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+

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 920.266.9262.  I look forward to hearing from y’all!
 
Discernment Process, Part 3
 
So I had come to the realization that I had to go back to Fr. Rob, the priest with whom I had initially began exploring a possible call to holy orders years ago, and tell him that I believed I needed to re-enter into the discernment process in The Episcopal Church.  But by now, it had been a couple of years since I’d been active in church at all, much less actively pursuing a call to ministry.  What was he likely to think?  How genuine could my call be, if it apparently fluctuated like that?  What did it say of me, that I had stepped away from the process once before?
 
There were further, more pragmatic complications, as well.  Anne and I were planning at that time to be in South Carolina for perhaps another year, and not much beyond that.  What would Rob, or the church, for that matter, think about the prospect of beginning the process anew when I might not be around for the long haul?  Yes, I had rediscovered my sense of call.  I was afraid, however, that I might already have missed my window of opportunity.
 
I was hesitant, therefore, even to attempt to begin the process again there, in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina.  Anne and I were seriously considering the possibility of moving back to Georgia in order that I might attend graduate school; as I spoke with my father about that possibility, and about my concerns about restarting the discernment process, he recommended that I contact Bishop Louttit of the Diocese of Georgia. 
 
My parents had moved back to south Georgia, and they had been sharing with me stories of the innovative ways Bishop Louttit had been addressing the shortage of priests in his diocese.  They thought he might have some insight as to how I might best proceed.  Indeed, Bishop Louttit spoke with me (a complete stranger to him) for an hour when I called, and he was kind enough to refer me to one of his diocesan Discernment Committees, one based in Augusta, which wasn’t too far from where we were in South Carolina. 
 
Under Bishop Louttit’s direction, the Diocese of Georgia had created regional standing committees to be the first step for aspirants (those who wonder if they might be called to holy orders) in their discernment processes.  The aspirant would meet with a regional committee (made up of clergy and laity from several parishes within the diocese) once a month for six months.  At the end of that time, the committee members make a recommendation to the aspirant’s home parish based on their perception of the person’s path and vocation.  Although I was not coming from a parish within the diocese, Bishop Louttit offered to put me in touch with the Augusta Committee so that I might come to a clearer understanding of the path to which God was calling me before Anne and I picked up and moved to Georgia.
 
This opportunity seemed like a Godsend.  I was extremely grateful for the chance to explore God’s calling in a structured environment and for the chance to have help gaining clarity after my earlier experiences.  I must stress, however, that what led me to that exploration with a group in Augusta, as opposed to seeking it in my home parish, was the near certainty that Anne and I would be moving out of that parish, and out of the diocese, in comparatively short order.  Anne had applied the previous year for a job in Asheville, but it seemed unlikely that funding for the position would be available, and we were each becoming less and less satisfied with our current job situations in South Carolina.  We needed a change, and it looked like that would mean a move to a new locale.
 
It would, perhaps, have made more sense to wait until we had moved and joined a new parish to take on such work again, but despite the uncertainty regarding where we were going to end up, I felt a sense of urgency to proceed with discernment.  When my sense of being called (to something) flared back to life, it did so intensely.  I had reached a point where I couldn’t really make long term plans with my wife for our future together without a better understanding of what role(s) I would be called to play.
 
In that light, I entered into working with the Augusta Discernment Committee with the specific goal of discerning whether my primary path of service ought to be academic or ministerial.  I realized that the two were not only not mutually exclusive, but often interdependent; I felt driven to discover, however, whether I could be of better service as an academic who also does ministry, or as a minister with an academic background. 
 
When I began meeting with the Augusta committee, I suspected that I would end up leaning towards a primarily academic vocation, one which I thought would likely include some aspects of lay ministry.  But as I moved more deeply into exploring the questions put to me by the committee, it became clearer and clearer to me that where I wanted to be, that where I needed to be, was in Christ’s Church, helping to administer His Sacraments—in other words, I began to realize that the academic gifts I’d been given and experiences I’d had would only be put to their best and highest use in service to God’s people through His Church.  I felt called to be directly involved with people’s lives, on a more holistic basis than I had experienced as a college teacher.  And parish life is full of very real opportunities for teaching and learning, after all, and that’s also where opportunities for healing, grace, reconciliation, and transformation are likely to be experienced, much more directly so than in any academic classroom that I had yet be part of.
 
I was coming to another point of clarity on the road to ordination.  But, as is often the case in the fullness of God’s time, there was yet another twist coming … 

To be continued…
 
Peace,
C+

THE GOOD NEW DAYS:
A Few (okay, a lot!) More Words about Service Times, Sunday Schedules, the Good Ol’ Days,
and what’s on the near-horizon
 
My dear friends in Christ,
 
It wasn’t very long at all after I first announced that we were about to experiment with moving our Sunday service time to 10:30 for the remainder of July that I began receiving inquiries about the change.  While some folks reached out to say “thank you,” the majority of the messages that came in asked whether we would ever have an early service again, or if this new, later start time were an indication that anybody who preferred the early service would simply be out of luck, moving forward.  Other folks have raised questions about when we might be able to stop roping off every other pew, when we might be able to sing hymns together, and what our “new normal” might actually look like, when and if we manage to get to the point of having a “normal” again, after Covid.
 
So I wanted to take the opportunity to share with all of you the answers to some of these questions that have come in, as well as a more in-depth glimpse into the thought process behind this experiment and the longer-term goals involved as we try to navigate this strange in-between time of being almost post-Covid, but not quite.
 
By far, the most common question so far has been “Will we ever go back to having an early morning service again?”  The short answer to that question is:  YES, I absolutely hope and plan to return to our pre-Covid practice of having both an early and a later service each and every Sunday.  Please understand that there is no question of whether we will be adding an early service back into our schedule; the only question is when.
 
In answer to that question, the current plan is to resume a two-service schedule for Sunday mornings no later than this fall, when we’ll be launching our regular program year.  Everything else being equal, that would be the logical time to make such a change.  That said, however, there is a consideration that might lead us to return to a two-service schedule sooner than that:  if our in-person attendance continues to increase ~ and especially if the diocese continues to require us to rope off spaces for social distancing between usable pews ~ then we will need to have two services in order to accommodate everyone whilst maintaining social distancing.
 
Even if the diocese decides to relax the social distancing requirements, if in-person attendance gets much higher than it was last Sunday (the 11th), I’ll want us to go to two services anyway, in order to help things run more smoothly in terms of logistics.  Since we resumed in-person worship on Palm Sunday, but prior to last Sunday, the highest attendance we had ever had in church on a Sunday was 36 people; we had been averaging about 21 per Sunday.  (By way of comparison, in pre-Covid times, we were seeing 13-20 people each Sunday at the early service and 55-75 people each Sunday at the later one.)
 
This past Sunday, we broke 40 for the first time (41, to be precise).  That was good news, not only because it marked a significant increase in in-person attendance, but also because one of the main reasons we wanted to try out starting at 10:30 for a few weeks was that many of our parishioners, including a half dozen of our more senior parishioners, had been asking me ever since we re-opened if we could start later, because they're having such a hard time getting to church by 9:30.  They wanted very much to come worship in person, but a number of folks have found the early start time either difficult or preventative.  We needed at least to try to accommodate these folks who are so faithful and so committed to being in church but who've been having such a hard time just physically getting here.
 
