Dear People of St. James’,
Time flies when you are having fun! As of yesterday, I will have been with you as your Rector for a whole five months. This means I am new enough that I am still fulfilling responsibilities that I agreed to before accepting this call, like directing the senior high camp at Camp Allen this week. (Please pray for my team of adult staff and college-age counselors and our 78 campers as we explore our theme, The Hero’s Journey.) It also means that I have been with you long enough to emerge from the fog of new beginnings so that we can start to set a path forward together.
As we have walked together thus far, three desires weave through all of the conversations we’ve had:
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We desire to grow in our radical welcome and multicultural identity.
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We desire to nurture and equip all people to live into their baptismal call – to be a new creation engaged in the work of creating a new loving, liberating, and life-giving community.
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We desire a future and are willing to do the deep systems-building that will provide an infrastructure for resilience and growth.
I believe that these desires have been planted in our hearts by the Spirit that has brought this surprising and wondrous community together and has sustained it with joy amidst struggles. Let that Spirit be our guide!
Growth in radical welcome and multicultural identity will require prayerful and strategic attention in all of the areas of our life together: worship, pastoral care, outreach and advocacy, stewardship, Christian formation, community life, and yes, even governance. It is not as simple as someone picking the right hymns or a few people greeting visitors or even all of us saying, “Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome at this table.” To aid us in this work, we will be drawing upon resources that have grown out of our life together, like the One Human Race program, the arts, and the history of St. James’. I hope that, whether you have been at St. James’ all your life or just a few months, you will bring your whole self and offer your capacity for relationship to this process of building a community in which we belong to each other because we are one in Christ Jesus.
We are already taking some exciting steps to nurture and equip all people to live into their baptismal call. Today, we will publish a job description for a Director of Family Ministries, who will work with children, youth, parents and grandparents in our community. This is an exciting step, and I am so grateful to your leaders who have been patiently laying the groundwork to make this possible. This week we have also published a job description for a Senior Services Liaison to help us expand the capacity of Neighbor 2 Neighbor to minister to the vulnerable elderly in our community. This position is the result of a seed planted at Diocesan Council, when your Council representatives heard Bishop Fisher allude to the newly created Episcopal Seniors Foundation, which will fund this 3-year grant. Pray for the candidates for these two new positions and for a Spirit-guided process of discernment.
Building an infrastructure for resilience and growth is not simply about instituting some best practices from the non-profit and business world, although we will be team-building, developing a system of operations driven by our mission and vision and backed up by measurable goals, slow-building an endowment through planned giving, etc. Ultimately, the bonds of conversation, covenant, trust, and love form an infrastructure for resilience and growth in the Spirit-guided community of the Church. And so, we will be called to attend to the wounded places in our life together where trust has been broken and conversation cut off, even as we forge new relationships with others who gather around the same table.
All of this is holy and worthy work, because it reflects the spirit of the One who calls us into new being. So, to fields of the harvest, we go with joy!
Rev. Eileen
