By Dane Neufeld

A Reading from Numbers 21:4-9, 21-35

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became discouraged on the way. 5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” 6 Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

21 Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, saying, 22 “Let me pass through your land; we will not turn aside into field or vineyard; we will not drink the water of any well; we will go by the King’s Highway until we have passed through your territory.” 23 But Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel to the wilderness; he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. 24 Israel put him to the sword and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as to the Ammonites, for the boundary of the Ammonites was strong. 25 Israel took all these towns, and Israel settled in all the towns of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages. 26 For Heshbon was the city of King Sihon of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab and captured all his land as far as the Arnon. 27 Therefore the singers say,

“Come to Heshbon; let it be built;
let the city of Sihon be established.
28 For fire came out from Heshbon,
flame from the city of Sihon.
It devoured Ar of Moab
and swallowed up the heights of the Arnon.
29 Woe to you, O Moab!
You are undone, O people of Chemosh!
He has made his sons fugitives
and his daughters captives
to an Amorite king, Sihon.
30 So their posterity perished
from Heshbon to Dibon,
and we laid waste until fire spread to Medeba.”

31 Thus Israel settled in the land of the Amorites. 32 Moses sent to spy out Jazer, and they captured its villages and dispossessed the Amorites who were there.

33 Then they turned and went up the road to Bashan, and King Og of Bashan came out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 34 But the Lord said to Moses, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have given him into your hand, with all his people and his land. You shall do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.” 35 So they killed him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left, and they took possession of his land.

Meditation

For many reasons, the book of Numbers does not always make for the easiest devotional literature. Perhaps the greatest is that we have no concept of what it would mean to be a nomadic people enroute to a permanent home, amidst dangerous and violent enemies. Pretty much nothing in our experience in North America corresponds to this.

Though in recent memory these experiences were quite common. I heard a Blackfoot elder speak  about the Book of Numbers, and for him, the cultural memory of travelling across the land as a people, through shifting territorial regions, was not so distant. Where many of us tend to comb over the geographical and cultural peculiarities of the Old Testament in search of spiritual nuggets, for many Indigenous Christians these “peculiarities” are what hold real interest. It was not long ago that Chief Crowfoot led his suffering and depleted people north from Montana, to the reserve they had resigned themselves to after years of bitter suffering.

The Israelites seek nothing more than safe passage through Amorite territory, but King Sihon not only denies it but resolves to attack them. Israel’s offer of peaceful passage quickly turns into armed conflict, for the which the Lord provides victory for his people. There is no easy way to spiritualize this passage other than to say that if we were in Israel’s position we would probably hope and pray for the same result.

The Church finds itself in strange country these days. At times even our well-intentioned and deferential attempts to coexist in our society are rejected. But we can trust that the Lord is guiding and protecting his people through dangerous and complex circumstances, unlike any of us have ever seen.

♱

The Rev. Dane Neufeld currently serves as the incumbent of St. James, Calgary, after serving 7 years in Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Iowa
Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Matthew 21:1-11

1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

5 “Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Meditation

I wish we had an insight into the owner of the donkey. For whatever reason, Jesus chose to send the disciples, rather than go himself, knowing that whoever this colt belonged to was prepared by God. Much like Simeon in the temple can pick out the baby Jesus from dozens of other babies that must have been coming regularly for the same reason, somehow God has told this person, “I need your baby donkey. I’ll send some men for it — they won’t ask first.” And he must have known and loved the God who told him this, because he consented to give his donkey to strangers.

Then the disciples begin — and the crowds follow — to throw their cloaks along the (undoubtedly filthy — remember all the animals around) road for Jesus to ride over. Why? All it accomplishes is to get their clothes dirty — and when you might only have one cloak, and it was valuable, and laundry was hard work! But they recognized their king. A king they loved. They knew him because he came riding a donkey.

A donkey, of all things! In the fairly tale, Pinocchio, the wicked boys turn into donkeys. That seems more fitting. A donkey is not a noble animal. But Zechariah — though not a stranger to noble language or noble imagery — said “a donkey,” and here it is. Again, they knew the God they loved, they knew him by his words, even though those words were not what you’d expect.

I began the week pondering the ways in which we fall into worshiping our idea of Jesus rather than the real Jesus. Love is the way out of that pitfall. Love bridges things that don’t make sense. Love doesn’t want or try or expect to reduce the Beloved into anything less than he is. Love would have you muddy your cloak just to express itself.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Malakal – The Episcopal Church of South Sudan
St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, River Hills, Wis.

Cornerstones

By Richard J. Mammana Jr.

I met the former St. Alban’s, Olney, in 1990 when I was 10 years old, a soprano at a guest Solemn Evensong with the former Singing Boys of Pennsylvania, a sort of choral sideshow that traveled throughout North America, East Asia, and Europe between 1970 and 2014. I remember little about what we sang at the service, but I do remember Canon Dorsey, maybe a dozen people in the pews, and a short trip home from North Philadelphia at night in the choir bus.

I knew little more about St. Alban’s until I was 17 and was given a small red copy of The Practice of Religion by a priest friend. The book, published continuously since 1911, is “a short manual of instructions and devotions” of Anglo-Catholic material not included in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer. The book’s title page proclaims its author as the rector of St. Alban’s.

Through books, I came to learn more about St. Alban’s and its pastor of 54 years, Archibald Campbell Knowles. The story of the experiment he launched could only have happened in its place and time with a unique constellation of personality and wealth, and I revisited it with friends this year during Passiontide.

Archibald Campbell Knowles was born in Philadelphia in 1865. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1885, and traveled widely in Europe for the next 10 years. The family’s trajectory through the Social Register and Philadelphia Clubland gives an indication of his early life.

Despite never attending seminary (not uncommon at the time), he was ordained to the diaconate in 1898 and assumed charge of the small mission of St. Luke’s, Germantown, in a bustling neighborhood of North Philadelphia. After Knowles was ordained to the priesthood by the Bishop of Milwaukee, he formed the parish along what he would have described as “thorough” Anglo-Catholic lines in an originally humble church building.

