Rector’s report to the parish 2011
I have been with y’all, with All saints, for seven years now….a year as Curate, a year as the interim Rector and five years as Rector. I still believe as I did when I accepted the call to be your rector, that All Saints is special inMobile, and that All Saints has a special calling inMobile. We are known for our being out in the community, “enacting the gospel,” (my words) or as many others say to me, we are consistently involved in organizations that help the least fortunate of our community. People are always telling me that…. and often they go on to say, “you know I really quit going to church a long while ago, but if I did go, I’d go to All Saints”…oh, if I had a dollar for everyone who’s said that to me! But we’re not a churchy church….and by that I mean we have an inquiring and, dare I say, skeptical (in a good way) ethos here regarding our life of faith, and I think that is very healthy. One who doesn’t question the faith has an inert faith. Our lives of faith should be ones of discovery, not a simplistic ascription to dogma.
Such a predisposition is not included in George Barna’s church growth formula, however. Barna has made millions and notoriety marketing church growth around the country….For a fee he guarantees exponential growth, if you’ll just follow the formula: praise bands, gyms and spas, non-liturgical worship, preaching on the prosperity that being a Christian brings….and most of all an insistence on developing a community of certainty and answers. But that’s not who we are as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, as members of All Saints parish. All Saints has a uniqueness even among Episcopal Churches in town. We believe, as Episcopalians and practice such a belief at All Saints, that we are duty bound to question matters of faith; though we hold fast to our creedal heritage, again, we are about discovery, not prescribed –isms. And we are duty bound to first and foremost serve our world…and that means imaginative critique as well as imaginative service and support within the world in which we live, locally and globally….we are to be agents of change, co-creators with our God….Our grandparents’ old, comfortable church, the proverbial hospital for sinners, is dying across denominational lines. We can no longer live for ourselves…we must live for the good of our world. I believe we are working hard at that here.
I believe All Saints continues to emerge as a church that will attract doing and thinking Christians, which means we won’t attract everybody….We will attract those who want to address the questions of life with integrity….We will attract those who don’t want easy answers, but are willing to do the hard work of faith, and discover that God is indeed with us in our pain and in our joy…unfortunately, that is a not-so-large demographic in our culture, because such a faith takes committed engagement…so our growth is and will be slow, but it is and will be solid. I’m preaching to the proverbial choir here, of course….but each of you knows of someone who belongs here…don’t you? Tell them about all that goes on here. Many of these folks you know already know…tell them we have one of the finest choirs in the city….tell them our worship is beautiful…our burials, our marriages…our high feasts like the one this past Sunday…from Sunday to Sunday we take most seriously that our worship is beautiful….perhaps because I’ve got enough English Major left in me to still believe that beauty changes things. So we are a church that also calls forth the multitude of talents that exist among our people here to create such beauty. And tell them that we are a genuinely welcoming and warm community.
You’ve heard over the months Clark Kelly’s financial assessment of the church….we’ve managed to do a whole lot here on a shoestring. For the past several years our finances have been quite literally a balancing act….and unfortunately that has been balanced to a great extent on the back of our giving to the diocese…that’s improving slowly as our finances improve slowly….but we have never turned our back to our neighbor, nor shall we. We will continue to be known as that beautiful church across from Griffith Shell that cares for her neighbors and who welcomes with open arms all who would come. I’m terribly proud of that…and I hope you are too. Let’s don’t keep what we’ve got to ourselves. Let’s let this year be the one when the friends we’ve been waiting on to make the leap to All Saints, make the leap….you may just have to give them more of a push…. they’ll come. Know once more that I am honored and proud to be your rector. God bless All Saints….may our work and worship and life together bear fruit beyond our knowing….and may the world we serve be better for it.