Of course, what's easier for one group of parishioners is often a hardship for another group of parishioners.  Since making the announcement of the temporary time change, I’ve also heard from a number of people who can only attend an earlier service.  We need to accommodate these folks, too, obviously.  And we will.
 
But while it might have been possible to add an 8 o’clock or 8:30 service and continue to hold the live-streamed service at 9:30, I really didn’t want to do that, and I’ll tell you why:  long-term goals.
 
Ultimately, when we get to the point of being truly post-Covid and the pandemic restrictions have been fully lifted, what I'd really love to see on a Sunday morning would be something like this: 
 

• An early Eucharist that would be spoken only, no music, and that would overall be a quieter, more contemplative service (and not live-streamed);
• A fellowship/Sunday School 'hour' during which we'd have coffee and refreshments, and also classes for kids, youth, and adults running at the same time (for the adults, maybe 30 minutes for coffee & fellowship, followed by c. 45 minutes or so for formation?) ~ I really want to get an adult formation class going on Sunday mornings;
• A later Eucharist with full music & pageantry that will be our "live streaming" service each week.

 
There are, of course, any number of problems with trying to organize Sunday mornings that way.  Probably the biggest, most difficult problem would be that fellowship and adult formation would conflict with our choir’s pre-Covid schedule, which had the choir rehearsing between services (and sometimes while the first service was still going on).  I don’t want our choir members to have to choose between their love of music ministry, on one hand, and both fellowship and Christian formation, on the other.  We could, alternatively, do adult Formation after the second service, but I imagine that most folks ~ especially those who would have kids who’d finished up Sunday School before the second service ~ would be ready to leave by then … and of course I’ve been cautioned about making people late for kickoff during football season (for the record, I have several good sermons prepared on that topic, should the opportunity arise! J).
 
It is, admittedly, an ambitious goal.  And, obviously, much more brainstorming and planning ~ and likely some experimenting ~ will have to happen before we can come close to a Sunday schedule like that.  But I think that should be the goal towards which we aim. 
 
(Of course, one of the main reasons I’m sharing these raw ideas with you, even though they are not even close to being worked out and ready to implement, is to get your feedback.  I very much want to hear from all of you about what you would like our Sunday mornings to look like.  Please do take some time to think about worship, formation, and fellowship, and let me know what you think ~ I’m including my email address & phone number below for just that purpose.)
 
In any case, we will return to a two-service schedule on Sundays.  It is my sincere hope that our new “regular” schedule will also include time for both coffee/fellowship and for Christian education and formation for all ages.  In terms of overall timing, it would make the most sense, I think, to try to kick off a schedule like that in the fall, when we will be launching our "program year" anyway, so that moving to the new schedule is simply part of what we do, as we gear up for that 21/22 program year.
 
One important thing has to happen, however, before we can get all the way there:  we need to wait to have full in-person Sunday School for kids until there's a vaccine available for children under 12.  Parents might not feel comfortable sending their kids to Sunday School without the option to have them vaccinated; as a parent myself, I don’t know that I would.  The latest rumors suggest that there might be a vaccine for children 5-12 in September, and perhaps in November there will be one for children even younger.  But we just don’t know yet, and that prevents us from making a concrete plan with a concrete timeline.
 
So that’s what’s going on “behind the scenes”; I hope that this context helps make a bit more sense out of the decision to experiment with starting at 10:30 in July.  As I mentioned earlier, I invite and encourage all your questions, comments, concerns, and creative ideas:  please share them with me at 920.266.9262 or at fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com .  I very much look forward to hearing from you and we envision a new normal for All Saints Episcopal Church.
 
Yours always in Christ,
Christopher+
 

All Saints has updated our masking policy, adapted from the current guidelines put forth by the diocesan office: 
 

• Persons not fully vaccinated are asked to wear a mask when in church buildings.  If you have chosen not to get vaccinated, please remember that you can still transmit the virus to others even if you are asymptomatic.  It is vital that unvaccinated people take precautions to protect those around you who are vulnerable (children under 12, for whom there is no vaccine, folks with compromised immune systems, etc.), so please mask up!
  
  
• The wearing of a mask is now optional for fully vaccinated people.  Please note that if you have only had one shot of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, you are not yet fully vaccinated.  If you’ve had a complete round of vaccination, it’s up to you whether you want to mask up for church or not.
  
  
• All Saints will continue to have a supply of disposable masks available for any who may wish to use one.  We will likewise continue to have hand sanitizer available for use when entering the building and during the Sunday service, as well.

 
Thanks, y’all! 

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 2
 
I had achieved a real clarity about my calling in winter of 2001, but by the time it got to be 2004, nothing had come of it.  It seemed to me that I was going in circles.  I would spend six or eight months participating in a specific series of meetings or workshops or “discernment activities” … and as soon as I was done, another six- or eight-month exercise would pop up, which I’d be told I had to complete before I could meet with the bishop.  Everyone, from the diocesan level to the parish, from clergy to laity, said the discernment process was “broken,” but nobody seemed able to fix it.  In fact, I could never get a clear answer as to whether I was even officially in the discernment process.
           
Something had to give.  I decided to take some time off from church activities.  To be clear, I never considered leaving the Church—especially not after having recognized a call to serve Christ with my life.  But I needed to take a step back in order to reflect on where ~ and who ~ I was. 

I’d been teaching freshman English full time at Spartanburg Community College (then Spartanburg Technical College) since the spring of 2002.  After moving to Spartanburg in the fall of 1999, I taught part time at Furman University from 2000-2001, and I’d also been teaching as an adjunct at STC since the spring of 2001.  Perhaps, I thought, my calling is to serve in an academic, as opposed to an overtly ministerial, capacity.  Certainly, teaching freshman classes at a community college involves a great deal of counseling, if not outright ministering…  

At that time, I was also dealing with several more mundane concerns:  buying a new car for the first time, buying my first house, learning to handle the pressures of a career as opposed to a mere job) … Moreover, I found that, after my recent church experiences and the resulting frustration and confusion, quite frankly, I need to heal, emotionally and psychologically, before I could return fully to the question of vocation.  I felt severely let down by the parish in which I’d placed my trust, and by the process itself, and I needed to sort those feelings out and let go of whatever negativity was there before I could proceed to anything else in that regard.

In the meantime, Fr. Rob, with whom I’d initially discussed discernment, had accepted the position of rector at another Episcopal church in Spartanburg:  St. Matthew’s.  In the summer of 2005, having been away from active church participation for roughly a year, I decided I needed to visit Fr. Rob in his new church.  I did not, at the time, intend to switch my parish membership, much less to become actively involved again, but I quickly ended up doing both those things. 

The atmosphere at St. Matthew’s was markedly different than what I’d known at my previous parish.  This congregation, though just as divided politically, instead of focusing on their anger and fighting things out to see who “won” and therefore was “right,” primarily focused on worship of Jesus Christ, and I found that … rejuvenating.  I jumped into music ministry again, joining the guitar choir that played and sang for the healing Eucharist on Wednesdays.  I even considered beginning active discernment again in this new parish, despite the fact that I’d have to start over from scratch.  Once again, though, life offered me an unexpected turn.

There was a young lady in the Wednesday night guitar group who was herself a new member of the parish, a music therapist working in the behavioral health unit of Spartanburg Regional Hospital.  Anne and I became close quickly and started dating.  And despite a brief moment of “cold feet” on my part at the very beginning (I had never connected so quickly and so thoroughly with another person as I did with her, and honestly it scared me at first!), our relationship deepened into an abiding love.  In November of 2006, I asked her to marry me, and we were married on the 19th of May, 2007. 

