Get your Church Healthy and Keep it That Way

Fr. Mark EldredgeArticles, Canon for Congregations

This is often the time of year that many churches have their Annual Parish Meetings, approve budgets, hold Vestry Retreats, and generally think about and cast vision for the church moving forward. As this is a good time of year to be reflecting on these matters, may I suggest that, as you do, part of your vision and goal setting include focusing on how to get and/or keep your church healthy?

The church is the living body of Christ, and living things (if healthy) naturally grow as God designed them to. How can you focus on being healthy this year? By focusing on simply doing the things Jesus instructed the church to do. And, what did he tell the church to do? Although you can find the answers to that question throughout the Bible, like in the description of the first local church in Acts 2:42-47, Jesus was kind enough to summarize it for us in two key scriptures: The Great Commandment and The Great Commission.

Through the Prayers of Many

Comms Dir Samuel HorowitzArticles

The ordination service for a priest includes the Examination, in which vows are made with the response, “I will, the Lord being my helper”. How wonderfully often the tangible evidence of the Lord’s help comes through human agents who encourage, exhort and guide us by their prayers to God on our behalf! I thank God that my pathway to priesthood has been so blessed and formed “through the prayers of many.”

Report from New Wineskins 2022

Canon Keith AllenArticles

Be the one. See the one. Share the ONE. The Gulf Atlantic Diocese, under the leadership of Bishop Alex, is poised to raise up and deploy missionaries to our neighborhoods and to the nations.

Petra 2022 Retreat Recap

Comms Dir Samuel HorowitzArticles

Petra is a diocesan ministry founded and led by young adults to serve young adults. Built to meet the need for an organized ministry to connect young adults across the Gulf Atlantic, its centerpiece is the Petra retreat, an annual summer event incorporating Biblical teaching and corporate recreation. This year’s retreat, held from May 19 through 22, was based on Ephesians 6:13: “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” Scripture teaches that humanity is involved in a spiritual war of cosmic proportions in which every soul is at stake. To stand, Christians must arm themselves with the armament God has provided them in Christ.

A Parting Blessing

Marcia LebharArticles

A parting blessing. My mother used to say it as we said goodbye for any length of time, like when I was returning to boarding school or college. “May the Lord watch between me and thee while we are apart, one from the other” (Genesis 31:49-50). It sounds so affectionate, lovely. I only learned later, and I wonder if she ever knew, that it was actually spoken between Laban and Jacob as a prayer for accountability. It expresses the suspicion of wrongdoing and the uneasy peace that marred their relationship. In truth it’s more like the refrain of the Christmas song, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, warning little kids that Santa “knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”

Heavenly Food

Marcia LebharArticles

I once had a quirky unemotional vision. A waking dream. I wondered for years if it was a function of an overactive imagination or a spicy lunch. I’ve always said that since God made me, he knows how low he has to aim to get me right between the eyes. Still, if this was a message from God it somehow missed me.

Ditch the Scolding Bias?

Marcia LebharArticles

An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God. (David Benner, … Read More

Confidential Conversation

Marcia LebharArticles

Moses met the Lord in the tent of meeting in the wilderness. God arranged it for private conversation. Can you imagine it? Friendly conversation with the Creator, Redeemer, God of Israel? While the word of the Lord comes to various prophets in various ways, Moses is the only one in the Hebrew Scriptures whom we are told has this kind of intimate conversation with God…as one speaks to a friend

Slow Learners in Advent

Marcia LebharArticles

My whimsical dad was known for his tongue-in-cheek pithy sayings. Growing up, I would have said he repeated them ad nauseum. Now I’d give just about anything to hear him repeat one, just one more … Read More

Remembrance and Recovery: A Thanksgiving Exercise

Marcia LebharArticles

The fall holiday season is here. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Charlie Brown specials! Are they even on network TV anymore? To me, the most endearing and memorable feature of those shows was the unintelligible voice of every adult. Teacher and parent alike were heard only as a blurry, slow, muted trumpet sort of sound. Waaah-wah-wa-wa-waaah. Remember it?

The Big Lie

Marcia LebharArticles

There is a Big Lie out there, one that is both ancient and contemporary, and it eclipses all the “big lies” we are so accustomed to hearing about in the media. This is the Big Lie: God cannot be trusted, so you’d better do something, and fast!

We’re spending the year considering the cohesive story of the Scriptures, seeing it as a narrative tapestry with threads, themes, running through it, start to finish. My friend Canon Mary Hays contends that at the heart of sin there is always a lie. And the more I think about it, this truth emerges as a bright thread of warning in the biblical narrative.

Summer Gardens

Marcia LebharArticles

The ecstasy. The agony. Toiling in the Florida heat, ignited by hope and visions of glorious produce, I, along with my tribe of grandchildren gardeners, put in the labor. We clear the plot, dig it up and enrich the soil. Once we’ve planted, we weed, water, and watch it. After much waiting comes the mystery of harvest: big warm tomatoes, perfectly round and sweet, crunchy cucumbers, a handful of blueberries. It brings to mind Jesus’ parable in Mark 4 of the farmer who sows his field and it sprouts and grows but “he has no idea how it happens.” It is all some kind of miracle.