From 1915 to 1921, Fr. Knowles rebuilt the church as a memorial to his parents in French Gothic style, contracting an architect whose other work includes the Philadelphia Cricket Club and railroad stations and hotels in the American South. The church was beautified throughout with Heaton, Butler, and Bayne stained glass in memory of each of his siblings and cousins, with chapels in memory of his wife and daughter, a bell tower in memory of a brother-in-law, and various internal monuments and decorations in thanksgiving for his ordination anniversaries. Fr. Knowles collected no salary during the entirety of his ministry.

The family lived six miles away from the church in comfortable Mount Airy, and a regular complaint in the diocesan archives is that Fr. Knowles conducted most of his pastoral work by telephone. He also kept the telegraph wires warm, inviting bishops from the Bahamas, Chicago, Fond du Lac, Long Island, Milwaukee, and Quincy (but the Bishop of Pennsylvania only on one occasion) to officiate at celebratory events burnishing the parish’s Catholic credentials. The Lord Abbot of Nashdom was a welcome guest preacher.

Fr. Knowles received a Nashotah D.D. in 1937 in commemoration of 30 years as rector. He continued to spend one to two months a year in Europe, writing extensively on Swiss mountaineering, Anglo-Catholicism, and French architecture — and even publishing a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as well as a very bad novel.

Fr. Knowles died in 1951, the year he was made rector emeritus. He left some of his residual estate to domestic servants, but the remainder to St. Alban’s on the condition that it make no deviation from his standards of Anglo-Catholic teaching and practice. His estate finally wound up 32 years later in 1983, but the parish limped along financially with Knowles fumes for almost 20 more years and single digits of parishioners.

St. Alban’s had only one other lasting permanent priest, Canon James Claypoole Dorsey, who began his ministry in 1961 and celebrated its final Masses four decades later. By 1966 the parish was struggling to pay a priest’s stipend, and the service registers indicate only one baptism every few years, outpaced significantly by burials. (Even in its heyday, baptisms were surprisingly infrequent and often of newborns at local hospitals rather than of parishioners’ children or adult converts.)

By 1968, the roof was leaking and the building needed an estimated $250,000 in repairs. A vestryman complained to the bishop that the parish was being “run to a large extent on gambling and grants,” noting that bingo fundraisers had become the church’s most popular neighborhood offering. It remained a regular setting for the annual gatherings of devotional societies such as the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and the Guild of All Souls.

The last baptism at St. Alban’s was in 1988. There were a final four burials in 1994, and a marriage in 2001, after which there are no service records. A long day at the diocesan archives at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia showed me that in the final 65 years of its existence, there were 42 baptisms, 61 confirmations, 38 marriages, and 217 funerals — in some years there were no sacramental rites at all other than daily and Sunday Masses. Bishop Charles Bennison Jr. formally closed the church in 2005, and the Diocese of Pennsylvania sold it for $180,000 to Église de Dieu par la Foi de Philadelphie (God’s Church by the Faith of Philadelphia) at the end of 2007.

When I drove by St. Alban’s on a rainy Saturday afternoon at the end of Lent, my heart leapt as I saw a man walking from its side door to his car. He asked if I and my three companions would like to come inside. We very much did, and he gave us a tour of the place half in French and half in English, but all in evangelical hospitality.

I learned about the new congregants’ delight in the exquisite English windows, their weekly attendance of about 200 people who worship in their own heart language, perform full-immersion baptism in portable tubs, have services that last several hours with drums and a keyboard but no organ music or incense, and certainly none of Fr. Knowles’s irreducible minimum of Anglican faith and parish life.

Much of the church’s moveable furnishings were removed to Aladdin’s Cave. The Stations of the Cross, some altars and ornaments, the sanctuary lamps, candle stands, and the rood screen are no more. The organ is still in situ, but unplayable after years in an unheated, unoccupied, and disused building. One of the former chapels is a display area for trophies, and another is a repository for coat racks before an empty brass tabernacle in a setting of marble. Dehumidifiers and ductwork clutter the aisles, and one smells Pine-Sol rather than what would have been frankincense in days of yore.

An older self would have exclaimed “Ichabod!” and thought poorly of the people who had now made the space their own, but this is not where I went this year. Part of me mourned within for several reasons, and part of me could see sparks among the stubble — perhaps even flames from those sparks. Something beautiful had been changed, but not ended.

An artificial outpost of a robust religious tradition I think of as my own had been replaced by one that is unfamiliar to me and would have been confusing to Fr. Knowles. But the seeds of this eventual change were planted in the squire-archical origin of it all. The Anglo-Catholic accoutrements are simply not useful to the new Pentecostal congregants, but there is no disrespect in their use of a building of which they are justly proud. What, after all, was St. Alban’s, other than a (mainly) benign Potemkin parish?

Some will opine — as part of me does — that Fr. Knowles had followed the Magdalene in his wasting of what was precious in the service of the Lord, and there is something to this. But whatever he did, Fr. Knowles carried on a ministry that had little to do with his congregation or his diocese. His creation of an admitted jewel box of devotion in the memory of his family certainly glorified God, but this was acknowledged mainly by prelates imported from foreign parts and periodicals like The Living Church and The Church Times.

Absent the need for a stipend, the congregants never needed to practice stewardship in support of the ministry; and they were indeed never able to do so. By the late 1990s, portions of the building had begun to collapse much like the internal coherence of American Anglo-Catholicism had been doing since the early 1970s. The end was ineluctable.

Still and all, there is something here about the power of the gospel to speak to the dry bones of St. Alban’s in its new life and ministry carried on in Creole and in French and somewhat in English. We received a warm Christian welcome from a man of venerable age who has cared for his community and church with the love of a shepherd, and who helped to find them a new home in which to worship. The building is being used by sincere Christians who do things I do not do, but this does no harm to me and much good for them. The removal of candlesticks is at the end of the day a part of the divine plan as old as the Revelation to St. John the Divine.