In the ensuing year, I began learning not only how to be a full-grown adult with a career, a car, and a house, but also how to be a husband, as well.  All of which is to say that it seems clear to me now that God understood, back in 2004, that I had a lot of education to catch up on before I should consider going forward with any vocational discernment, even if at the time I hadn’t seen it that way.
As we began our second year of marriage, Anne and I began exploring the deeper, existential questions of life together, questions about vocation and purpose.  We realized that where we were was not where we felt ourselves to be of greatest service.  I discovered that I loved teaching, yet I had not felt fulfilled or fully devoted to what it was I’d been teaching for a while.  I felt, and still feel, drawn to the academic study of religion, and I wondered if perhaps my call were to pursue a Ph.D. and move on to teach at a university.  At the same time, that powerful sense of clarity I’d discovered back in 2001, being called to serve God and God’s people through the ministering of the Sacraments, still haunted me.  I was at a crossroads, uncertain how proceed.

I needed help finding a way forward.  That, and the powerful sense of call to sacramental ministry, drove me once again to engage in active discernment within a structured Church environment.  I had to tell Fr. Rob … but how would he respond, given that I’d stepped away from discernment several years before?
 
To be continued...
Peace,
C+

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 1
         
And that is where the matter stood when I arrived in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the fall of 1999.  Some important things happened at that point:  I became active in a parish, participating in its Canterbury young adult ministry from my first weeks here.  In the summer of 2000, I traveled (as one of several adult chaperones) with the church’s youth to the village of White Horse, South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, for my first mission trip.  I attended meetings of the Committee on Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, including a planning session for the annual Cross-Roads gathering.  For two years, I taught Rite Thirteen Sunday School.  All of these activities gave me insight into the meaning of living a life of service, and all of them strengthened my sense of purpose and calling to ministry.
           
In early 2001, after participating in a workshop facilitated by Fr. Rob Brown (then the associate rector of the church I’d been attending since coming to Spartanburg) entitled “The Voice of the Lord’s Invitation,” all of these experiences came together for me.  The workshop focused not on directions or end-goals for our lives, but rather on discovering what gifts we have been given by the grace of God and by virtue of being who we are.  Doing that showed me what choices I’d already been making, subconsciously at least, about which priorities were most important to me in my life.  And I began clearly to see a distinct pattern, a definite direction that my life had been taking up to that point—sometimes in spite of myself.
           
That direction was one of ever deeper, ever more profound encounter with the mystery of the Christ.  A close friend of mine once told me he respected the fact that I was willing to ask spiritual questions that made him too uncomfortable, that he himself would never ask.  The comment surprised me, because I hadn’t realized until then that it wasn’t something I was willing to do at all; it was something that, being who I am, I have to do.  As I had grown closer to Christ, through my searching and questioning, and through my life experiences, I felt a growing need to share what I felt, what I’d seen, what I’d experienced firsthand, with others.  Helping others, if possible, to approach and move into that mystical encounter with Christ Jesus, or merely proclaiming the very potential of such an encounter (that it is something that can actually, really happen!), was something that I not only felt called to do; it was something that—having now examined closely the details of my life up to that moment—I had apparently already been doing, for as far back as I could recall.
           
That is what led me, in the spring of 2001, to feel called to seek Holy Orders.  I was at the point of making a conscious choice:  to make the seemingly random patterns that led me to that moment in my life an active part of my awareness and daily activity.  To do intentionally and consciously what I had been doing automatically and unconsciously.  It became clear to me that whatever gifts I’d been given in life had been entrusted to me by God for the work of bringing about God’s Kingdom in the world.  I felt that, in order to develop these blessings to their fullest extent and to use them for the greatest good and the highest purpose, I would need the training, community, structure, and—eventually—the authority that comes with seminary and ordination.
           
To that end, I became even more actively involved at my church than I had been up to that point.  I became a lay reader and chalice bearer, so that I could participate more fully in the liturgy and especially the Eucharist; I offered my abilities as a musician, playing guitar for contemporary evening worship services.  I directed a “reader’s theatre” production of the play Christ in the Concrete City as both a Lenten reflection (for the actors) and as an Easter celebration (the performance) for the parish.  Over a period of roughly two months, I co-presented, with the Rev. Marilyn Sanders, an adult education class/Bible study/workshop the purpose of which was to bring together parishioners of varying viewpoints and opinions (in the wake of the confirmation of Bishop Robinson) to discuss issues of sexuality within the Church from cultural, anthropological, theological, and Scriptural perspectives (this parish, at the time, was deeply divided, as were so many parishes, and indeed the national Church itself, over such issues).
           
Despite all of that activity, however, my own discernment process never seemed to move forward.  I met with the church’s Vestry; I participated in a six-month workshop, meeting with a committee of Vestry members and lay folk to explore the various canons of ministry.  I met regularly with the rector, Fr. Clay Turner, but in spite of his strong support, the process seemed to stall out.  At the time, I didn’t quite understand what was going on.  To this day, I’m sure I do not have the whole picture.  I did discover, however, in later years that this particular church has in its history only rarely sent anyone to seminary, even though it is one of the largest churches in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, and one of the most blessed in terms of people, education, and resources.  Eventually, I became not so much disillusioned, but frustrated and more than a little confused about God’s plan for me.  After having felt like I’d finally achieved such clarity about my calling in 2001, by the time it got to be 2004 and no further progress had occurred (at least from my point of view), I believed I needed to reconsider some things.

To be continued...

Peace,
C+

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!
 
Call Story, Pt. 3
 
By the time I was in graduate school (at Southern Illinois University) in my late twenties, I believed I had managed to get a pretty fair idea of what I, personally, believed, and that I had nurtured a healthy and productive relationship with Christ Jesus on my own, independent of any formal worship or of any formal institution.  Not really having experienced such a thing for myself at that point, I had little concept of a “faith community,” much less a “church family.”  The irony, therefore, of nurturing a healthy and productive relationship with Christ Jesus in the absence of the covenant community was quite lost on my younger self. 

Having spent so many years “on my own,” I took it as given that my particular beliefs, understandings, and perspectives would never fit in within the mainstream Church.  Of course, I hadn’t stopped to examine that assumption, or even to realize it was in fact an assumption—not until I had been in grad school for almost two years (of a three year program).  Coming back into town after visiting a friend for the weekend, it struck me (“out of the blue,” as it were) that in all the time I’d been in school in Carbondale, I’d never set foot inside the local Episcopal church.  The particular thought that hit me, riding back on the train, was that I had no clue what the inside of the local church looked like.  On a whim (or so it felt at the time), I resolved to get up the next morning and go to the Sunday service there.

That proved to be another pivotal choice.  Once I got involved at St. Andrew’s, I quickly experienced a series of revelations.  No more visions or anything like that; these were much more mundane realizations, yet their impact upon me was nearly as profound.  To put these realizations into perspective, let me jump back in time for just a moment.  I had been taught from an early age, being brought up in the Church, that God is everywhere, in all things, and so I’ve always felt that connection on a personal level, as I’ve described.  But I also grew up with the notion that priests, as the official servants of God’s Church, were somehow different from regular, normal folk—that they were in some strange way not “real” people.  So for all the years I spent pursuing the spiritual quest that I’d begun at age 13, it was possible for me to admire the priesthood as an institution, and the individual priests who served the churches I’d attended, all the while thinking, “It would be wonderful to serve God in that way … but those people aren’t like me.  And I’m certainly not like that.  Not like them.”

