for bringing us all more deeply into the worship of Our Lord.
 
Sarah Gilbert, Catherine Neiswender, Suzanne Fischer, Nancy Krueger, Cathy Twomey, and everyone on the Altar Guild—amazing job through all the changes & liturgical requirements of the past week!  Thank you all for making sure everything was where it needed to be, when it needed to be there, and for making sure our worship space was elegant and lovely!
 
Karrie Moore, Barb Fetterolf, Suzanne Fischer, and Jan Reeves—the flowers at the main altar and at the altar of repose were stunningly beautiful and gorgeously arranged.  Thank you all for such a fantastic transformation from the sparseness of Lent into the glory of Easter!
 
Emily Gilbert, our intrepid parish secretary and de facto stage manager and show-runner:  without your prodigious efforts, we would never have had the scripts (i.e., bulletins) or the servers (whom you scheduled and coordinated) or that quintessential sense of coherence and organization that absolutely kept the train from going off the rails any number of times.  “Thank you” does not seem adequate; nonetheless, a heartfelt thank you, indeed!
 
Bill Reeves, for reviving, organizing, and hosting a longstanding tradition of holding a celebratory reception after the liturgy of the Great Vigil, a profound thank you.  The food and drink were wonderful, and the atmosphere and fellowship were downright divine.  Thank you so much for bringing this tradition back to the parish!
 
Brad Retzlaff and Ken Bozeman, thanks be to y’all for keeping us “on the air” with the livestreaming of our worship services throughout Holy Week and on Easter Sunday.  Our online presence is so important to those folks who are unable to join us in-person at All Saints.  And without somebody working that fancy console in the back, we would risk losing connection with folks who’ve been part of All Saints for many years.  Many, many thanks!
 
To everyone who read from the Scriptures as a lector, who carried the Cup of Salvation as a chalice-bearer, who stood up to read your parts in the Passion Narrative, who rolled up your sleeves as you washed the feet of your neighbors, and especially to everyone who showed up for seven consecutive Church services, a hearty thank you and my sincere gratitude! 
 
Y’all, it’s been a weird (and sometimes, let’s be honest, rough) three years.  For me, this year’s liturgies were my first opportunity to celebrate Holy Week and Easter with you without the crushing burden of pandemic restrictions holding us back or weighing us down.  Since 2020, we have had to invent, from scratch, services that could honor the liturgical celebrations in new ways every single year, in order to conform with whichever restrictions were in place at the time.  This year, however, I hope we have finally established a new “normal,” a template for years to come.  I am so very grateful that my family and I could worship with y’all in full this year, and we’re off to an incredible start to our Easter season.
 
May the days ahead continue to bring you, and All Saints Church, many blessings.  Thank you all so much for being this amazing community of faith.  It is an absolute privilege to get to serve and worship with you.
 
Yours always in Christ,
Christopher+

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to serve as senior warden at All Saints! I like to be involved in governance and have volunteered in several leadership roles to help plan and set direction. In my professional life, I have worked in communications and leadership development, mostly in the non-profit sector including a consultant trainer role with the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee and my current volunteer training & development job at Girl Scouts. I have a bachelor’s in public relations and a master’s in organization development. I look forward to seeing how the gifts of the Spirit will continue to manifest in our congregation. We are a talented and dedicated crew, committed to this parish and one another. Reach out to me anytime with your ideas for our church!
 
At home, I live with my husband, Mike, and our children Meredith (freshman at Fox Valley Technical College) and Henry (junior at East High), and two cats. Our family travels to Iowa and Minnesota regularly to see relatives. I love sleeping in, practicing yoga, reading Jane Austen novels, and visiting Door County.

Hi, I’m Erin Hunsader - your new Junior Warden. Although I’m new to All Saints, I have been an Episcopalian for over 10 years and was received into the church in 2015 by Bishop Matt (at St. Anne’s in DePere). I attend the 10:30 service and just wanted to introduce myself to anyone I haven’t met yet. Please feel free to email me with any Junior Warden issues/concerns. I already have a list LOL. My email is [email protected]. I look forward to serving the church in this position.

My dear family in Christ,
 
We have now had five parish forums* where we’ve presented a proposed vision for All Saints as developed by the Vestry and me last year ~ three in person forums and two via Zoom.
 
