I’ve just received the semi-annual newsletter from Michael and April Floyd. Michael was my Old Testament professor at the Seminary of the Southwest…April ran the refectory, and marshaled a cast of liturgical dancers who from time to time participated in our Thursday Eucharist. Last year we supported them financially through proceeds from the Bayou Bash in their ministry to the Dominican Republic. They were there to establish an Episcopal Seminary. That has happened, and now they have moved to Ecuador to do the same thing. The Episcopal diocese of Ecuador has only sixteen congregations, down from thirty just a few years ago, due to an embezzlement by the bishop, who has just now been removed… and is in dire need of competent clergy to restart the diocese. Michael Floyd’s job is to teach and prepare the next generation of Ecuadorian priests.
I marvel at their fortitude. Can you imagine? They live in Quito whose predominant language is Spanish, but a third of the population speaks some twenty different indigenous dialects. The Floyds already spoke Spanish, but now they have had to immerse themselves in learning the native tongues. They are committed to the Anglican persuasion of Christianity to the extent that they have left friends and family in Austin and Holland and Taiwan to live some ten thousand feet up in the Andes to prepare people for ministry. They give me hope that there is a future for the church.
The word apostle means, “the sent one.” I don’t know what difference they will make…but I know they will make a difference because of their living a life of sacrifice, intelligently and imaginatively…they are not naive, immature Christians…they’ve been around the block, as it were… and they are living into their apostolic life….living into being sent out for God’s greater good. In the newsletter Michael looked older than I had remembered him…but it has been ten years since seminary….He looked older, but joyful standing at the altar in a struggling congregation soon to be a seminary as well. The Floyds rely on support from friends and supporters in the U.S. because the church there hasn’t the funds to pay them…but they persist…they persist for the sake of the gospel…they embody a life of faith.
As Christian folk let us own up to our being sent out….sent out from our comfort zones…sent out to do God’s work where it is needed most, wherever that may be….Let us own up to our being named apostle….for God depends on us…the sent ones…for there is no one else.