Several things happened toward the end of my studies in Illinois to alter that belief.  First, I began to meet—as an adult—actual members of the clergy, as well as people preparing for or already in seminary.  I kept thinking, “But wait, these people seem to be exactly like me.”  It was unnerving at first, to say the least.  At the same time, I was realizing that, though I was about to complete my master’s degree (and thus be qualified to begin a career in college teaching), I had yet to find a direction or purpose in life that truly commanded my conviction.  Teaching was something that I could do, but I was not at all sure that it was something I should do.  I felt compelled to seek a vocation that would make the best use of my life, for the greatest good.  Additionally, through working with the priest in Carbondale and through attending various Province V and national conventions, I had come to see that the personal beliefs and perspectives which I thought I had hammered out for myself in isolation were, in many cases, perfectly in-sync with where the contemporary Church stood. 

I also started noticing a lot of little things, which collectively seemed to point in a particular direction.  Sometimes, it was a subtle as a line in a book that leapt off the page—“Who, in this modern day and age, will once again take up the Mysteries of Christianity?” one author asked, seemingly of me, personally.  At least once, though, it was really on the nose.  I’d worn a black, circle-necked shirt to church one Sunday (because I didn’t like wearing neckties), and at the peace, Father Isaac came over, shook my hand, and told me “We need to get you a collar to go with that!”  I hadn’t even known the man for a month, and I’d not yet spoken to him of any feelings of vocation.  And for his part, he was I’m sure just joking around with a parishioner.  But still.  In the context of my life at that point, the moment stood out like a shout in a silent room.  How did he know?  

Thus, having lost my best excuses for not seriously considering the priesthood, I realized that if I didn’t explore that possibility in earnest, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

To be continued…
 
Peace,
C+

Greetings to all!
 
FDL Summer Camp is right around the corner, and we are incredibly thankful to be able to return in-person even though things still look at bit different due to the pandemic. All sessions will take place at Waypost Camp in Hatley, WI. Please keep the following campers & staff from All Saints in your prayers:
 
Senior Camp (June 20-26): Campers: Mallory; Staff: Erin
Middler Camp (June 27-July 1): Campers: Jorden; Staff: Erin
Junior Camp (June 27-July 1): Campers: Martin, Fletcher, Abby, Charlie; Staff: Brad, Mallory, Erin
Kinder Camp (July 1-3): Campers: Jonah; Staff: Erin
 
For more information on Summer Camp and to access materials from Camp @ Home 2020, head to the FDL Summer Camp webpage. Check out the Virtual Camp Tour, too!
 
Camp Mail: If you would like to send mail to any campers or staff during their respective sessions, you can! It’s a great way to connect and to show prayer support while they’re away. Please plan at least 2-3 days for delivery when sending a letter.
 
Camper Name
c/o Waypost Camp
210608 Crooked Lake Dr
Hatley, WI 54440
 
Summer Events: At this time, we will be offering TWO events this summer for families to gather in-person for fellowship, prayer, and play.
 
Dates: Wednesday, July 14 and Wednesday, August 18
Times: 6:00-7:30pm
Location: North Lawn, corners of Drew & Washington Streets
Details: To be announced
 
Have a great rest of the week! Peace be with you all.

By now, you may have noticed that the Diocese of Fond du Lac has updated the guidelines and regulations governing in-person worship. While we are not yet “out of the woods” in terms of the Covid pandemic, we are seeing some very encouraging signs across the country and in the state of Wisconsin. The fact that the Bishop Matt and the Covid Task Force are making some changes to our safety protocols reflects the general, if modest, good news that we are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel (and that it’s probably not an oncoming train 🙂).
 
The updated guidelines may be found here.
 
It is important to note that the permissions granted to parishes by the diocese are options, not mandates. From the beginning of the pandemic and resultant shutdown, the diocese has set limits, restricting what parishes are allowed to do. As things have improved, the diocese has allowed certain restrictions to be relaxed, but each parish has had to decide individually how much to relax restrictions, based on the needs of each community respectively. 
 
Since the diocese first began allowing parishes the possibility of partial, limited reopening, as your rector I have proceeded out of an abundance of caution, preferring to move incrementally, rather than rushing to do too much too soon (and possibly having to pay a price for such haste). Now, as we (hopefully!) near the end of this pandemic, I still intend to move us back towards full reopening incrementally. I know that’s not what everyone wants to hear, but it is, I believe, the way we need to handle this process.
 
The three most significant subjects about which changes have been made to the diocesan guidelines are masks, singing, and wine. 
 
Masks. Recent research has shown that fully vaccinated individuals are at minimal risk not only for contracting Covid but also for spreading the virus to others. Unvaccinated people, however, remain at high risk for both. At All Saints, therefore, we will for the time being continue to encourage strongly all persons to wear masks whilst in the building with other people present. During worship, I will unmask only for reading the Gospel & preaching the sermon (when I am the minimum distance of 20-30 feet away from the congregation), and for the Eucharistic prayer (during which all wafers being consecrated for distribution will remain completely covered in the respective containers), replacing my mask and sanitizing my hands before coming down to distribute the host.
 
Singing. We must still avoid congregational singing, unfortunately. That said, we now have permission to have small groups of choristers—all of whom must be fully vaccinated and who must be sufficiently distanced from the congregation—who may sing during the service (while masked). Obviously, this arrangement is not ideal, but I think it will be a huge step forward on the journey back to church-as-we-know-it to have vocal music be part of our shared worship once again. I’m excited about this one, y’all—I hope you are, too!
 
Wine. The new guidelines offer a couple of options for resuming the distribution of wine during Communion. Both options are, in my professional opinion, both theologically problematic and rather distasteful. For the record, I’m delighted to discuss the underlying theology involved with anyone and everyone who is interested in such things. But for the sake of saving space here, let me simply say for now that 1) I very much miss our being able to share the Cup at Communion, and that 2) I very much look forward to the time when we can, once again, all share in the communion of the common Cup, as we all share in the saving grace of Christ’s one sacrifice for all. Even with the new options from the diocese, we are not yet to the point where we can safely share the common Cup, and so we must wait a little longer on this front. Let is, in the meantime, remember and give thanks that, theologically, as the blood is inherent in the body, so the wine is inherent in the consecrated host, and therefore to receive Communion “in one kind” is not to receive merely part, but is in fact to receive and experience the whole and complete Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.
 
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about these policies and/or the reasons behind them, please contact me at fatherchristopherallsaints@gmail.com or 920.266.9262.
 
Peace & blessings,
Christopher+

Spiritual Autobiography
 
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. 
 
This chapter that I’m sharing this week may strike you as … a little strange.  It is not an episode of my journey that I’ve shared with many people ~ it is certainly not one with which I would ordinarily begin a conversation with someone I’d just met.  To be honest, I had considered being a bit more selective with my storytelling and only sharing certain excerpts (read:  probably not this one), rather than the entire narrative, for this newsletter column.  But upon reflection, I realized that I would rather y’all have a chance to get the whole story, as it were.  If nothing else, perhaps my sharing an experience like this one might serve as an invitation to some very interesting follow-up conversations!
 
