December Newsletter Article, 2023

(Content produced for the community of Church of the Good Shepherd via its monthly newsletter)

One of the trickier things to nail down in any church is the concept of “membership.” For some people the term is nearly meaningless, but it can also be a loaded and intensely sensitive subject. Anyone can come for Sunday worship and everyone is allowed to visit, attend classes, give, and come to special events. This begs the question: why be a “member” at all?

The short answer is that membership has adequate Scriptural, historical, and theological warrant. As for the long answer—well, let’s dive in. In the Old Testament, membership in Judaism was defined by the race, nationality, culture, and language of the Jewish people. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks to and about Jews, but also—radically at that time—to and about people gathered in his name who existed outside of Judaism. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus teaches people who choose to follow him how they should treat each other. We have come to call these people the Body of Christ. As membership in Christ—defined solely by Baptism and not race, ethnicity, language, or anything “worldly”—grew, we see the disciples pray for leaders to be raised up (in Acts 1 and 6). These leaders serve the membership of Christ, take God to where people need Him, and make sure that the growing community is well stewarded and efficiently governed. Paul speaks directly to individual churches in Corinth and Ephesus (among others) in his letters. He encourages them in their local calling to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world and reminds them of their greater belonging (their membership) in Christ. Through time, we’ve seen Christ’s community continue to act and grow—to Baptize, make disciples, and raise up new leaders to serve in churches all over the world. We see how important it is to seek to know God as He is revealed in Scripture, in Jesus, and in each other in community because community means belonging—belonging to each other, to Jesus, and to God. Membership—belonging—moves past individual interests to something other and bigger than self. And with many members, a need for common rules and understanding exists.

For something so large as the worldwide Anglican Communion (with around 110 million members worldwide), the bureaucracy that grows out of a need to organize and steward membership can be astounding. On the business end of things, the term “membership” has bearing in almost everything we do: from how we count and record numbers of people in attendance on a given Sunday, to the way we manage our everyday ministry into the world, to how we are represented with votes and delegates in larger meetings of the Church. In other words, membership is too important to ignore. So how do we define it?

Currently, The Episcopal Church defines lay membership in three ways:

(1)    Baptized Members—All persons who have received the Sacrament of Baptism in a given Church. Baptism is full initiation and inclusion into the Body of Christ.

(2)    Adult Members—Baptized Members 16 years of age and over.

(3)    Members Confirmed or Received—Baptized/Adult Members confirmed or received by a Bishop. Confirmation may be looked at as initiation into the ministry of the Church.

Further, The Episcopal Church lists three ways of defining its lay members’ involvement:

(1)    Communicants—Members having received Holy Communion 3 times in the previous calendar year.

(2)    Adult Communicants—Members aged 16 and over who have received Holy Communion 3 times in the previous calendar year.

(3)    Communicants in Good Standing—Members who for the previous year have been faithful in worship and to the work, prayer, and giving for the spread of God’s Kingdom.

What’s important to note is how these definitions strengthen community. Healthy community has a habit of doing that—building us into more than we are alone by shaping us, guiding us, and even humbling us. In membership, Baptism is but a beginning. Beyond Baptism, we are challenged to continue and grow into ministry and relationship with God and each other, to proclaim our faith and connect it to the wider world, and to continue to worship, pray, and give for the spread of God’s Kingdom.

This is one of the reasons why only “Adult Members Confirmed or Received being a Communicant in Good Standing” are considered for leadership positions within Good Shepherd and the larger Church. We want leaders here to set a faithful example, and we are continually aiming to raise up members to lead in prayer, in worship, in welcoming, in governance, and in so many other ways in the life of our parish.

As Clergy—yet another distinct layer of church membership and leadership—Fathers Milton, Philip, Frank, and I seek to support you in your ministry of representing Christ and his Church, as you bear witness to him where he is, as you carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world, and as you take your place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.

So how do you fit in here? That is—where do you fall in the literal terms of membership? Are you fulfilled there? What is your growing edge? What do you feel driven to in your own heart? And how can we support you as you become—by expanding your participation and membership—in Christ and at Church of the Good Shepherd?

If you are interested in knowing more about the various layers of church membership, all your clergy welcome your questions, and we invite you to attend the Adult Inquirer’s Class on Sunday mornings in the new year.