Christianity is a religion of cyclical death and rebirth, and we live in a liminal moment when even worthy institutions are undergoing their appointed collapse in the fullness of God’s time. The private undertaking of an enthusiast, however good in intention, has become the birthplace of a spontaneous and popular religion. The practice of religion is alive and well, and the Église de Dieu par la Foi could use your help in repairing its roof. A glory has indeed departed, but it is probably a gloria mundi rather than the Shekinah.

Richard J. Mammana Jr. is the Episcopal Church’s associate for ecumenical and interreligious relations.

By Elizabeth Baumann

Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist

A Reading from Malachi 3:1-5

1 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight — indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; 3 he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years.

5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

Meditation

The Old Testament lesson we have today is the one also chosen for the Feast of the Presentation. On the latter feast it’s an unexpected foil — what a twist! The Messiah comes to his temple as a baby in his mother’s arms, too poor even to bring a lamb for the sacrifice. For today it’s obviously chosen because of the opening line: the messenger sent to prepare the way. Automatically we think of John at the shore of the Jordan river, calling the people to repentance, proclaiming Jesus as the Lamb of God. But today we celebrate the day of his birth many years earlier — and after he had already begun to fulfill his calling. It was John who first recognized Jesus, months before either was born, and leapt for joy in Elizabeth’s womb.

In a few months we’ll have another feast of John the Baptist — the commemoration of his beheading. But today is the day more widely remembered, more widely celebrated and kept. Except for Jesus himself (and that is arguable), he’s the only person whose birth is a bigger deal on our calendars than his death. We’re told explicitly that John was filled with the Holy Spirit before he was born, before he could breathe on his own — much less preach. Lest we believe the lie that we need to be able to do more to fulfill our vocations, remember John the Baptist. Today we’re celebrating him for being born — he didn’t do anything on this day. For that matter, the Messiah who suddenly came into his temple, as a 40-day-old infant, didn’t do anything either.

Nor are we so very different. Whatever our various vocations, God sends his Holy Spirit to “purify and refine” us until we too may “present right offerings to the Lord.” We were never meant to do anything apart from him.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

St. George’s Episcopal Church, Nashville, Tenn.
The Diocese of Malaita – The Anglican Church of Melanesia

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Correspondent

On any given day, St. Martin’s Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, teems with people, including many who are not part of the congregation. Parents drop off children at the preschool run by a separate nonprofit that rents one floor. Musicians stop by to borrow instruments from the Charlotte Folk Society, which runs a lending library in a former office space. Artists sell on church grounds several times a year. And more collaborations are in the works.

“Our problem is we’re running out of space,” says the Rev. Josh Bowrun, St. Martin’s rector.

Partnering with community groups adds to St. Martin’s coffers — the preschool alone brings a net gain of $40,000 a year — but that’s not the motivation. St. Martin’s has not run a deficit in years, has a $900,000 budget, is a very healthy church, and does not need extra money, Bowrun said. At least not at this point.

“What I’m trying to do is build a culture for 20 years from now,” Bowrun said. “As the church continues to decline, you want to have these beautiful buildings have a ministry, and it’s going to take some time to build a culture.”

Meanwhile, benefits are already accruing in the form of friendships. Signing contracts to work together leads to “being with” one’s neighbor, Bowrun said, in a way that writing charitable checks does not. It injects energy into the parish, he observes, and stirs imagination for “what cool things can we do together?”

He adopted the concept from HeartEdge, an ecumenical movement based at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in London, which helps churches reimagine themselves and society. And it constantly leads to new experiments, such as a concert for children that the preschool plans for the fall and workshops for musicians led by Folk Society members.

This type of collaborative thinking is important, in part, because new revenue models are needed, said Demi Prentiss, program director for research and development at the Episcopal Church Foundation.

“Funding your ministry through plate and pledge is no longer realistic,” Prentiss said. “The real opportunity here is for engagement. … Certainly we could supply a worship space for a congregation that’s in need of it, but what partnership might we build with that congregation beyond that?”

As a matter of stewardship, partnering helps ensure that physical spaces are not neglected. It also takes financial pressure off drawn-down endowments, borrowing costs, or generous parishioners whose giving capacity is already maxed out or nearing that point.

But seizing the missional and financial opportunities can require timely and strategic action. Congregations often know their financial situations are worsening, yet they wait to develop new revenue streams, said Kate Toth, executive director of Bricks and Mortals, a three-year-old nonprofit that helps New York City congregations find creative and sustaining solutions to their financial challenges.

“They often don’t know how dire it is until it’s actually too late to do something,” Toth said. “They’re one bill or one COVID away from having the entire enterprise collapse.”

Churches are hearing the message. Across the country, efforts are afoot to undertake “adaptive reuse” for the sake of missional effectiveness, revenue enhancement, and showing other congregations how it’s done.

In the Sustainable Solutions for Sacred Sites (S4) program, 46 churches are embarking on new projects this spring. One is creating a homeless shelter, another a food kitchen, and another has a new rental program.

Their experiences will turn into case studies and success stories with guidance from Bricks and Mortals, Partners for Sacred Places, and Hartford International University. One goal of this Lilly Foundation-funded program is to develop a set of how-to-partner insights for congregations nationwide.

In S4 and other programs, advisers help congregations learn to manage risks, rather than allow risks to prevent action. With strategies and tools, they say, churches can become both more community-engaged and more resilient.

Consider the risk of revenue becoming taxable. Though religious organizations are generally tax-exempt, congregations can lose that status if the Internal Revenue Service determines they’re generating meaningful profit from an enterprise unrelated to their core mission. Fearing this risk, congregations hesitate to diversify their revenue streams, Prentiss said.

“That’s the first thing they bring up: ‘We’ll lose our 501(c)(3) tax status,’” Prentiss said, referring to the nonprofit category in the tax code. “Well, yes, you can if you’re not precise about it, if you’re not careful.”

To protect tax-exempt status, a congregation should keep good financial records and avoid commingling funds, Prentiss said. By doing that, if any revenue becomes taxable, only the non-traditional stream is affected, not the congregation’s giving to its general fund.

What’s more, new income streams often don’t trigger taxation if they’re only a fraction of the church’s income. In Portland, Oregeon, Trinity Cathedral derives 3 to 4 percent of its revenues from non-traditional sources, such as renting parking lots for sporting events and other spaces for musical, educational, and ecumenical activities, said Jerry Brown, the cathedral’s treasurer.