On that note, 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!
 
Call Story, Pt. 2
 
From the age of 13 until my late twenties, I pursued that goal of discovering and understanding whatever it was that I actually believed, both informally, on a personal level, and to an extent formally, getting my bachelor’s degree in anthropology.  (I had, early on in high school and only very briefly, entertained the notion of becoming a theoretical physicist and studying “reality” in that way, but a couple of higher math classes quickly disabused me of that error!  But I had always had a love so social sciences, anyway, and when I took Anthro 101 at Georgia Southern in the spring of 1990, I was hooked.)  I spent time reading about all sorts of religions and belief systems, from my native Christianity and its cousins Judaism and Islam, to eastern faiths such as Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, eventually exploring belief systems of various non-Western, non-industrial, indigenous cultures and “alternative” nature religions, so-called “New Religious Movements,” like Wicca and Druidry.  And I spent even more time in conversation with as many different people, from as many different backgrounds, as I could find. 

In hindsight, it seems a bit odd, but throughout this period of intense and wide-ranging exploration, I never considered myself to be anything other than Christian, though admittedly I rarely attended formal services during those years.  Only once did I seriously entertain the idea of actually leaving the Church.  That moment of consideration was another formative milestone on my spiritual journey, and it deserves a bit of description and explanation.

It happened one evening during my junior year of college at Georgia Southern.  I had been doing field research for a term paper in my cultural anthropology class, studying a group of Wiccans (they were more common that you might expect in south Georgia in the early ’90s!) as a religious sub-culture.  It had struck me more than once, over the course of that research, that, although it would have taken me a lot of adjusting, I could in fact have found a spiritual home amongst the people I was meeting and interviewing.  It was shocking, in fact, to realize how fully and completely I would have fit in with and been welcomed into their community. 

I found especially compelling the degree to which the people who practiced this religion integrated their spiritual beliefs and religious rituals and practices into the ordinary business of their everyday lives.  For me, that way of living their religion was a bit of contrast to what I’d experienced in the tradition into which I was born, which all too often relegated religious concerns and practices to one or two designated days out of the week and, also all too often, left one wondering what connection the religion even had to the actual business of living day-to-day. 

At any rate, on the night in question, I was thinking pretty hard about that idea of really living the faith, about one’s entire life being a continuous act of religious devotion and expression, and about the realization that I could potentially find a spiritual home in this new tradition … when I had what I’ve only been able to describe afterwards as a vision.  I happened to be looking into my bathroom mirror and, instead of my own reflection, I suddenly saw the figure of Jesus, smiling at me kindly. 

He didn’t speak out loud, but I was given to understand that I was perfectly welcome, if I liked, to choose the change in direction that I was considering, and that if I did choose that change, there would be no wrath or punishment from Him because of it.  I was also shown, however, an image of myself as a Wiccan, and then an image of His slowly turning around and walking away from me until He vanished in the distance, and I was left staring at my own image in the mirror once again.

The experience was devastating.

The utter finality I perceived in that that image that struck me like a physical blow.  For the first time, I caught a glimpse of what my Baptist friends from childhood had described as a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”  Watching the that possible future unfold in which Christ allowed me my free choice and stepped away, never to return, I felt a sense of loss that goes beyond expression in words.  And I knew—suddenly and completely—that, though I was free to choose my own path and that I would continue to build friendships with people of all sorts of faith backgrounds and to learn as much as I could about as many different belief systems as possible, I would never, could never, choose a path that led me away from my relationship with Christ Jesus. 

It was in that moment that I discovered that that relationship, that His presence, had always been with me, though I had only just embraced it fully consciously for the first time.
 
To be continued…
 
Peace,
C+

Greetings to all!
 
Youth Ministry: We give thanks for all those adults who have served in any capacity within the Youth Ministry of All Saints in the 2020-2021 school year: Brad, Catherine, Heidi, Ian, Ben, Carol, Matt, Maria, Emily, Suzanne, Oliver, Tina, Stephanie, Sarah, and Fr. Christopher.
 
Lord, we give thanks for these your faithful servants and the gifts that they have shared together in community this school year. We thank you for their presence, their persistence, and their commitment to helping teach and nurture our children and youth as they continue to grow in knowledge and wisdom.
 
As we take leave of this school year, Lord, please bless these teachers and helpers on their given paths, and may they find comfort, rest, and rejuvenation in the days ahead. Bless their families and those whom they serve. All this we ask through your son, our savior, Jesus Christ. AMEN.
 
Graduates: Please congratulate and pray for our Class of 2021 graduates!
 
Alexander J. Laswell will be graduating from Kimberly High School and is still discerning what his next steps will be.
 
Andrew N. Ring will be graduating from Neenah High School and will be going to Fox Valley Tech to pursue an Associate’s Degree in the Fire Protection Technician Program.
 
Thomas J. Kiesnowski II graduated Summa Cum Laude from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA this spring with a Bachelor’s of Art in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, with a minor in Chinese and Business Consulting. He is currently based in Philadelphia and working for the medical device startup company Cagent Vascular.
 
Holy and Everliving God, we lift up to you your servants, Alex, Andrew, and Thomas. Pour out your Holy Spirit upon them as they celebrate this moment of graduation, and as they look ahead to discover what you have in store for them next.  Give them that peace which the world cannot give, that peace which comes from knowing they are truly, deeply loved, that peace which abides in Jesus Christ.  Help them to feel and to know the truth of your eternal presence, within them and around them, everywhere they go, so that whatever they face, their hopes, their fears, their successes, their failures, their dreams, their challenges, indeed their whole lives, may rest securely in the power and the certainty of your love for them, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.  Amen.
 
FDL Summer Camp: There is still time to sign-up for Summer Camp! Head to the FDL Summer Camp webpage for more information. Check out the Virtual Camp Tour, too!
 
Senior Camp (completed grades 9-12 & high school 2020 grads): June 20-26
Middler Camp (completed grades 6-8) & Junior Camp (completed grades 2-5): June 27-July 1
Kinder Camp (ages 4-7 with adult): July 1-3
 
Have a great rest of the week! Peace be with you all.

Spiritual Autobiography
Introduction
 
One of the worst aspects of these past fourteen months of pandemic shutdown has been that you and I, the parish and your new rector, have been essentially robbed of a year’s worth of time we would otherwise have been able to spend actually getting to know each other.  My dear friends in Christ, I have agonized over that fact.  And while it’s true that we are finally beginning to be able to open back up, at least a little bit, we are still a ways off from being free to come together for face-to-face fellowship, the telling of tales, the swapping of memories—not to mention the sharing of meals—that are so deeply part of what makes a parish feel like a family.  So I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about it, in the meanwhile of waiting for Covid numbers to decrease and Covid restrictions to relax a bit further.
 
I don’t know if it will be helpful at all, but it occurred to me that, although I might not be able to get out there and get to know all of you as I would like to yet, perhaps I can give y’all a chance to get to know me a little better.  I thought, what would happen if I shared with you my Spiritual Autobiography?  When folks are discerning a possible call to ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, they are required to compose and share their “spiritual autobiographies”—accounts of their lives with particular emphasis on the events and experiences that were spiritually significant, that were formative, that led to the conviction that God was calling them to the diaconate or to the priesthood.  So my Spiritual Autobiography is, in many ways, the story of how I came to be here with you, serving you as your priest. 
 