May Newsletter Article, 2023

(Content produced for the community of Church of the Good Shepherd via its monthly newsletter)

Whether you’re gearing up for Buc Days, deciding on a Mother’s Day gift, celebrating the end of the school year, or preparing for summer, May is a busy month—blink and you’ll miss something!

Here at Good Shepherd, we are also in high gear:

—On May 7 at the 10:30AM service, we will celebrate 24 youth and adult confirmands as they affirm their faith. Our bishop, The Rt. Rev. David M. Reed, will pray over them in our annual service of Confirmation—this will be his last official visit to our Church before retirement.

—On May 21 at the 10:30AM service, we will showcase and celebrate our graduating seniors, acolytes, and children’s choir. After the service, our graduating acolytes will lead a training to raise up new leaders and welcome new acolytes to the fellowship and ministry.

—May 21 and May 24 conclude our Spring Sunday School and Wednesday Classes.

—On May 25-26, our beloved St. James Episcopal School will recognize the good work completed in this school year and graduate its 8th-Grade scholars in Celebration, Baccalaureate, and Graduation services.

—On May 28, we will begin our Summer Lectionary Study during the Sunday School Hour —diving deeper into God’s Word via the Scripture we hear on Sunday mornings.

In the midst of these things, we will observe the conclusion of the Easter Season, venerate Christ’s ascension into Heaven, and join with Christ’s disciples as they pray for their community and await the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, our Holy Advocate, to lead them—and us!—out into the world in love and service modeled in Christ’s life and ministry. We will also observe the historic arrival of that Spirit—the birthdate of the Church as we know it—on Pentecost Sunday, May 28.

The season of Pentecost recognizes where we exist today and every day—that Christ has gone on before us to prepare a place for us who take part in His ministry. In the same ways that we observe the coming and going of seasons, the rotation of our calendar perpetually forward, and mark our progress through life—another school year, another confirmation class, another graduating class, another passage of seasons—we recognize, too, that we live and minister and wait for some great thing beyond ourselves and our expectations. And Christian waiting is never an idle thing—ministry doesn’t break for summer. We participate in Christ all along the way by continuing to come together in worship and in prayer, by gathering around the Lord’s table, going out to do the work of His Kingdom, and by raising up new generations to follow us.

Month to month, season to season, year after year—our lives look and feel a little different, but the same wonderful opportunities to gather and follow Christ in His ministry await us—to know him in each other and to share him with those who know not yet of him. In this way, Pentecost is the season of Christian life and work.

Summer may feel a little different with its change of pace and routine—but summer is no less busy. June brings Vacation Bible School (June 12-16) and the hundreds of young lives it shapes. We’ll be called to pray for our Youth Group as it travels to Camp Duncan Park in Colorado. And, as always, we’ll have opportunities to gather in fellowship and to learn about Christ as we wait, minister, and take joy in all God does for us.

No matter where this new season pulls you, we hope you’ll join us in fellowship, worship, and prayer to change lives and share Christ.

William+

Christmas Message, 2022

(Content produced for the Central and South Texas Regional Newsletter of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem and for the community of Saint James Episcopal School, Corpus Christi, Texas)

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.            Philippians 4:7 (Authorized Version)

I repeat Paul’s words from his letter to the Philippians almost every Sunday as part of the blessing concluding the Holy Eucharist. And while the primary feeling most Christians assign to the seasons of Advent and Christmas is hope, God’s Peace is what I most long for during Advent. God’s Peace is also what I sense most profoundly in Christmas.

In my youth, I attended a boarding school outside of Philadelphia. There, on snowy winter evenings, I can remember savoring the passage from the well-lit warmth and (loud) camaraderie within those residential and academic halls to the intense quiet of snow falling outside. I had experienced it before—the natural phenomenon of snowy silence—mostly on ski trips with family and friends, but never with such acute awareness as my first winter away at school. For this Texas boy, there was so much snow. And so much quiet.

There is a profound, beautiful, and awe-inspiring quiet in Christmas. It comes only after all the anxiety of Advent and the work of Christmas Day is done—the lights and decor, shopping and giving, the flurry of parties and pageantry, family and friends, and all the pains we take to master the needs, wants, and problems of daily life. When there is nothing left to do or to be anxious over peace enters and allows, if only for a moment, us to sit back and enjoy the gifts present in the day.

Of course, there is reason behind the quiet of snow: air-filled gaps between ice crystals in each unique snowflake act to break up and absorb sound waves as the snow falls through the air and further to insulate surfaces that naturally reflect sound. And as sound travels along the earth it is naturally drawn upward as it interacts with cooler air aloft. The result is marvelous quiet.