*The sixth and (likely) final forum will be held via Zoom on Monday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m.
 
I’m writing to you today to address some questions that have come up over the past several weeks. My hope is that we can go into this next forum with a bit more clarity about what exactly we're doing and why, and that answering those questions will help us find a greater sense of purpose moving forward.
 
So, what exactly is this whole … thing … that we’re doing?  Well, in a nutshell:  We’re trying to figure out, as a community (a family) of Jesus-followers, exactly who we are. More specifically, we’re discerning what God is calling All Saints Church to be, in this place at this time ~ to envision All Saints as God would have us be. The visioning process is all about discovering our identity as the Body of Christ in Appleton, WI, in 2023 and beyond.
 
Last year, the Vestry and I discerned that God is calling our parish to be 1) Christian, 2) Episcopalian, and 3) Affirming. But why do this vision/identity stuff, when we’ve got bigger fish to fry? Don’t we need to get busy and actually take action, actually do something?
 
Fair points, but here’s the thing: we need to tease apart our vision from our mission. Our vision is the identity God is calling us into; our mission is the work that God is assigning us to do. In some of our messaging thus far, I think those two different ideas have gotten blurred together, and that's creating some confusion and frustration. We need to keep them separate in our thinking, or else we won’t have real clarity about either one. 
 
And we have to clarify the identity (vision) first, because who we are called to be will determine the specific work that God is calling us to do. 
 
In other words, when we know whom God has called us to be, we will see clearly what God is calling us to do.
 
So, what would it mean for our parish to be a Christian, Episcopal, and Affirming community? 
 
Being Christian, in this context, means embracing and teaching the core truths of the Christian faith as expressed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. But more importantly, it means making Jesus the center of everything we do as a parish community. It means that All Saints is first and foremost a church whose primary purpose is to worship God, particularly as we know God in Jesus Christ.
 
Being Episcopal means embracing our Anglican-ness in our worship, our Sacraments, our role as an inseparable part of our diocese, the national Church, and the Worldwide Anglican Communion. It means that, while each of us individually might believe different things, we as a community hold to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Christian faith as we receive it from The Episcopal Church (see the Catechism, BCP p. 845ff).
 
Notice how Point # 2 follows naturally from Point #1? There is a definite sequence to the proposed 3-point vision. It would make no sense to put Point # 2 first, or to remove Point # 1, because there’s no such thing as a “non-Christian Episcopalian”!  
 
So the order of the points matters.  Especially because Point # 3 is the one that is, historically, most likely to be controversial…
 
To be Affirming means to be more than merely tolerant of other people; it means more than merely being welcoming; it means embracing, supporting, and valuing each and every human being on Earth as the special creation of God Almighty who bears the holy imprint of the Divine Image, and in whom we are called and sworn to seek and serve Christ Our Lord.
 
Point # 3, thus, flows directly from Point # 2, because it is in our specifically Episcopal sacrament of Baptism that we swear before God and the Church to adhere to the Baptismal Covenant (BCP, p. 304-5):
 
Celebrant:        Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People:             I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant:       Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People:              I will, with God’s help.
 
If we take our Episcopal Baptismal Covenant seriously (as we should!), we cannot have within our church community any “second class citizens” whom we allow in but do not fully embrace and support and value as complete and utter equals. And that goes for any categories that have been used to degrade, oppress, abuse, and/or marginalize particular groups of human beings: race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, education, gender identity, sexual orientation, &c.
 
Now, everything I've said so far has been focused on our shared identity. On whom we’re called to be. What does any of that have to do with the work that God is calling us to do? Let me offer an example of how the one leads to the other: 
 
If we adopt and embrace the identity of being a Christian, Episcopal, and Affirming parish, then we will finally be in a position to do something that I’m told that Bishop Matt instructed us to do some seven years ago: namely, to make a formal decision as a parish about whether we will bless and solemnize same-gender marriages at All Saints.
My friends, we are way overdue for making that decision. But I hope you see what I’m trying to clarify here: that we cannot possibly make such a decision (one way or the other) if we don’t first have a clear vision of who we are as a parish community. We have to sort out the identity question before we can tackle the action items. 
 