Under normal circumstances, I would no doubt have ended up sharing much of this information with you informally, chatting during coffee hour or in conversation at various church functions, or perhaps even over coffee or a shared meal in small groups.  And I still very much hope that we can do all those things together!  But as an experiment, while we wait for the pandemic to be enough under control that we can resume gathering freely like that, here is the first excerpt from my formal Spiritual Autobiography, for anyone who might be curious.  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, and let’s talk!
 
 
Call Story, pt. 1
 
My “official” spiritual journey—at least in terms of my conscious awareness of being on such a journey, and of the fact that I was taking deliberate steps on that journey—began when I was 13 years old.  I remember clearly a particular Sunday School class, taught by a nice lady who was actually younger then than I am now, which served as a catalyst in my spiritual life.  That morning’s lesson was a pre-printed tract which attempted to “prove” by means of the mathematics of probability that life simply couldn’t have evolved on the Earth, as the scientists claim. 

At that point in my life, I was very much what my friends at school would call a “nerd.”  I had watched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nature documentaries on Public Television and had spent countless hours poring over whatever scientific information I could find on dinosaurs and related subjects.  I also had very little patience with anything that I, in my 13-year-old “wisdom,” deemed silly.  So I really couldn’t help myself when confronted with that lesson.  I felt compelled to raise my hand and point out that the infinitesimal percentage that the lesson plan indicated was the chance that life actually evolved on our planet was nothing of the kind; rather, I informed the class, that was the percentage chance of the exact same pattern of evolutionary development happening again on some other planet, exactly the same way it had on Earth.

I remember being aware on some level, even at the time, that the lesson plan was not written by our Sunday School teacher, that she was just presenting the curriculum she’d been given to present.  But I also remember how important it seemed to me that the truth be spoken and understood.  It was something that was bigger than anyone’s personal opinion, including mine.

As soon as my family made it back home after church that morning, I informed my parents that I would not be attending Sunday School any longer.  My father was particularly displeased; I can still hear his voice as he told me, very calmly, that he had a problem with the notion that my formal religious education was to end at age 13.  I did too, I replied.  It was just that I felt pretty certain that I wasn’t going to receive any real education in that class.

In hindsight, all these years later, it seems odd to me that I never once had any intention of walking away from the Church.  Nor, as I tried to explain to my father, was I shying away from religious education.  If anything, I felt compelled to seek out such education.  What had been presented in that Sunday School class made no sense, and something deep within me told me that not only should things make sense, but that, somehow, some way, they actually do.

It was about that same time period in my life when I noticed that many of my friends at school were not just rejecting the religious practices of their parents, but also often rejecting religion itself outright.  “I don’t let my parents force me to go to church anymore,” I remember hearing, and “I’m not going to be a hypocrite like that.” 

In light of my own experience, I realized that what I’d been doing for 13 years was essentially just going through the motions, imitating what I’d been exposed to.  I knew all of the liturgy by heart … but it occurred to me then that I had no real understanding of what any of it meant.  I concluded that I needed either to quit being a hypocrite myself and stop attending services I didn’t really understand, or I needed to figure out exactly what it was I did believe, and (perhaps more importantly) why.  As I mentioned above, leaving the Church never seemed like a serious option to me; I felt strongly (even if I had no idea why) that I belonged there, somehow.  So at 13 I set out to find some way to understand the tenets of the faith in which I’d been raised. 
 
To be continued…
 
Peace,
C+

Happy Easter to all!
 
Youth Ministry Volunteers: We are thankful for our Youth Ministry volunteers! We will be acknowledging all their work and gifts this Sunday, May 16 during our worship service. Thank you to everyone who has shared their time, talents, and gifts with students this year!
 
Graduates: For those graduating from high school and college, we’d like to hear from you so we can honor your achievements and celebrating what’s coming next! Please send your full name, school you’re graduating from (with major/focus if applicable), and what your next steps are (e.g. further education with major/focus, entering the workforce, taking a gap year, etc).
 
Over the last several years, we have traditionally recognized graduates the Sunday before Memorial Day weekend, which this year is Sunday, May 23 (Pentecost), so please send info to Erin Wolf at asygpappleton@gmail.com by Sunday, May 16. Thank you!
 
Virtual Camp Tour: CLICK HERE to spend a few minutes exploring the camp grounds with Camp Director Erin “Erni” Wolf.
 
FDL Summer Camp: Camper Registration & volunteer Staff Applications are live! Check for updates via official diocesan channels – diocesan website, FDL Summer Camp webpage, diocesan Facebook page, @diofdlyouth Instagram account, and Scattering Seeds newsletter.
 
Senior Camp (completed grades 9-12 & high school 2020 grads): June 20-26, 2021
Middler Camp (completed grades 6-8): June 27-July 1, 2021
Junior Camp (completed grades 2-5): June 27-July 1, 2021
Kinder Camp (ages 4-7 with adult): July 1-3, 2021
 
At this time, we are intending to hold all camp sessions at Waypost Camp in Hatley, WI, which is a part of the ELCA Crossways Camping Ministries.
 
Have a great rest of the week! Peace be with you all.

​My dear family in Christ,
 
A recent exchange I had via social media has brought my attention to a topic that I don’t think we, as a Christian community, talk about as much as we should.  A certain individual took issue with a particular phrasing I used in one of my comments (on a thread I had myself started) ~ I had quoted a character from Star Wars/Disney’s The Mandalorian:  “I have spoken.”  It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek pop-culture reference in the midst of a more serious discussion.  The individual I mentioned above demanded to know if I “talk to my children that way.”  I responded to this person by asking “How dare you attempt to use my children in an attempt to shame me just because you disagree with my point?”  Personally, I found and still find that tactic to be extraordinarily offensive.  This individual replied:  “I thought you were supposed to be a pastor.  Some pastor you are.”
 
That response—and let me tell y’all, it is one that’s heard all too frequently by those of us who are in the business of ministry, whether lay or ordained—is evidence on the surface of what I think is a fairly deep issue, both within the Church and beyond, in the larger secular culture.  There is a widespread misconception that being a Christian, in general, and that begin a pastor/priest/minister/etc., in particular, means first and foremost being “nice.”  Now, nice, of course, is a good and wonderful thing; what makes this expectation problematic is that “nice” gets defined as “never, ever pushing back against any words or actions, no matter how offensive or vile those words or actions may be; never challenging anyone or anything, but instead just being happy and making sure nobody ever feels bad for any reason.”  Christians, and especially Christian ministers, are just supposed to smile, nod, and “take it,” no matter what sort of vitriol is directed our way.
 
Now, to be sure, we are absolutely called to conform our lives to the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who commands us unequivocally to turn the other cheek, to return kindness for malice, compassion for hate, love for fear, and to make of our lives a living sacrifice in service to God and God’s people (i.e., everybody).  Beyond that, Jesus calls us to be, ourselves, agents of transformation:  when hatred or anger are directed at us, we are called to transform that hate and return only love, to transform that anger and return only peace.  We must follow not only the commandments but also the living example of Jesus, every single day. 
 
So I am not even remotely suggesting that any of us ought to “fight back.”  To do so is irretrievably un-Christian.
 