And peace? We can find reason there, too. Peace hints at there being nothing left over which to hold anxiety. With Christmas comes a gift of the peace of God—the same which Paul says “passeth all understanding.” It is important to remember the Christ we celebrate lived a fully human life. He bore its burdens, suffered its heartaches, and died its death to eliminate our need for the seeking, striving, desiring, and hurrying we too often allow to distract from our relationships. When we give those over to him there is nothing left for us to do except to take joy in God and in each other. This is Christ’s gift to us as God with us, as Emmanuel.

In both snow and Christmas, the demands for comfort and of the day beg we take leave of such wonderment. However, when we give ourselves over to Christ and allow him to keep our hearts and our minds—to bear our sufferings for us continually—the peace we know on Christmas Day extends a moment longer than the day itself, a snowfall, and even a lifetime. Such peace is truly worthy of our longings. This year, I pray you may delight in the peace of God for the wonderful gift it truly is.

May His Peace gather us to joy, to each other, and to Him today and everyday.

Merry Christmas!

William+

The Emerging Problem of Emergence Anxiety

(Content produced for the June 2021 COTGS Newsletter)

Lately, it feels like we are on the cusp of reentering a more-or-less “normal” way of life. Pandemic-warranted mandates are being lifted (at last!), and those little things that so many of us took for granted before March of last year—opportunities for closeness to each other and to see smiles unhindered by masks—are starting to emerge like so many flowers after too long a winter.

For the most part, I find that I am letting my excitement outshine my very real anxieties. After all, I still have a toddler and an infant well-under the vaccination age at home to consider. And even though I’ve read dozens of articles about how children are rarely severely impacted by COVID-19, if I’m to be completely honest, then I have to admit that I am still almost as fearful of the prospect of locking down again as a family unit if someone gets sick as I am of the sickness itself (I say as I push away the temptation to enter the fear-center of my parent brain—all those hideous “what if-s”).

And those anxieties are joined by others. How do I keep up the healthy practices I developed to cope with and stay connected through the pandemic while I look forward to and begin to live again into my pre-pandemic workload and expectations?

On May 14, 2021, The Church Times (U.K.) reported on the dramatic increase of people seeking mental health referrals in the United Kingdom citing an increase in demand for people to deliver more than ever before: their traditional working roles being added to by new demands for online presence alongside often diminished financial and human resources. To sum it up, we had to pivot in our personal and working lives in big ways to deal with COVID, and now we must pivot again to emerge and return. And I do not know about you, but I am still exhausted from the first set of changes!

Studies such as I mention demand that we ask questions: How are you adapting to the ever-changing environment of “new normal”? and How are you coping with change (or are you coping at all)? Because merely acknowledging the fact that this change (even when it’s back to “normal”) is difficult is a huge step forward for our mental health. It is not enough to heal—we have work to do to be made whole again.

Too often, I think, in the Gospels we focus on the miraculous, especially in terms of Jesus’s healing ministry, without giving much thought to what those healings mean—long term—to the lives of those made well. Consider, for example, when Jesus cleanses a leper in chapter 8 of Matthew. In the first century, lepers were not only considered unclean (which had physical, spiritual, relational, and communal dimensions), but as living in a state of physical death. They were cast out from their families and communities and forced into stigmatized isolation—viewed and mourned as dead by their families, friends, and neighbors. Sound familiar? Can you imagine rejoining the society that had both left you for and considered you dead? But Jesus follows up this healing with these instructions: “…go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to the people” (Matthew 8:4, RSV). The healing was just the first part—the personal and social restoration to wholeness for this individual is a separate matter.  And to start that work, Jesus tells this restored person to go, worship, and give thanks as an initial aspect of reentering society and acknowledging a monumental change in life.

Moving on from COVID is more than being vaccinated and lifting the rules—we have work to do as individuals and as community to emerge. Like the leper, we all have things to celebrate, but also to grieve, move past, reconcile, and offer anew (and renewed!) as we seek a return to wholeness and “normalcy.” But this work is too important to leave unattended—undone, it can produce anxiety that interrupts healthy relationships with ourselves, each other, and God. This work takes time, and we are going to need to help each other through it. But I look forward to that work with you all in the coming months.

A Reading from Matthew

8:1 When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; 2 and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” 3 He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (NRSV).