“By sharing revenue through parking-lot agreement structures in place, we have not been subject to UBIT,” or Unrelated Business Income Tax, Brown said via email. Key to that structure is how the church works with a parking management company to handle lot monitoring and fee collections, he said.

Likewise in North Carolina, income from non-traditional sources has not been significant enough to require tax payments, according to Bowrun.

In situations that could trigger taxes, the church need not carry the burden alone. Dominic Dutra, a California Realtor, commercial real estate investor, and author of Closing Costs: Reimagining Church Real Estate for Missional Purposes, provides examples of how it can work.

With a triple-net lease (NNN), the tenant is responsible for base rate plus property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs. An absolute net lease is similar, except tenants also pay for necessary improvements to make the space suitable for their needs. Both types can help congregations stop worrying and get on with using their space for powerful mission, Dutra says.

“A property tax assessment agency will come in and say, ‘Listen, you’re no longer exempt because half of your building is being operated by a for-profit, so we’re going to tax you,’” said Dutra, who founded 3D Strategies, a Fremont, California, real estate consultancy for faith-based and other organizations. “Your exemption is going to go away from a property-tax perspective. [But the tenant] absorbs that. That’s part of structuring an appropriate lease.”

Not all partnerships will make a dent in budgetary gaps, of course. For instance, renting sanctuary space to a new church plant or a congregation of new immigrants will not go far toward covering a budget deficit, Dutra said. But it can do a lot to build relationships, good will, vitality, and mission-mindedness. Likewise, providing space for recovery groups to meet is commonly seen as entirely missional, with either no fees or only nominal fees.

But closing gaps with new mission revenue streams is possible, especially with certain types of partnerships. Dutra says cash-strapped churches would be wise to explore preschool partnerships. Their services are in demand, they’re always seeking space, and churches are uniquely laid out to accommodate their needs. He suggests meeting with a mission consultant, a Certified Commercial Investment Member Realtor, and possibly an architect before circulating a request for proposal.

“Preschools in general are probably the best opportunity for leasing from a fiscal sustainability perspective,” Dutra said.

For St. Martin’s in Charlotte, running its own preschool for 70 years until it closed in 2021 under COVID pressures had come to require a subsidy from the congregation. The church-owned preschool cost $15,000 more per year to operate than it was bringing in. Only when it shifted to renting the space to a separate preschool operator did having a school on site begin generating $40,000 a year for St. Martin’s.

Congregations with robust partnerships find they can still be missional even in structuring their agreements. St. Martin’s charges the preschool operator a below-market rate, Bowron said. Trinity in Portland likewise gives nonprofits a break on rental rates.

“We use a ‘market rate’ rental schedule for the various-sized rooms/kitchen/parish hall that allows for a discount rate for nonprofits,” Brown said. “Trinity is committed to collaboration and support for our neighbors and our city of Portland. Radical hospitality is our goal; by opening our doors, our parking lots, our pantry, we challenge ourselves to satisfy our diverse spiritual missions.”

In this time, when many congregations can’t afford to do deferred maintenance work on underutilized buildings, and needs are going unmet in the surrounding community, something needs to change, Dutra said. In some cases, he said, a struggling congregation might discern a call to close and let the real estate be used for new missional purposes.

But often, partnerships can improve both a church’s mission effectiveness and financial condition, he said, as long as the church goes about it the right way.

“The status quo is not acceptable. That’s the talent being buried in the ground,” Dutra said, alluding to Matthew 25:14-30. “And the landlord wasn’t too happy about that.”

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Matthew 20:17-28

17 While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves and said to them on the way, 18 “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; 19 then they will hand him over to the gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and on the third day he will be raised.”

20 Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. 21 And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” 22 But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” 23 He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

24 When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, 28 just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Meditation

My brother, who’s well into his thirties, is about to start a new job. I joked to my mom that she should be sure to call up his new boss and make sure he knows how to treat her son. We both laughed. So when James’ and John’s mother comes to Jesus and asks him to put her two sons in charge of his kingdom, I imagine Jesus smiled. Especially since he just said he was going to be “mocked, scourged, and crucified.” Boy, did the disciples miss stuff.

Then Jesus asks if they can drink from his cup, and they’re only too eager to say yes. (Did anyone else think of the research showing that men are more likely to say they can do jobs whether they’re sure they can or not? And that it actually helps their careers?) But even though Jesus says they don’t know what they’re asking — and he knows James and John are clueless — nevertheless, he says they will drink from his cup, as he said in Tuesday’s lesson that the Twelve would sit on twelve thrones. Ironically, they’re asking for the right things, just imagining how it will work in all the wrong ways, and with a lot of mixed motives. They get exactly what they ask for — but in a way that purifies everything that’s wrong with them here.

How often do we go before God with similar mixed motives, asking for good things, but with a certain idea of how it should look? Like the person who prays for patience, imagining a calm, patient version of themselves sailing peacefully through life, feeling rather virtuous, but receives more things that try their patience. God often takes us at our word, giving us what we ask for, but he does it in the way that’s calculated to produce holiness in us.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Malabar – The (united) Church of South India
The Diocese of Central Florida

The July 3 General Convention issue of The Living Church is available online to registered subscribers.

This will be the fourth General Convention held in Baltimore, and in our cover story, Mark Michael takes a deep dive into the news and controversies of the prior three, all in the 19th century.

In News, Mark reports on the former refugee who was named secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, and explains why the upcoming Lambeth Conference will not pass resolutions.

Kirk Petersen weighs in with preconvention coverage of proposed resolutions on Title IV discipline for bishops and communion without baptism, discusses a candidate forum, and reports that short-notice changes to the schedule will cost the church more than $1 million.

In international news, Neva Rae Fox describes how bishops in Sri Lanka are siding with protestors during anti-government upheaval.

After 10 years as president of the House of Deputies, Gay Clark Jennings will hand the gavel to her successor at the end of General Convention. She looks back on her tenure, and forward in hope, in an extended interview with Kirk.