That said, however, Christians in general and Christian ministers, especially, do have an additional obligation, and that is to teach, through word and example, the faith of Jesus Christ.  Teaching sometimes requires a bit of compassionate confrontation, a willingness to call people’s attention to the nature of their own actions and those of others … and the courage to offer loving correction when needed.  What happens, all too often, is that the expectation that Christians and (again especially) Christian ministers are to be meek and mild at all times gets weaponized:  “I can say and do whatever I want, and the pastor has no choice but to allow me to do so, because if he or she pushes back at all, I can accuse him or her of being a bad pastor and not following Jesus … and yet I don’t even have to try to live up to that same expectation myself.”
 
Folks, in the Christian community, we all have to live up to that standard, together.  That’s the piece of the puzzle that’s so often missing in our modern Church and especially in the larger, secular culture that surrounds us:  it’s not about individuals’ behavior at all.  It’s about the way the entire community is called and commanded to behave towards each other within the community, and towards the larger world outside the community.  We’re all in this together.  That’s the only way any of this Christian life can work.
 
That means that I sometimes need to receive—with as much gratitude as I, in my own sinfulness, can muster—a loving rebuke from a fellow follower of Christ.  Even, and really especially, when I don’t want to, I have to make myself close my mouth and open my ears and my heart to hear where it is that I’ve misspoken or acted inappropriately, how my behavior has hurt or is hurting someone, and what I need to do to make it right.  It’s hard to be on the receiving end of such a rebuke at all, much less to take it in gracefully, but that’s what I’m obligated to do. 
 
It also means that, when I witness someone’s mistreating another person (whether that other person be me or some other individual), I am obligated by my faith to speak up.  I can’t let it slide; I have to step in and let the offending party know, as gently but as firmly as possible, that he or she is speaking and/or acting in a way that is contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that such behavior will not be tolerated in my presence.  Looking out for each other, taking a stand for each other (or even for ourselves, sometimes), whilst maintaining a humble awareness of our own capacity for harming others (whether advertently or inadvertently)—that’s all part and parcel of the Christian witness that is our obligation and our collective vocation.  Again, we’re all in this together.  To borrow once more from The Mandalorian:  “This is the Way.”

A blessed Holy Week to all!
 
A reminder that if you’d like to explore any Way of Love Faith @ Home materials, which are offered for adult-preschool, adult-elementary, adult-youth, adult-adult, CLICK HERE. These are designed to use at any time during the liturgical year and are free to all.
 
We are still in need of secondary adult support on Wednesday evenings for our Youth Group gatherings through the end of April. We meet from 7:00-7:45pm via Zoom. If available and willing to assist, contact Erin Wolf for more information.
 
Spring/Easter Break: Youth Group will NOT gather tonight, Wednesday, March 31, and Sunday School will NOT gather Easter Sunday, April 4. Virtual gatherings for the remainder of April WILL resume Wednesday, April 7 (YG) and Sunday, April 11 (SS), respectively.
 
Holy Week Services: As has been announced in several places, Holy Week services will be both in-person and live-streamed. Contact Emily in the parish office to reserve your spot to attend in-person, if you wish, and please note that masks and distancing are required. A note re: Saturday’s Vigil & Easter Sunday – please choose one OR the other to allow more people to attend an Easter service. Thank you!
 
Maundy Thursday: 6:30pm
Good Friday: 12:00pm NOON
Holy Saturday – Easter Vigil: 6:30pm
Easter Sunday: 9:30am
 
There will NOT be an in-person or virtual Coffee Hour on Easter Sunday, nor will there be any other activities offered at this time. As hard as this is to again miss out this year on some of the extra pieces that make Holy Week and Easter Sunday so special, we thank you for your continued patience and support as we continue navigate opening things back up at All Saints.
 
End of Year Virtual Celebrations: Our 2020-2021 program year ends at the end of April! Sunday School’s end of year celebration will take place Sunday, April 25, and Youth Group’s end of year celebration will be Wednesday, April 28.
 
FDL Summer Camp: Camper Registration and volunteer Staff Applications are live! Be sure to check for updates official diocesan channels – diocesan website, FDL Summer Camp webpage, diocesan Facebook page, @diofdlyouth Instagram account, and Scattering Seeds newsletter.
 
Senior Camp (completed grades 9-12 & high school 2020 grads): June 20-26, 2021
Middler Camp (completed grades 6-8): June 27-July 1, 2021
Junior Camp (completed grades 2-5): June 27-July 1, 2021
Kinder Camp (ages 4-7 with adult): July 1-3, 2021
 
Have a safe and blessed Holy Week and Easter! Peace be with you all. ​

My dear family in Christ,
 
The short version first:
 

• Limited in-person worship will begin on Palm/Passion Sunday
• 50 persons, maximum, including priest/servers/tech support
• Facemasks and social distancing are both required of all attendees
• Live-streamed services will continue as before via Zoom/Facebook
• Registration/reservations are required—you must contact the office
• No physical contact during the passing of the Peace
• No singing in the church building
• Seating will be distanced; one family unit per pew, alternating pews
• Those who are “at risk” and/or not comfortable with physical gatherings should continue to worship with us virtually via our live-streams

 
The longer version:
 
As you know, it has been a year and a week since the last time we were all together in our beautiful church, praising God, singing hymns, and sharing the sacrament of Holy Communion as the gathered Body of Christ in Appleton.  A year is a long time to be apart, even under the best of circumstances, and—regardless of one’s perspectives, preferences, proclivities, or priorities—I think we’d all be a bit hard pressed to describe 2020 as having comprised “the best of circumstances.”  It has been particularly difficult to have to fast for so long not only from each other’s presence but also from Holy Communion shared together.
 
Now, as the season of Lent draws to a close and we look eagerly toward Easter, I have some good news to share.  Of course, the greatest good news is that Jesus is Lord! and that we will once again celebrate the Resurrection this Easter!  But I have some more immediate, down-to-earth good news to share, as well: 
 
We will reopen our church (in limited fashion) beginning on Palm Sunday!
 
It’s time.  Not because Covid is over—it isn’t!  (More on that in a moment.)  Not because the risks are gone—they are not!  Even so, the overcrowding in our hospitals and healthcare facilities has started to go down, more and more people are getting vaccinated every day, and as long as we continue to mask, distance, and observe the recommended safety protocols, we can finally worship together again in limited numbers.  So it is time for us to begin the long process of moving back into our shared, communal worship.
 
That’s the good news.  As you can tell, however, from my careful wording above, there is unfortunately also some bad news.
 
The bad news is that the return to our remembered experience of full-scale in-person worship, including so many of the things we love about the All Saints experience, is still a good ways off.  In other words, we will NOT be “going back to the way things were” anytime soon.
 
Instead, our return to in-person worship will have to happen in stages, in increments.  And this first stage will NOT be ideal.  In many ways, it will be awkward and strange.  It will almost certainly feel frustrating.  But it WILL be a necessary and important first step towards a complete post-pandemic reopening, and that’s not nothing, y’all.
 
So how is it going to work?  What exactly will it look and feel and sound like?  What will be different?  Here’s a breakdown of some key features of this next phase we’re about to enter into together:
 
Face masks & social distancing are absolutely required.  Until the Covid numbers get significantly better, these requirements MUST be observed.  We don’t ever want to turn anyone away from our doors … but as pastor, my responsibility—and my sincere desire—is to safeguard the well-being of the entire flock.  So these restrictions are non-negotiable.  (We will try to keep a small supply of disposable masks on hand, in case someone just happens to forget to mask up before leaving the house to come to church, but if possible, please bring your own.)  As for spacing, we will limit seating to one family unit* per pew, and we’ll have to skip a pew in between each family unit as well.  The pews will be marked off accordingly when you come in to the church.
 