Is it Easter yet?

(Content produced for the April 2021 COTGS Newsletter)

Since we didn’t get to celebrate Easter together last year as a Church family, I’ve heard many people say that this past year of pandemic has felt like an extended Lent. It’s a great simile—and if we do the math, then come Easter Day, we will have observed Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness “with prayer, fasting, and self-denial” for a whopping 402 days. And in each of those days we have been tempted in ways similar to how Christ himself was tempted: the devil has tempted us to worry over food (among other “essentials”), he has tempted us to throw ourselves down in despair and in loss and in fear, and—perhaps most pointedly—he has tempted us away from our habit of gathering together to worship God.

We have spent 402 days in a season filled with changes designed to save lives—to protect ourselves and those around us—but what about our eternal lives? Psychologists estimate that it takes, on average, 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. By this Easter, we will have had 6-times that amount. That is sobering to contemplate.

As our state reopens and more and more of us become vaccinated, I find myself wondering: when can church get back to “normal” again? And it seems that my family and I are continually revisiting the question of what is an “acceptable risk” to take? Where do we start?

These are questions we are all asking ourselves, and the answers will differ for each person and family. And they may change from day to day and week to week. I encourage you to keep thinking about returning to worship in person with us. It may not be the right time for you this week, but maybe it will be the week after that.

These days it has more meaning to me that Christ was rather patient with the devil tempting him in all ways except for one: when the devil tempted him to stop worshiping God. In that moment, Christ immediately called out, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matthew 4:10, RSV). At those words, the devil left Christ’s presence. What’s more: angels came to minister to him.

As we approach the Easter season this year, I am so very looking forward to celebrating Christ’s defeat of death and Satan once and for all! It is my earnest prayer that you will be able to join us in person on our great Festival Day. And if you are not ready for that yet, I pray that you will be encouraged to stand fast in your faith as you continue to worship with us online. I can hardly wait to greet you in our Risen Lord’s name.

An Invitation to Worship in Lent

(Content produced for the February 2021 COTGS Newsletter)

With the beginning of the season of Lent this month, our church family is diving into a congregation-wide study of The Letter to the Hebrews through a 6-week course with daily devotions by The Rev. Charlie Holt. However you choose to join—in Munds Hall with Fathers Milton and Philip, with me and other parents of young families in Dobbins Hall Adult Classroom, in small groups within your social bubbles, or on your own at home—you should keep in mind that even though the letter is addressed “to the Hebrews” it is written primarily for people who are already believers. It is not an evangelical work written to convince Hebrew people to believe in Jesus, but a word of exhortation—a sermon—calling for endurance within an audience that has suffered hardship and persecution, and which is beginning to fall away from its faith.

This study is very well timed. I feel like the whole of this last year—and we’ll mark a year of COVID-19 in south Texas next month—has been not only an extended Lent, but a time of hardship where something we cannot see and only barely understand is keeping us from loving one another and gathering in the name and love of God in the ways we always have. We sorely need what Hebrews provides—a “word of encouragement” (to quote Hebrews 13:22, CEB)—to our faith through better understanding of our absolute need for Christ’s presence in our lives. After all, Christ—Hebrews reminds us—is the primary and superior example of faithfulness to the whole world: he crosses the divide between God and humanity; he endures all trials alongside us; and he pours out himself so that we may all come closer to God and to each other.

I invite you to start digging deeply into the messages and story of Hebrews this month that it may sustain you and your faith through a renewed understanding of Christ as he exists and inspires us yesterday and today and for all time.

SCRIPTURE:

“He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful world” (Hebrews 1:3, NRSV)

Advent Already?

(Content produced for the December 2020 COTGS Newsletter)

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time believing that Advent is here. Credit that how you may: from “COVID-tide” (Advent 1 marks 260 days and counting—and all the restrictions and guidelines and protocols and quarantines that have gone with it), to it having been a contentious election year, to just being, well, tired. Not that the lead-up to Christmas is ever truly refreshing anyway, right? I feel like I’ve been “expectantly waiting” and “preparing” enough this year already, even if this year is looking to be somewhat quieter than those to which I’ve grown accustomed. Anyone else with me? So I have found myself feeling especially nonplussed about entering a season that is all about “expectantly waiting” and “preparing” myself and my life for Christmas.