But if we embrace this proposed vision, then we immediately see, for example, our mission to the LGBTQA+ community, to the downtown Appleton community, to the Lawrence community, etc. And more importantly, we will then have the ability to build relationships with the people in those various communities, because we’ll be able to show them clearly and openly who we are. 
 
Every bit as importantly, we will be able to invite people to join our parish community, because we’ll be able to give people a clear vision of exactly what it is they’d be joining. That’s how we grow All Saints and build a community that will do more than just hang on, but will instead actually thrive and be a real source of light and refuge and healing and grace in a world that’s all too often very broken and dark for so many of God’s children.
 
I urge you, my friends: please take advantage of the opportunity to participate in these crucially important conversations. If you're not able to attend the next forum ~ or if you just happen to be not comfortable discussing these topics in a group setting ~ please contact me (either through the church office or via my direct email & pastoral phone line). I would love to talk with each and every one of you, whether in groups or individually, whether publicly or confidentially.
 
Thus far, the forum conversations have been overwhelmingly positive and engaging. People have expressed genuine excitement about what this vision of All Saints will mean for our future. People have also brought up wise questions and compelling insights about the challenges we might face moving forward and the factors we will need to address as a parish if we are to move forward in a healthy and life-giving way.
 
But we have not heard from all of the voices in this parish, and we need to do so. Every one of you is a vital member of the Body of Christ. So please plan to log in to the next forum, especially if you haven't attended one yet; or if you're not able to attend or you're not comfortable attending, please get in touch with me and let's at least connect one-to-one.
 
Yours always in Christ,
C+

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+

Greetings to all!

LET’S CELEBRATE! has been postponed for the month of August. We are hoping to have this segment return in September. For those wishing to participate, please send in your moments of joy and celebration to Erin at [email protected] by Tuesday, September 27.

FALL 2022 YOUTH MINISTRY SCHEDULE: Schedules and registration forms for Youth Ministry programs are now live on the Calendars page of the Youth Ministry website. They have also been sent out via the Youth Ministry Weekly Update email list. Please contact Erin to be added to this list.

Re: Registration Forms: Please fill out only ONE Registration/Media Consent Form per family. It's important that I have accurate and up-to-date records on file. Parents can return forms either digitally via email or in-person at church. If there are any questions, please ask. Thank you!

Sunday School (grades 4K-12) will be offered both in-person and virtually via Zoom beginning Sunday, September 11. Families are welcome to attend either depending on their given circumstances and/or comfort levels and do not need to commit specifically to one or the other.

We will continue with the multi-age approach that we've been using since March 2020, as it has shown to be an effective learning model for the students who have been involved. This means that we will offer one class in-person and one class virtually for the time being. If our needs change, we will revise accordingly.

Needed: 2-4 adults to teach (at least 2 per class); rotation schedule is an option
Times & Location: Sundays, 9:30-10:15am, Undercroft/Kemper Hall (downstairs) & Zoom

Youth Group (grades 5-12) will be offered in-person beginning Wednesday, September 14. We will retain the option to meet virtually if weather or other circumstances dictate otherwise. It is my hope that we will be able to return to offering regular service project opportunities for students, as well as activities/game nights with other local youth groups. Those opportunities will be announced soon.

Needed: 1-2 other adults to assist for both practical and Safeguarding purposes.
Times & Location: Wednesdays, 6:30-8:00pm, Undercroft/Kemper Hall (downstairs); Zoom if needed for weather or extenuating circumstances

SAVE THE DATE: After a three year hiatus due to the pandemic, it’s thrilling to announce that the Diocesan Youth Fall Lock-In is set to return in 2022. This overnight retreat-type event is open to students who will be in grades 6-12 for the 2022-2023 academic year. This year’s Lock-In will be held November 18-20 at Waypost Camp (weekend before Thanksgiving). Space will be limited – stay tuned for more information.

Greetings to all!

FAMILY FUN NIGHTS will conclude next week Wednesday, August 24, albeit with a few modifications. Due to a variety of factors, we will no longer be having the parish potluck as originally scheduled.

However, we will still gather at 6:30pm in the church for Holy Eucharist and a Blessing of the Backpacks. Students & educators alike are encouraged to bring their backpacks and/or parcels used for their educational journey for a blessing in preparation for the 2022-2023 academic year.