The Diocese of Maryland had events and activities planned for thousands of convention-goers, but the pandemic intervened. Neva Rae reports on the mission and ministry of the diocese.

Nashotah House has nearly doubled its enrollment in the past five years, and Dean Garwood Anderson shared the secret sauce in an extended interview with Kirk.

When Churches in Communion Disagree from Living Church Books is now available on Amazon. In a chapter excerpt, Wes Hill describes what we can learn from Acts 15.

Mary Kay Wold describes how Church Pension Group has weathered the pandemic. Robert Tobin looks back on the ministry and episcopacy of Kim Myers, Bishop of California, during the tumultuous 60s and beyond.

All this plus much more news, book and music reviews, People & Places, and Sunday’s Readings, from an independent voice serving the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion since 1878. Consider subscribing today.

NEWS

• Former Refugee to Be Secretary General
  By Mark Michael

FEATURES

• Gay Jennings Retires as HoD President
  By Kirk Petersen
• Hymns, Duels, Ritualists, and Prayer Books:
  Baltimore General Conventions Past
  By Mark Michael
• General Convention Weighs Israel-Palestine Crisis
  By Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• Nashotah House: New Attitude Drives Enrollment
  By Kirk Petersen
• COMMON COUNSEL
  Communion and Disagreement in the New Testament: Acts 15
  By Wesley Hill
• Church Pension Group Stays Connected
  By Mary Kate Wold
• Bishop Kim Myers Worked to Light the Dark Streets
  By Robert Tobin

CULTURES

• To Speak to Our Time: Choral Works by Samuel Adler
  Review by Christopher Hoh

BOOKS

• Realizing Beloved Community
  Review by Scott Bader-Saye

OTHER DEPARTMENTS

• People & Places
• Sunday’s Readings

By Kirk Petersen

The financial health of the oldest Episcopal seminary deteriorated during the pandemic to the extent that the trustees have considered closing the school and selling its assets, according to testimony at a recent online legislative hearing in advance of General Convention.

Instead, pending approval of Resolution A139, General Theological Seminary (GTS) intends to cede significant governance autonomy in a formal affiliation with Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), the largest and most affluent Episcopal seminary.

GTS has “an unsustainable financial model, overly reliant on variable and vulnerable revenue streams, declining interest, applications, and declining enrollments in core programs,” said the Rt. Rev. Robert Wright, who is Bishop of Atlanta and chair of the GTS board of trustees. He was one of half a dozen witnesses from both seminaries who testified in favor of the resolution at a June 16 hearing of the joint Committee on Agencies and Boards.

Wright said the trustees considered three possible courses of action:

1. Pursuing a partnership or affiliation with another seminary;
2. Selling or redeveloping part of “The Close,” GTS’s valuable real estate in the Chelsea section of Manhattan; or
3. Closing the seminary, selling its assets, and establishing a fund to support theological education.

In January 2021, the two seminaries announced they were in talks about a partnership that might lead to sharing faculty and resources. But in an interview with TLC, the Very Rev. Dr. Michael W. DeLashmutt, acting dean and president of GTS, said the 2022 vision is very different.

“The affiliation that we’re proposing will effectively give the board of trustees of Virginia Seminary a controlling interest in the board of General Seminary. And, the leadership of Virginia Seminary will play a considerable role in leading General Seminary. It’s more than just a collaboration, it is a legal affiliating of the two institutions,” DeLashmutt said.

The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, dean and president of VTS, emphasized that details are still being negotiated, and that a final agreement would have to be approved by both boards of trustees.

He explained that the proposal would expand the VTS board of trustees to 40 people, with 32 from Virginia and eight from General. He and the Virginia administration would lead both seminaries.

“We will still remain two corporations, but the same people will run both of those corporations, and the administration of Virginia Theological Seminary will be responsible for General Theological Seminary,” Markham said.

Both deans rejected the idea that General would become a “subsidiary” of Virginia. “This is where it gets very very complicated, because that has a distinctive set of legal connotations. So I don’t think you can say that, actually,” Markham said. “The word we’re using is affiliation.”

“This isn’t simply a takeover of the seminary by Virginia, but rather an affiliation and an alignment, borne out of a common sense of mission,” DeLashmutt said.

All of this depends on the passage of Resolution A139, which would grant GTS the authority to make changes to its own constitution and bylaws. Under a 19th-century arrangement that is unique to GTS among Episcopal seminaries, any such change requires the concurrent approval of General Convention.

“If this resolution fails to pass the General Convention, the Virginia Theological Seminary board will not proceed with the affiliation,” David Charlton, who chairs the VTS board, testified in the legislative hearing.

Passage seems highly likely. Nobody spoke in opposition to the proposal during the hearing, and committee members posed no questions. Both deans said they have been discussing the matter with their constituencies for months, and both said they know of no opposition.

“I think most people feel that it’s better for this affiliation to happen than for General to disappear,” Markham said. “That was its dilemma.”

There is a need for “naming the sense of loss by some because things were changing,” Wright told TLC. “Rather than opposition, there was some real pastoral care that was required, and I think will be required going forward.”

General Theological Seminary was founded in 1817, and the vision at the time was that it would become a unified seminary serving the entire church. Thus the General Convention retained considerable control of the governance of the GTS. But VTS was founded in 1823, and the School of Theology at Sewanee: The University of the South in 1857, both with governance structures independent of General Convention.

The proposed arrangement is the latest example of a changing business model among Episcopal seminaries, and indeed in the broader world of theological education.

Most recently, Trinity Church Wall Street, with $8 billion in assets from Lower Manhattan real estate, reached across the country in 2019 to acquire Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. In 2017, Episcopal Divinity School closed up shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and relocated to New York as the Episcopal track of the ecumenical Union Theological Seminary. In 2013, Seabury-Western merged with Bexley Hall to form Bexley Seabury. The downsizing of the Episcopal seminary structure has been inevitable since 1970, when the Pusey Report called for reducing the number of seminaries from 11 at the time down to five or fewer, because of declining enrollment.

