Migration, Mission...and Ninjas?

Well, last Sunday was my first at St. Edward's, San Jose and it seems like a good start. Just getting used to a new and much bigger worship space was a challenge for me but, as I said "no one got hurt." It is a joy to see folks with such a great attitude in the face of all that they have been through. It is pretty new to me to be personally involved in the fallout from folks departing the Episcopal Church for Anglican splinter groups, but that is where I've ended up by being here. Part and parcel of that is my increased awareness of, and rumination on, what is distinctive about the Episcopal Church alongside other churches. One answer to this is the Around One Table initiative to facilitate the discussion of identity. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the folks at King of Peace in Kingsland, GA (where my friend Frank Logue serves) have come up with an answer (and then revised it)...Episconinjas:



I think that the video describes things pretty well--though it focuses on social service and hits the liturgical richness of our tradition pretty lightly. However, social service is much more likely to be attractive to the non-churched than a description of our worship, at least at first. Well done!

At the same time as the above video has been spreading across the Internet like wildfire, news that the Roman Catholic Church is providing a "home to traditional Anglicans" (to use one headline), making it easier for disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians to move to the Roman Catholic Church. There has been a huge amount of reaction to this announcement, which I will not attempt to summarize here. My own reaction is that God really doesn't care what flavor of Christianity the disciples of Jesus Christ follow. We will not be carrying our denominational labels into eternity with us. For that reason, I'm perfectly happy to see any development that will allow those who are genuinely feeling estranged from their current denomination, and thus perhaps hobbled in their ability to fully live into their identities as followers of Jesus, to find a place where they believe they can more fully live out their God-calling. I couldn't move to the Roman Catholic Church myself (for both personal and professional reasons), but if that is where folks are feeling called, Godspeed and blessings on their journey.

As for me and this congregation--9 a.m. every Sunday, alternating Rite I and Rite II, standard Episcopal fare. Come one, come all!

Pastor, Packer, and Painter

This morning, I presided at my final Eucharist at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Albany, Oregon. This afternoon, I led a service of the Blessing of the Animals commemorating St. Francis of Assisi. That service was my final liturgical act at St. Alban's. I have said many goodbyes, and will say many more this week, but for now both mind and body turn towards preparation. I must pack my office and ship books and papers to my new office at St. Edward's Episcopal Church in San Jose, California. I must complete the packing of our house into our moving POD. I must repaint some rooms at my house and prepare it for sale. I must do all of this, with a little help, in the next several days before I leave Albany on Thursday.

For that reason, this will not be a long post and you will not see more posts from me until at least my first Sunday at St. Edwards, October 18. Until then, I am officially in transition!

Moving "The Library" and Thinking Ministry

As you might imagine, I am in the midst of packing up my church office and preparing boxes to be transported to my office at St. Edward's. As I do so, I am struck again by how many books I have accumulated over a mere thirteen-plus years of ordained ministry. Book accumulation is both a personal inclination and a professional near-necessity. Yet as I begin to sort through this decade-and-a-half (includes three years in seminary) accumulation, I am struck not only by the volume and variety, not to mention the many that I have either not read at all or not read in a decade or more, but that most of the information I get now is most readily accessible via the Internet. Why do I need a big heavy tome of "Who's Who in the Bible" when a couple of keystrokes can get me the same information? The answer, most of the time, is that I don't. Hence the "donate" pile grows ever larger.

As I think about that, and about ministry in general, two things strike me. First, that this readily accessible information fits in a bit too neatly with our culture's frantic pace. Rather than walking over to the bookshelf, bringing back a book or three to my desk, and bending over the desk for some serious, protracted, and substantial research, doing things like sermon preparation too easily fall into the "check the Internet" temptation. Want to know what others have written on that? Check the Internet. Want a good sermon illustration? Check the Internet. Don't get me wrong, I'm in many ways a child of the Internet, and I grew up (and will now once again be ministering) in Silicon Valley, so I am hardly averse to technology. Yet a computer screen is necessarily a less prayerful and deliberate medium than the pages of a book. As I transition to this new call, perhaps there are some lessons to be learned there.

Second, I have been working my way through Kevin Martin's "5 Keys for Church Leaders". The first key he explores is that of the myth of the Pastor as CEO. His point is that in the twenty-first century, the Pastor or Priest is less the all-knowing expert and much more the group facilitator and encourager. I'm realizing that if I had actually read all of the books I own, I would have a huge amount of knowledge--only a fraction of which would likely be useful to me in the day-to-day activities of pastoral ministry. As someone who loves books and learning, it will be good for me to remember that.

Back to book sorting.....

New Call: St. Edward's, San Jose

As my current congregation is now aware, I have been called to, and accepted, a position as Priest-in-Charge of the Episcopal Church of St. Edward the Confessor (otherwise known as St. Edward's, or St. Ed's) in San Jose, California. My last Sunday at St. Alban's will be October 4th and my first Sunday at St. Ed's will be October 18. September will be a month in which my family and I pack all of our worldly belongings as well as all of our memories from what will end up being over seven and a half years of life and ministry here in Albany, Oregon. I have only just begun to process the move within myself, so perhaps some of that processing will eventually make it to this blog.

Until then, however, the moving boxes come out, the goodbyes have already started, and we're officially in transition!