LET’S CELEBRATE! has been postponed for the month of August. We are hoping to have this segment return in September. For those wishing to participate, please send in your moments of joy and celebration to Erin at [email protected] by Tuesday, September 27.

FALL 2022 YOUTH MINISTRY SCHEDULE: Schedules for Youth Ministry programs, as well as 2022-2023 registration forms, for the Fall 2022 semester will be available in late August.

Sunday School (grades 4K-12) will be offered both in-person and virtually via Zoom beginning Sunday, September 11. Families are welcome to attend either depending on their given circumstances and/or comfort levels and do not need to commit specifically to one or the other.

We will continue with the multi-age approach that we've been using since March 2020, as it has shown to be an effective learning model for the students who have been involved. This means that we will offer one class in-person and one class virtually for the time being. If our needs change, we will revise accordingly.

Needed: 2-4 adults to teach (at least 2 per class); rotation schedule is an option
Times & Location: Sundays, 9:30-10:15am, Undercroft/Kemper Hall (downstairs) & Zoom

Youth Group (grades 5-12) will be offered in-person beginning Wednesday, September 14. We will retain the option to meet virtually if weather or other circumstances dictate otherwise. It is my hope that we will be able to return to offering regular service project opportunities for students, as well as activities/game nights with other local youth groups. Those opportunities will be announced soon.

Needed: 1-2 other adults to assist for both practical and Safeguarding purposes.
Times & Location: Wednesdays, 6:30-8:00pm, Undercroft/Kemper Hall (downstairs); Zoom if needed for weather or extenuating circumstances

SAVE THE DATE: After a three year hiatus due to the pandemic, it’s thrilling to announce that the Diocesan Youth Fall Lock-In is set to return in 2022. This overnight retreat-type event is open to students who will be in grades 6-12 for the 2022-2023 academic year. This year’s Lock-In will be held November 18-20 at Waypost Camp (weekend before Thanksgiving). Space will be limited – stay tuned for more information.

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+

Greetings to all!
 
EPISCOPAL DIOCESAN SUMMER CAMP (aka Episco Wisco Camp) has wrapped for 2022! Thank you to all the families and campers of All Saints who were able to participate this year and thank you to those who served as volunteer staffers! Thank you to everyone who held camp in your prayers - every little bit of support is greatly appreciated! Please be sure to ask our campers about their experience: Mallory, Jorden, Duncan, Abby, Elena, Emily, Martin, Fletcher, Charlie, and Jonah.
 
FAMILY FUN NIGHTS will resume TONIGHT, Wednesday, July 6, and we are planning to again gather on the North Lawn from 6:30-8:00pm (rain location: Kemper Hall). Remember, we are mask optional outdoors presently, though still asking folks to mask indoors. Here's what we'll be up to for our remaining gatherings:
 
Wednesday, July 6, 6:30-8:00pm: Creation Stations - As the wonderful fictitious science teacher Ms. Frizzle (from the Magic Schoolbus series) always said, "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!" There will be a selection of stations for participants to get creative in different ways - please dress in clothes that could potentially come home with a little extra on them, and BRING YOUR OWN WATER BOTTLES!
 
Wednesday, July 20, 6:30-8:00pm: Prayer Walk & Cool Treats - Weather pending, we will take a walk as a group with sidewalk chalk and pray for our literal neighbors and community! We will enjoy cool treats upon our return.
 
Wednesday, August 10, 6:30-8:00pm: Game Night 2.0 - Another night of silly games to keep us moving!
 
Wednesday, August 24 (times/details to be announced): Parish Potluck & Blessing of the Backpacks – Keep an eye out for sign-ups and more information!
 
MISSION TRIP PRAYER REQUEST: Abby Wolf, a member of the All Saints Youth Group, will be going on her first mission trip July 16-24 to Kentucky. She’s joining a crew going from around the diocese, sponsored by St. Thomas, Menasha, and they will be working with Appalachia Service Project to do house repair projects at local homes. Please keep Abby and the team in your prayers. Thank you!
 
LET’S CELEBRATE! I hope y'all were able to catch the June edition of "Let's Celebrate!" For those wishing to participate in July's edition, please send in your moments of joy and celebration to Erin at [email protected] by Tuesday, July 19. Thank you!

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?