GTS has had financial challenges for years. DeLashmutt said enrollment in the three-year, residential M.Div. program (master of divinity) declined from nearly 80 in 2011 to fewer than 10 in 2021, with only five students living on campus. Despite that, the seminary was running a modest surplus at the end of the Very Rev. Kurt Dunkle’s term as dean and president.

Then the pandemic hit, leading to “a softening in our annual giving” and the complete loss of income from the seminary’s conference center. In addition, the school faces some deferred-maintenance costs, including repairs to the deteriorating tower of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. In October 2021, DeLashmutt said the seminary was facing deficits in the range of $800,000 to $1.5 million for the next three years.

The trustees had to consider “not just can we balance the budget, but is this the kind of budget that leads to the thriving of our students and our institution,” he said.

The seminary began offering a hybrid online program in November 2021, and had 50 applicants, compared to the normal 15 to 20 for the residential program. They recruited 19 students who will be starting in the fall, featuring online instruction and three intensive, week-long residential courses in January, May, and August.

If A139 is not adopted, “Plan B is the shrinking of the [campus] footprint and focusing exclusively on hybrid learning, and Plan C would be looking at some sort of significant sale or development of the institution, and possibly ceasing instruction for a period of time,” DeLashmutt said. “This is a high-stakes vote for us.”

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16

1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Meditation

Lest the disciples puff themselves up over what Jesus promised yesterday, he follows it with today’s parable. Everyone who comes to Jesus, early or late, putting in light or heavy work, gets the same reward. After all, what is there beyond heaven? Yet this cannot negate what Jesus said yesterday; nor is it an appealing prospect that in heaven we’re all somehow homogenized. No: God made individuals, and he’s going to preserve that multiplicatious goodness in the perfect good of heaven.

Heaven is heaven, but the happiness we experience there, the rewards we are given, are directly proportional to the sacrifices we make now — which just makes sense. By giving up things that hinder us from following Jesus, we’re making room in ourselves for more of his gifts.

Yesterday, Jesus gave an intimidating list of potential sacrifices: homes, lands, and even family members. But he’ll take little things: the twinge of grief you feel because they changed the words of a beloved hymn; the offering of patience with a child who can’t find what’s right in front of her; the helplessness you feel because your dishes are never done — God will lovingly take it all.

So you didn’t show up until the end of the day, and there’s only an hour left? Don’t waste that hour. If you wasted your youth, don’t waste the rest of your life; especially don’t waste the regrets about what might have been if you had known or chosen differently. If you wasted your whole life, you can still give God your death. Death is no small offering. Only God knows the weight of what you give him — no one else is allowed an opinion — and what is a light thing for one person might be hardly bearable to another. Only God knows the splendors he can work from even our smallest offering, so dare to give him everything.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Makurdi – The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral

SUNDAY’S READINGS | June 26

2 Kgs. 2:1-2, 6-14 or 1 Kgs. 19:15-16, 19-21
Ps. 77:1-2, 11-20 or Ps. 16
Gal. 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

“For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). Freedom comes with a warning. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence” (Gal. 5:13). Freedom understood merely as arbitrary choice for immediate and impetuous pleasure is indeed a form of bondage: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19-21). Such pleasure is not only directionless and destructive but also a path toward profound and bitter loneliness. People may “bite and devour one another” (Gal. 5:15). Violence may present itself as a ready answer. When, for instance, the Samaritans did not receive Jesus, James and John were quick to say, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54).

Authentic freedom is freedom for service to others, especially toward those we are bound to either by real or implied vows in the close circle of family, friends, neighbors, and church. “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:14). Turning to others, we are also tending to our own deepest needs. We hear an inner voice like that of Elisha before Elijah was taken up to heaven: “As the Lord lives, and you yourself live, I will not leave you” (2 Kgs. 2:2). We hear a voice like Ruth speaking to her mother-in-law, Naomi: “Do not press me to leave you, to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16-17).

Yearning for connections and meaning, we hear Jesus speak: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. … I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you” (John 14:16, 18). The Advocate comes, bearing a tangled web of relationships, obligations, duties, sorrows, and joys that make up our lives. The Advocate within us connects us to others. Even the most solitary monk in his small cell, with his little cup of water and portion of bread, cannot be himself unless his heart and hands are the instruments of service to the world. In some sense, it is good to be alone. Go to your room, shut the door, and pray. But it is not good to be utterly alone. We need companions on the way because we are only persons in a community of other persons. Thus, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21).

We need other people, but not only other people. Jesus came for the life of the world, for the whole creation. With the eyes of faith, we see and feel the works of the Lord, mighty deeds, works of wonder, the water, the sky, lightning, earth, everything radiant with divine presence (Ps. 77:11-18). In the exquisite words of Thomas Traherne, “You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you” (Centuries).

Nature and people are the sacramentals of a well-formed and mature Christian life.

Look It Up: Acts 2:44

Think About It: All who believed were together and had all things in common.

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Matthew 19:23-30

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

27 Then Peter said in reply, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” 28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

Meditation

We live in the midst of riotous prosperity. Even with inflation. Even with everything wrong in the world. The very fact that you are reading this means you receive email. You have an internet connection. That alone puts you in the top bracket of people with the most stuff who have ever lived. It might be tempting to read this lesson and identify with the disciples — but check that. We’re a lot more like the rich man. We’ve been accustomed to live with a lot of comforts, a lot of safety nets. The grace we need to become perfect, to qualify for heaven, is not insignificant.

But here’s what boggles me in this lesson: when the disciples are dismayed that no one (not even the poorest) will be able to enter heaven, Jesus replies, as Gabriel to Mary, that nothing is impossible for God. And Peter, instead of sighing with relief and being satisfied, replies, “We’ve left everything for you. What’s in it for us?” To which I expect Jesus to say sarcastically, “Abundant grace and eternal life isn’t enough for you?” But Jesus doesn’t say that at all. He has a concrete answer, not just about the honors to be accorded to his twelve disciples, but the rewards to be given to all who follow him and leave anything behind. Like Job, whose many possessions and even children were restored to him, and then some, after he lost everything in a test of faith, Jesus promises that anything we let go of for his sake will be paid back to us at an interest rate of a hundredfold. And you can take that to the (heavenly) bank.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Makueni – The Anglican Church of Kenya
St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church, Harrod’s Creek, Ky.