However, that feeling—of being jaded or fatigued or “here we go again” or of “once more into the breach” (to quote Shakespeare’s Henry V)—is an important part of what Advent is all about. I think most adults can speak to the moment in their lives that Christmas went from being a season of wonder and excitement to one of anxiety and stress and/or profound loneliness. There are times when we all struggle to follow Christ with the child-like vigor that Jesus tells us is essential to faith, and I believe that Christmas is both especially hard on us and especially revealing about the current status of our faith. Jesus addresses this issue himself when he says, “And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:12). But Christ also says, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). The struggle is to keep our faith brilliant and new even though the world—life in the flesh—works so hard to tarnish it.

So what can we do to renew that childlike faith to which God calls us?

Something I’ve taken great delight in this year has been our congregation-wide study of The Story, and I think that it has helped to keep us (and me) relatively on-track throughout the struggle of 2020. Now that’s over, too, but The Story hasn’t left us without tools to polish our faith into renewed brilliance. Revelation—the last book of the New Testament (and the focus of the last chapter of The Story)—gives us a glimpse into the renewal of life to which God calls us: a new heaven and earth; a new Jerusalem; a new garden; and a new relationship with God as He intends. And in Revelation, John of Patmos is instructed to write to churches to plead with them to renew their faith. He writes, “Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Rev. 2:5a). Remember, repent, and do the works you did at first. That’s needed advice.

With all that COVID-19 has taken from us this year, I think it is also giving us an opportunity to renew the ways we approach the seasons of Advent and Christmas: without the baggage of dozens of parties, the chaos of shopping in crowded stores, and non-stop busyness. And I would urge you to take some time to think about this unprecedented opportunity:

• take some time to remember what made your childhood holidays special (or not special)

• think about what has changed (or not changed) to dull them

• repent—admit and leave behind—those things that dull

• hold fast to the things that brighten this holy season and holy day: the wonder and the excitement of new (and renewed) faith in Jesus Christ.

Something Worth Sharing

(Content produced for the October 2020 COTGS Newsletter)

When was the last time that you shared joy? I’m not talking about the last time you experienced joy. Rather, when was the last time that you shared a joyful experience from your everyday with someone?

I cannot begin to tell you how many times in the last six months on phone calls and Zoom meetings I’ve asked, “How are you doing?” only to hear in reply something generic like: “Oh, we’re getting by,” “We’re surviving,” “We’re doing OK,” “We’re making this work,” … Truth be told, I’ve become more adept than I’d like in answering that question with platitudes, too. Sharing something personal can be exhausting (and my call sheets are long)—it’s easy to shrug off those kinds of questions. That’s true even with the joyful news that I do have to share: like that my daughter has taken her first steps and is becoming quite the chatterbox, or that Claire and I are expecting our second child, a baby boy, in mid-November.

But even though it can be exhausting, we need to share more. I feel lucky when I get a little more: when I get to listen as someone shares with me their experiences even when they are moments of frustration or anger or loneliness or sadness or even profound loss. And, further, I feel truly blessed when someone shares their joy, because no matter how exhausted I have found myself I have learned that one person’s experience of joy in reply to “How are you doing?” can change the course of my entire week. Joy spreads joy.

I have faith that we have more to share—especially joy.

Why is this important? Studies in psychology teach us that the greatest predictors of depression in adults is anxiety and lack of control over things in our lives—especially negative inputs over long periods of time. For months now, it has felt like we have either had a deadly disease or that we have been freaked out that we may get a deadly disease; or that we have either lost part of our income or that we’re freaked out that we’re about to lose it all; or that we have either been home or lonely too long or that we feel like we can’t do the things we normally do to recharge. And since it is not unusual for parents to shoulder the burdens of their kids, I know that families are especially vulnerable.

Between COVID-19, months of isolation, hurricanes, anxiety, and everything else, I think that a focus on joy is what we need right now since joy is a Christian response to things, well, “not joyous.” After all, Paul claims joy as being a fruit of the Spirit (second only to love) in his letter to the Galatians. Joy is good fruit we can share to uplift and to keep our spirits high in these uncertain times.

And my prayer is that as the monotony of this worldwide grief sandwich continues, you are able to continue to find joy in your everyday and then make the effort to share it—to spread that joy in all the world.

SCRIPTURE: By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things (Galatians 5:22-23, NRSV).