Reservations are required in advance.  You’ll have to contact the church office before the close of business on Friday in order to reserve a physical place for yourself and your immediate family* for the following Sunday service.  In order to make sure as many folks who want to attend in-person get the chance to do so, we are going to ask that if you reserve a spot and attend in-person in a given week, you then join us virtually/online the following week, to give someone else a chance to worship in-person.  If we can voluntarily alternate weeks like that, it will make it easier for us to adhere to the other restrictions we have to follow, and also hopefully calling the office to sign up will maybe feel a little less like trying to get a vaccine appointment. : )
 
* NOTE:  I am using the terms “immediate family” and “family unit” to indicate a small group of people who live in the same space together.  If you have family in the parish, but you and they live in separate houses, then you and they would count as different “family units” for purposes of maintaining social distance.
 
One single service will be offered (to start) at 9:30.  As we begin to add in-person worshippers back into our Sunday morning service, we will continue to have a single 9:30 a.m. service that will combine in-person worship and live-streamed online worship.  At least, we’re going to try it that way to begin with; if it does not work to combine in-person with live-streaming, we might have to separate the two types of service, but I am truly hoping that we don’t have to do that.  I would prefer that what we do be what we live-stream out, in terms of worship, so that we have one communal act of worship, with some folks taking part in person and some folks taking part online, but all of us sharing the same worship together.
 
In-person capacity is limited.  Current diocesan restrictions for in-person worship services limit us to 25% of building capacity OR 50 persons total (including priest & servers), whichever is fewer.  With a space as large as ours, that means we are limited to 50 people per service.  For comparison, prior to the shutdown a tad more than a year ago, we were averaging between 70 and 90 people between two services.  Given that a significant number of our parishioners will not yet feel safe and/or comfortable attending in-person services, it may not be too unreasonable to expect that a single service that allows for 50 people would suffice for us, at least for this first phase of reopening.  Of course, if demand is too great, we will add a second service on Sunday morning. 
 
NOTE:  Folks who attend in-person on Palm Sunday will still be eligible to attend one or the other (but not both) of our Easter services, either Saturday evening or Sunday morning.  But, again, we would prefer that you choose in advance which one of the Easter services you want to attend.
 
In-person worshippers will receive the Bread only.  Diocesan restrictions require that both Bread and Wine be consecrated, that the Celebrant receive in both kinds, and that all other participants receive in one kind (Bread only).  Essentially, at this point it is still far better to be safe than sorry, and that is why we will not be sharing a common cup just yet.
 
In-person singing is NOT allowed.  This restriction, I predict, will hit our specific community particularly hard.  Music and (especially) singing are so deeply ingrained in the culture and identity of this parish that it’s almost unthinkable to consider returning to worship together … without also returning to our practice of singing together.  Overwhelming amounts of research show, however, that, because of the ways that the virus spreads most effectively, singing in groups is one of the most dangerous things we could do.  At this time, we simply cannot risk it.  Of course, the folks participating in our live-streamed service from their own homes can belt those hymns out as much as they like. : )
 
Grace will be needed.  We will need to remember that a number of our fellow congregants won’t want to, or even shouldn’t, attend in-person gatherings until the rates of Covid infections go down significantly.  So we must be absolutely clear that participating in our worship online via live-stream is every bit as valid and meaningful as attending in-person.  We can’t have higher or lower “tiers” of worship in our community, and we certainly cannot have “second-class citizens” in our parish.
 
You will need to dress for the weather.  For purposes of maintaining as much non-re-circulated airflow as possible, we will need to open some of our windows and exterior doors.  Using recycled air in enclosed spaces pretty much destroys any advantage we gain through social distancing, because it mixes everybody’s air all together and blows it all over everyone in the group.  Depending upon the weather on any given day, you’ll want to keep your heavy coats with you in the pew.
 
None of this process will be easy, at first.  It’s going to be awkward and strange and likely rather frustrating to be back in church, but in such restricted and unfamiliar ways.  But I have great faith in the faith and the grace that, in my experience, define this parish family.  With a bit of patience, continued devotion, grace from above, and a healthy sense of humor (or at least irony), I believe we will continue to be a blessed people of God together during this new phase of our shared life, just as we have during the long separation and isolation of Coronatide.  You all continue to inspire me, and you remain in my daily prayers.  Please call or email if you have any questions, and God bless you all!

​Rearranging Some Spaces
 
As many of you already know, we are gearing up for a return to in-person worship, albeit in a limited capacity and with a number of safety restrictions in place. And it is so very tempting, in our excited anticipation, to allow ourselves to think of this new phase we’ll be entering into as if we’ll be “finally getting back to normal.” That, unfortunately, will still not be the case for some time. Covid is yet with us, and while more and more people are getting vaccinated against the virus every day, the risks are still far too great for us to jump back into life as it was prior to March of last year.
 
Even so, grace—and good news—abounds! If we continue to mask, to observe social distancing, to get vaccinated as soon as we are able, and to follow established safety procedures, there is every reason to believe that we will continue to see improvements in the numbers. And one day, we will reach a point at which we can finally come back together in our beautiful church to pray and to worship without restriction. It will happen.
 
But there is even more good news than that. Namely, that we now have before us an incredible opportunity. We have the opportunity at this time to do more than merely try to “get back to normal”; we have the opportunity to determine with faithful intention exactly what we want our “new normal” to be.
 
As we finally begin to move through and beyond this time of pandemic, we can explore, imagine, brainstorm, and otherwise faithfully discern what we’d like to get back to … and perhaps also what we’d like to do differently. We have an incredible chance, now, to lay the foundations for an exciting new chapter of vitality and growth in the life of All Saints Episcopal Church. Now, that might sound like a tall order, but I’ll tell you truthfully that I’ve seen this parish accomplish amazing things over the past twelve months, and I’ve seen y’all do that under the worst conditions of this pandemic. Grace does indeed abound in this place!
 
So on the teeniest, tiniest scale, I have begun my own little experiment in exploring how things might be different as we come back into our church building. In preparing to resume in-person worship, I’ve transitioned from working completely from home, as I have for most of Coronatide, to working two days a week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) from the church. And when I started coming back into the office on a regular basis a few weeks ago, I suddenly had an idea about rearranging the space in which I was working. Basically, I decided to try switching out the “office” and the “library/conference room.” 
 
At the moment, then, my office is now in the room that used to be the library/conference room. It’s my intention to try out using the old office space as a library/conference room/project room. The transition isn’t complete; there’s more arranging to be done to make it all work. But thus far, I think it’s going to be a good change. The new setup already seems to me to be much more conducive to pastoral care and counseling, for one thing, and with doors that open directly into the hallways, I believe it will also be more inviting to anyone who stops by and wants to talk to the priest. Take a look and see what you think.
 
Now is a fantastic time for reimagining, for re-envisioning, how we see the treasures and assets that have been entrusted to us, for considering exciting new ways to appreciate and utilize the resources that we have, as well as for remembering and preserving everything we love and cherish about our parish. I invite you all to enter into this period of discernment with faith, joy, and eagerness. God is here, in the midst of our parish; who knows what the Holy Spirit is already working to stir up in us as we come back together and rekindle our shared faith in our shared space?