By Kirk Petersen

By a margin of 69-0, the Episcopal Church in North Texas (ECNTX) — formerly known as the Diocese of Fort Worth — voted June 18 to become part of the much-larger Diocese of Texas, which for part of the 19th century encompassed the entire enormous state.

The issue was only slightly more controversial in the Diocese of Texas, which nine days earlier approved the reunification by a vote of 526-14, or more than 97 percent in favor. Assuming both legislative houses ratify the move at the July General Convention, the merger will become final the instant the closing gavel falls on July 11, and ECNTX will cease to exist.

“We have come nearly full circle, which of course is not the end of the road,” said the Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer, who in 2015 was elected the fourth bishop provisional of what is now ECNTX. Mayer also has served as bishop diocesan of the Lubbock-based Diocese of Northwest Texas since 2009.

The driving forces behind the partnership were the traumatic schism that split the diocese in two in 2008, and the more than a decade of expensive litigation that followed. In February 2021, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of what was then one of two entities called the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. This let stand the previous ruling of the Texas Supreme Court, which awarded the name and most of the disputed physical property to the diocese that is part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The acrimonious divorce resulted in five congregations in the diocese affiliated with the Episcopal Church (TEC) having to move out of the church properties where they had worshiped for years. Four of the congregations arranged for new or shared worship space, while the fifth disbanded.

In the Eucharist that preceded the special convention that voted on reunification, Mayer said: “You did more than weather the storm. You did more than survive the journey. You chose life, and love. You gave away your money, your time, and your security for the benefit of others.” The Eucharist was held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Worth, which had voted to stay with TEC at the time of the split. Trinity is one of 14 congregations currently in ECNTX, compared with more than 50 in the ACNA diocese.

ECNTX is to become the North Region of the Diocese of Texas, which already has South, East, and West regions. The map of the combined dioceses will look like a chunky boomerang, encircling about two-thirds of the perimeter of the Diocese of Dallas. In 1982, the booming Diocese of Dallas was amicably split in two, with the western portion becoming the Diocese of Fort Worth.

Mayer will continue to serve the North Region, with “assisting” rather than “provisional” attached to his bishop title, and will continue as Bishop of Northwest Texas. Texas will continue to be led by Bishop of Texas C. Andrew Doyle, along with Mayer and the assisting or suffragan bishops for the other three regions.

Given that background, the obvious question is why isn’t ECNTX merging with Dallas or Northwest Texas? Either would create a more tidy geographical silhouette than the combination with Texas.

Katie Sherrod, long-time communications director for ECNTX and its predecessor, explained that Houston-based Texas was a better fit for other reasons. Northwest Texas is vast and largely rural — the see city, Lubbock, is only the 11th-largest city in the state — while Fort Worth is part of the fastest-growing metropolitan region of the country.

“And quite frankly, Dallas — there’s a real culture clash there,” she said. Every congregation in ECNTX supports same-sex marriage, while Bishop of Dallas George R. Sumner is one of a handful of bishops who do not accept the practice. Sherrod said she and her colleagues respect Sumner, but that it would make no sense to make him arrange alternate oversight for 14 more congregations regarding same-sex marriage.

The idea of a merger involving a culture clash provided a humorous note during Mayer’s sermon. “You are liberated,” he told the diocese. “You have made it very clear that there is no desire to return to Egypt.” When he was interrupted by laughter, he grinned and said, “oh, you got that.”

The Old Testament reading was from Exodus, and Mayer later said “Choosing a story from the book of Exodus is tricky for us. To be clear, we were not the ones who left. And to be very clear, reunification with the Diocese of Texas is not a return to Egypt.”

Bitterness over the trauma in Fort Worth seems likely to linger for years to come. It’s hard to imagine the pain receding entirely while the ACNA diocese continues to exercise its hard-fought right to call itself the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. The word episcopal is an adjective relating to a bishop, so the bishop-led ACNA entity is an episcopal diocese. But the confusion is both obvious and a source of resentment for ECNTX, which has a page on its website with the pointed headline, “Who We Are, and Who Is Not Us.” The page warns:

Please be aware that the group now using the name Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth is not part of The Episcopal Church, but is instead part of a group calling itself the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). This group is not part of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.  While some ACNA dioceses do ordain women, the ACNA diocese calling itself the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth does not. They are not welcoming of out LGBTQ people. They use a different prayer book. Their priests are not Episcopal priests.

While the vote to join the Diocese of Texas was a joyous occasion, Mayer noted that the anger has not been resolved. “This event today is not about closure. It’s an outward visible sign of faith, hope, and love by a liberated people,” he said in his sermon.

Texas already is the largest domestic diocese in the church, with nearly 75,000 baptized members as of the end of 2020. Adding ECTNX’s 6,000 baptized members will still leave Texas in second place behind Haiti, with more than 97,000 baptized members.

Six dioceses currently represent part of the state of Texas, five of which are entirely within the boundaries of the state. In addition to the aforementioned ECNTX, Texas, Dallas, and Northwest Texas, the San Antonio-based Diocese of West Texas is entirely within the state, while the Albuquerque-based Diocese of the Rio Grande includes El Paso and nearby Texas counties, along with almost the entire state of New Mexico.

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Matthew 19:13-22

13 Then children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them, 14 but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” 15 And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

16 Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. 19 Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20 The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Meditation

I imagine the bafflement of the poor fishermen disciples over this rich young man, distraught because he cannot let go of the things they’ve never had. Imagine, likewise, the reaction of anyone transported into our lives from a hundred years ago: washing machines, air conditioning, running water everywhere we turn around, aspirin. We have so much to lose — more than most of our species ever dreamed of — and most of the time, we don’t even think of it. But imagine Jesus says to you: Leave all this behind. Wouldn’t most of us react just the way this rich man did? Follow Jesus without hot water?