Being a Bright Light in a Dimly Lit World

(Content produced for the August 2020 COTGS Newsletter)

I have spent a lot of the past few months trying to think of the best way to rally and respond to the pandemic and everything else ongoing in our world. It has really been eating at me: mind, body, and spirit. And through all I have struggled to remain patient while I see work needing to be done. Especially because as the world around us struggles to acknowledge and deal with the widespread fear and uncertainty of our present moment, we Christians have knowledge of something that can really help—love.

Love stands as the foundation of Christ’s teaching, as Christ states in John’s Gospel: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12, NRSV). Likewise, love is our primary vehicle to understanding God as He is present in the world. In his letters, John explains that knowledge of love is knowledge of God, because God is love (paraphrase, First John 4:8), and he goes on to say that love and fear cannot coexist—that perfect love casts out fear (paraphrase, First John 4:18). The rise in fear, then, would seem to imply a decline in love in our world, which is problematic.

Even before the pandemic, rising rates of people who admit feelings of fear and anxiety have been well documented: in the 12-years from 2006 to 2018 the percentage of Americans claiming to have experienced worry, “during a lot of the day yesterday” rose 11 percent—to 45 percent of the population; feelings of stress rose 9 percent—to 55 percent (source: Gallup, “Americans’ Stress, Worry and Anger Intensified in 2018” by Julie Ray). Keep in mind that that information is two-years old! We know 2020 has those figures skyrocketing. And stress isn’t limited to adults: 55 percent of parents have reported that their child or children have been acting out more since the pandemic began and 71 percent of parents are worried about the impact the pandemic is having on their child or children’s social development (source: American Psychological Association, “Stress in the Time of COVID-19”). No matter how we choose to count it, fear and anxiety has been on the rise—and the pandemic is bringing the crisis of fear into focus.

Personally, I have always chalked the rise in fear and anxiety to the national and world-wide decline in church attendance. I think there is a real need for people to know who they are and Whose they are—to understand that God created us out of love in order that we might share love. And Christ does not call us to keep the knowledge we have to ourselves but to share it. In Mark, Christ commissions his disciples, saying, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15, NRSV). Discipleship is sharing Christ’s good news—that of the nearness of God and His kingdom and His love for us all. Since Scripture is constantly calling us out of fear and into something more, Christians have a responsibility to stand up to the fear and anxiety we see in the world in the ways that Christ teaches us: to love God and neighbor as one’s own self, to give over all fears and anxieties to God, and to wait patiently for His coming.

Certainly, love is a great start towards living into the truths evident throughout Scripture, but what is complicating a loving response to fear and anxiety, even in Christian circles, is how differently COVID-19 is requiring us to demonstrate love. The questions still remains: how can we respond to fear with love when the typical ways we express love are met with fear?

The answer, I’ve found, is not simple or clear. But we must be more patient and persistent than ever before in our love, in our worship, and with staying connected with who and Whose we are if we are going to stay ready to respond when we are, at last, able. We must keep seeking to worship Him in whatever ways we can. We must keep calling and encouraging each other—being open to talking about our fears and love with each other. We must find ways—however small—of being light in our darkened world in small ways. We must keep praying.

Being patient in our world is hard, but rest assured that there will be plenty of work to do when the time comes—and that time will come soon enough.

A Pandemic-era Letter to Church of the Good Shepherd

(Content produced for the June 2020 COTGS Newsletter)

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In late March, as the Coastal Bend entered its second week of sheltering in place, I began reaching out within our Church family to see how those of you with children were doing juggling so many things. What stands out to me still from those conversations are the ways that you were acknowledging this time—however long and however fraught—as unprecedented gift.

In the months that have passed since, I have given thanks to God for your perspective. I have been especially thankful that many of you asked that I pray for you, too—that you continue to keep this time framed as gift—because I think we have each struggled to hold onto the good during all of the chaos. Through praying for you I have come to understand better this time as gift, too—albeit one that I also pray earnestly never to experience again.

That is my prayer and challenge for those of you reading this: that you, too, might consider what gift there is during this time, despite the worldwide pandemic: that you name it and that you seek ways to perpetuate that goodness even when all of this is over.

Because even though these past months have been filled with unique and exhausting challenges, anxieties, and fears, there have also been opportunities for connection in our relationships with God and within our families that are worth finding ways of holding onto after the pandemic has passed.  But if we do not name them, then we run the risk of allowing this time—this virus—to consume even the good God has revealed to us along the way.

Keep fighting the good fight and hold fast to what is good—I look forward to hearing about what gifts you’ve named when we are able to gather together again in His name.

William+