November 11, 2023
Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal Day School
Augusta, GA

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

These words from the collect in Evening Prayer kept calling to me this year. I was drawn to this prayer as this is an invitation to the Living God. I mentioned in my Address that as we arrived in Kingsland, we had a vision for a church that was essential to the community around it. The other thing we said in those days was that we wanted to do something for God that if the Holy Spirit did not show up, we would fall flat on our faces and look like idiots. The vision had to be big enough to fail, save for God’s action.

There were times during that decade of work that I wished we had a vision small enough to accomplish on our own. And yet, I found time and again the ways in which what was unfolding was not our doing. In church planting circles, what we were doing was starting a church from scratch, rather than being the daughter church of a larger congregation nearby. From scratch. Once we were doing the work, I could see how I would meet someone and invite them to be a part of this new community and would hear all the ways in which the Holy Spirit had long been preparing the soil for that seed to take root.

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

Kindling new fire took a bit of faith in the first centuries of the Church. They were blissfully unaware of Bic lighters and all too familiar with the struggle to spark a fire from scratch. Yet, in the earliest Christians would extinguish their lights on Good Friday, wait across the uncertainty of Holy Saturday and spark new fire for the Easter Vigil.

The darkness on that long night of Good Friday into a hopeless dawn left the disciples in deep grief. The light of the Glory of God that had been revealed in the face of Jesus had gone out for ever. The first followers of Jesus were flat on their faces, looking like idiots to everyone who had seen and heard them proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah. And what happened next in the resurrection relied solely on the Holy Trinity. The kindling. The awakening. These were the Spirit’s actions. This is why sparking a new fire for the Easter Vigil became such a powerful symbol of how God can and does make a way where there is no way.

There are times when it all seems too much. A church is too heavy to carry. Y’all know this. If ever someone is preaching to the choir, it is me telling y’all a church can be heavy. And a Diocese is more than any of us could possibly carry. The Good News is that we don’t have to and we shouldn’t try. This Church belongs to the Holy Trinity. There is a savior and that savior is not me and it is none of you either.

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

We are not waiting in darkness. We do have the light of Christ and there are many ways that I am already seeing the sparks, the evidence of God doing something new.

This past year, I met several times with a couple who hoped to do something to help turn around the present situation of our not having enough priests to serve our churches. They decided to make an anonymous gift to the Diocese of Georgia creating the Great and Small Fund to assist with the expenses of those studying for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Georgia, hoping that they can make the path possible for the people God is calling to serve as priests. Their gift of a quarter million dollars is most generous and helpful. I join them in hoping that their donation will spark generosity from others who will add to the fund, growing the opportunity for us to raise up a new generation of priests and with your support, a generation of priests after that one. Their hope gave me hope and it came at a time when some of the other sparks I am seeing are the many people stepping forward to discern a call to serve as a deacon or priest.

Dr. Bertice Berry and Becky Dorrell are both candidates for the diaconate finishing up the Deacons’ School for Ministry, following not too long after I ordained the Rev. Noelle Raiford as a deacon. We have Shelley Martin, Brenda Brunston, and Roger Speer studying full-time at Sewanee where Doug McPherson and Jim Strickland are studying to serve bi-vocationally in the ACTS Program and Ken Shrader is finishing up his internships that followed those studies as he prepares for bi-vocational ministry. We have Ethan White as a full-time student at Virginia Seminary. Brandon Medley continues to work in the Colquitt County School, while taking part in a new Hybrid program at General Seminary. Brandon has taught fifth grade for 14 years and he gets to stay in that vocation while taking part in this four year long Masters program. In December, I will ordain Shayna Cranford and Kimberly to the priesthood two weeks apart from each other.

And I am discerning with 12 other people who are discerning calls to serve as Deacons and Priests. Among these are three people who feel called to be deacons and four others who feel called to the priesthood who will meet with the Commission on Ministry and Standing Committee during a retreat at Honey Creek in January. And there are three more people feeling called to be deacons and two others who feel called to be priests who are in earlier stages of discernment.

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

The Holy Spirit is active in the hearts and minds of parishioners of the Diocese of Georgia. This is as true for most of the parishioners of our congregations who will never be called to serve in Holy Orders, yet they do have God given gifts they are called to use in the work, at home, and at church. We have seen this in faithful wardens and treasurers and an ECW member in the convention videos. We have seen this in the persons who were given the Deacons’ Award, Deans’ Award, and Bishop’s Award. If we have eyes to see, the sparks of what the Spirit is kindling in our midst are all around. When we see those sparks for what they are, God making a way where there seemed to be no way, then the fire follows in our hearts and hope is awakened.

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

There are so many times throughout the year when I say to myself or exclaim aloud, “Now, God you are just showing off.” There are so many times when I see that the work that God is doing to kindle hearts and awaken hope is more than I could have asked for or imagined. I get to show up and see the fruit of that kindling in baptisms, confirmations, and receptions and in seeing people stepping forward in faith, trusting that God will show up.

So I know that if we spend some time not in making something happen, but in prayerfully discerning, the Spirit will use that faithfulness. This has been my message to search committees and vestries for 13 years of discernment work on calling a priest. I have told many of you that this work is first and foremost an act of prayer. The whole church can and should take part. We should pray expecting the Living God to guide us. I have named again and again that if we enter a call process and at the end we can say we made a good business decision, we will have worked so hard that we missed the Spirit’s presence in our midst. And so many times, we have reached the end of a search being able to name how we were surprised by what God did do, the ways the Holy Spirit did enter into the search.

Kindle our hearts and awaken hope.

If we want to return to the next convention with a strategic plan in place, we need to begin, continue, and end in prayerful discernment. First and foremost, the need is to pray and to wait. We need to ask God to reveal the next steps and we need to not take any action in absence of seeing God’s direction, or we will end up with something that is merely a smart move or a good business decision. God will be with us, but we will have missed God’s perfect will. If, instead, we pray, really pray, and expect the Holy Spirit to guide us, there will be ways in which we see the sparks of a fire we never dreamed of kindling. We will find a hope that is sure and certain. For the true missionary is God, the real work is being done by Jesus. We are given the grace to be on the team.

Amen.