Last decade I was a new clergy person, and I thought I knew a lot about Church, Christianity and stuff, and I was determined to remain jaded when it came to the business end of Church. Me and many of my peers that were required to go to monthly new-clergy classes at the Diocese of Atlanta were extremely dismayed to find our required text as something widely embraced by the business community. We felt comfortable with abstract theological ideas, biblical exegesis, and every esoteric bit of pretentious liturgical trivia, but we were down right disgruntled when we were given Ronald Heifetz’s book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership and told we’d be studying it for two years.

Oh, my goodness. It has been an incredible, beautiful, anxiety inducing, and hopeful week. To be honest, I still feel like I am recovering from the marathon that we have been running toward Easter. We were not just preparing for the holiest day of the year, but for the bishop’s visit at the Easter Vigil, which entailed preparing those to be confirmed and received into the Church, which was a whole other endeavor entirely. We consistently tried to go above and beyond and embrace opportunity, even if we were already stretched thin, and now that we are on the other side of Easter, I feel no regret for opportunities not taken, and an overwhelming sense of thanksgiving for the vibrant spirit of this place. Since we are on the other side of Easter, I thought I would share of numbers with you, and give you a litany of thanksgiving to those who made this season possible.

Last night I had the realization that I didn’t know how to articulate my belief on whether or not the Bible is literally the word of God. As our make-up confirmation class was winding down, we got a series of very good questions, and I believe I answered faithfully, but even as I was uttering my answers, I knew it was woefully insufficient. As always, I realized a better thing to say several hours after it was too late.

Friends,

Right now, all I can think about is confirmation, Lent, and the Bishop’s visit on March 30th. I think this is understandable, considering I am directly responsible for those things, and I believe this is our big chance to bridge the gap between the church and the diocese, we can set ourselves up for prolonged growth, blah blah blah. Though my focus is understandable, the Church is not all about me and when I get tunnel vision like this the wonderful things happening around me can become muted.

Friends,

Something I harp on constantly with anyone that I might feel is uncomfortable in Church is the two rules, which are:

1.     Whatever you are doing, do it slowly.

2.     Pretend like you know what you are doing.

There are additional rules that, like, “if you see someone doing something wrong, don’t say anything, unless someone will get hurt.” But even most of these are variations of the first two. If you call out a Eucharistic Minister for standing in the wrong place during the Sanctus, then you’re making them break rule #2, which is distracting to everyone. It’s best to let them continue to observe the first two rules, despite their minor infraction. 

The liturgical seasons often feel informed by the seasons around us. This makes sense, considering these seasons and holidays developed organically, and communities would observe them whenever was most meaningful to them. The most obvious seems to be Easter. It makes sense to celebrate life coming out of death in Spring, because the natural world is literally coming back to life all around us. Christmas makes sense, but in a dissonate sort of way. People were already wanting to rage against the dark and the cold before Jesus’s time. In areas that are particularly cold and dark in winter, there seems to be a common wisdom to be stubbornly joyful when it is the coldest and the darkest as a sort of communal reminder that things can get better. When Christian communities wanted to remember and celebrate the birth of Christ, it made sense to take from the winter traditions that were already around, and use that storytelling to help teach the community about the hope that comes with Christ being born.

Friends,

It is that time of year, when everyone in my family takes turns having a cold, and it is my turn. From about November through mid-March at least one of the boys, Leandra or I are down for some sort of crud. Even when they are well, the boys constantly have runny noses, and our whole world is fairly gross until the weather gets better. I’m sure that I will be fine by Sunday, but while I write this my brain is foggy, so do not expect anything profound. The good news is that I have a lot of non-found things that are mostly unrelated to one another that I’ve been wanting to tell you, so did you know:

We finally have a plan in place for confirmation classes at St. Luke’s! Our community has seen a lot of new faces join us in the last two years, and we are determined to make these classes and the opportunity to be confirmed or received available to anyone who feels called to go through the process. 

First of all, what is all of this stuff?

 When Christianity was growing in the first centuries of its existence, Bishops gave priests the authority to do baptisms, and then the bishop would visit and seal all those who were prepared to join the Church with the gift of the holy spirit and strengthen them for ministry. This would be done after the person studied scripture and felt called to join the Church.

Friends,

 There is a baby pool in the steeple.

There is a lot of stuff in the steeple, and among the cell tower equipment (did you know four cell towers are in our steeple!?) is a thirty-dollar plastic baby pool from Village Hardware. There is a lot of backstory as to why there is a baby pool in the steeple, but the only relevant parts are the fact that it is preventing further water damage in the Nave, and that a lot of history, committee meetings, occasional strong feelings, and time led us having a baby pool in the steeple. As to its purpose, it seems to be doing its job, and it is giving us the time to end a decades long mystery as to how water keeps coming into the Nave and find a permanent fix. All of this is secondary to the excuse it gives me to go onto the roof and see sacred things unfolding below.

Things have been interesting at St. Luke’s for a while now. It was about a year ago that we saw a significant increase in attendance on Sunday morning, and coincidently it is when I downloaded the TikTok app on my phone. A friend and new parishioner told me that it is the perfect platform for me to reach out and tell people about the Church. I made a few funny and educational videos that were similar in format to popular videos and they got some traction but not much. Whenever I would get busy, I would stop making videos, so I started uploading my sermons just because it was easy and I wanted to be consistent and post something every week. To my shock one of my sermons got tens of thousands of views and a ton of positive feedback. This coincided with a trip to Memphis where someone recognized me from the sermon! It was hard to not let my ego inflate two sizes too big, but a thought infiltrated my head that maybe it was all because of me. So, I asked my wardens if this was the case, but of course not directly at first. We batted around a few ideas, and then I just flat out asked, “Is it because of my preaching?” Both wardens gave a thoughtful look and said in unison, “Noooo, I don’t think that’s it.” I was a little disappointed.

     I don’t think we could have managed one more thing this Christmas season. I mean, wow. I am writing this on December 28th, and I feel like I am just getting to the point where I can let the past week soak in, and I feel an incredible amount of gratitude for all of you. I am going to something reckless and start naming a few ministries that went above and beyond. I know I am going to leave some out, for which I deeply apologize, but there is simply not enough room to include everyone who made Christmas at St. Luke’s so incredibly special.

            On Monday evening I was accidently part of the social media outrage machine. I strongly believe that social media should either be plainly informational or downright silly. When it comes to debating current issues or broadcasting opinions, I simply do not believe that Facebook is conducive to nuanced and compassionate discussion. With that being said, I posted a satirical video on Monday evening for Giving Tuesday pretending to be outraged that St. Luke’s does not sell access to online worship or charge to attend Christmas Eve services as a light-hearted way of encouraging people to financially support our ministries. Little did I know that at the same time the National Cathedral announced they were charging a seven dollar administrative fee to attend their Christmas services.

Friends,

         I would like a moment to talk to you plainly about our stewardship campaign. 

In order for us to thrive as a Church we need many things. The most important thing that we need is people who are called to gather to worship and do ministry. Another thing that we need is money, because without it, we cannot support the people in their ministry. People are far more important than money, and I would say that as a Church, we have our priorities properly aligned. On the people front we are thriving. We have seen many new faces come into the Church over the course of the past year, and a large portion of them have stayed to make St. Luke’s their home. I really do feel that we are doing something right, and there is something special happening at St. Luke’s!