Jesus isn’t asking most of us to give up our conveniences and comforts. Most of us are still struggling with following the commandments — especially that one about loving our neighbors.

I love that the lectionary gives us this lesson with the preface about Jesus welcoming the children.  Because let me tell you something about children: they’re incredibly needy and annoying. They’re precious and wonderful of course, but they’re born with no concept of polite behavior. They’re noisy, and messy, and often rude (because they haven’t learned how not to be). It would be nice if “loving your neighbor” meant lending an egg, or mending your fence, or even just being nice. But no, loving our neighbor means loving people who perhaps ask a lot of us and make us uncomfortable, like children tend to do.

Jesus may not be asking us to give up our creature comforts, but he is asking all of us to love others beyond what’s comfortable. Luckily, as you would find out if you asked a parent, it’s worth it.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

Collegiate Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Savannah, Ga.
The Diocese of Makamba – The Anglican Church of Burundi

By Elizabeth Baumann

A Reading from the Gospel of Luke 12:49-56

49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided:

father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Meditation

I’ve always loved Gone With the Wind (inhaling the whole 1,000 pages inside of four days), which is odd because it doesn’t have any characters I really admire. In many ways, it’s a more modern story than you’d expect, the kind where all the characters are deeply flawed. They can only begin to overcome their failings when they see them clearly. Scarlett can only realize her love for Rhett when she understands that the Ashley she thinks she’s loved is no more than a figment of her imagination. It’s largely a story about how Scarlett deludes herself.

The thing is, we do the same thing with Jesus. Ever heard anyone use the term, “my Jesus”? When we creep into language like that (and we have many ways of doing it), we show that we’ve enshrined our tendency to reduce the one we worship to the parts we like. We remember well “Come to me, all you who are weary,” and “I will be with you always.” And we should remember these well. But less well do we remember “Take up your cross,” “Keep my commandments,” and especially today’s lesson, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword.” The first time I read my little girls the story about Jesus cleansing the temple, they said, “Jesus wouldn’t do that.” The tendency to think we know him sets in early.

We have a choice: self-delusion (remembering only the comfortable parts) is remarkably easy (just ask Scarlett O’Hara); or we can work to keep our eyes open. The real Jesus is always going to foil our efforts to have him figured out. A good rule of thumb: if Jesus doesn’t make you at least a bit uncomfortable, it’s probably not the real Jesus.

♱

Elizabeth Baumann is a seminary graduate, a priest’s wife, and the mother of two small daughters. A transplant from the West Coast, she now lives in “the middle of nowhere” in the Midwest with too many cats.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, Tallahassee, Fla.

By David Baumann

A Reading from Romans 3:9-20

9 What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it is written:

“There is no one who is righteous, not even one;
11     there is no one who has understanding;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
there is no one who shows kindness;
there is not even one.”
13 “Their throats are opened graves;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of vipers is under their lips.”
14     “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16     ruin and misery are in their paths,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Meditation

The culmination of Paul’s argument in the course of this week is developed in today’s reading: “All have turned aside” — with emphasis on the word all. We have reflected this week on the place of the Jew and the Greek in the scheme of salvation. We have considered what it means to be faithful in “doing” the law, the unique place of the Jews as the custodians of the law, and how the Gentiles also now are grafted into God’s family.

Today Paul drives home that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.” The long quotation from the Old Testament (an assembly of selections mostly from several psalms, but also Proverbs and Isaiah) is unrelenting in its condemnation of fallen humanity. The fact that it is a compilation of quotes rather than from a single source is telling: Paul nails the teaching “so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” It is an overwhelming and forceful argument, but as we will see throughout the rest of the letter, it is intended to demonstrate incontrovertibly everyone’s desperate need of the rescue that only God can provide, and that God shows immense love to all by offering redemption and immortality.

Probably no one is ever completely willing to look fully at the depths of human failure and wickedness and apply them to himself or herself; but as Paul has shown in the readings for this week, only by doing so can we even begin to understand and value God’s staggering redemptive love.

♱

David Baumann served for nearly 50 years as an Episcopal priest in the Dioceses of Los Angeles and Springfield. He has published nonfiction, science fiction, and short stories. Two exuberant small daughters make sure he never gets any rest.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Maiwut – The Episcopal Church of South Sudan
St. David’s (Radnor) Church, Wayne, Pa.

By Mark Michael

The Rt. Rev. Enrique Treviño Cruz, Bishop of Cuernavaca, was installed on June 11 as primate of the Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, the Anglican Church of Mexico, following his election to the post at a recent provincial synod. Treviño has served as acting primate of the Anglican Church of Mexico since the retirement of the former primate, the Most Rev. Francisco Moreno, in November 2020.

Treviño was elected as Bishop of Cuernavaca, a colonial-era metropolis south of Mexico City, in 2013. He is the longest serving bishop of the church, which has five dioceses and an estimated membership of 21,000.

The Anglican Church of Mexico traces its origins to the Church of Jesus, which was established by liberal Mexican Roman Catholic priests in the 1850’s, and achieved official recognition in Mexico in 1857, when constitutional reforms guaranteed freedom of religion. In the 1870’s, the church established a connection with the Episcopal Church, and the Rt. Rev. Henry Chauncey Riley, who had previously been working in the region as a missionary, was consecrated as the first Bishop of Mexico in 1879.

Originally, the Episcopal Church assumed responsibility for English-speaking congregations formed among American and British railroad and oil field workers, while the Church of Jesus served Spanish-speaking congregations. As with Anglican mission work in South America and the Philippines, the church focused mainly on reaching indigenous populations in rural areas, where the Roman Catholic Church had a light presence.

The two mission efforts gradually merged, and the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Efrain Salinas y Velasco in 1931 as the church’s first native Mexican bishop marked a significant move toward autonomy. The five Mexican dioceses formally separated from the Episcopal Church in 1995, becoming a province of the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Church of Mexico, like most other small provinces in the Global South, has generally followed a centrist course in the Anglican realignment of recent decades. In 2010, it became the first province of the Anglican Communion to endorse the Anglican Covenant. Though same-sex marriage became legal in Mexico in 2010, the province does not endorse the practice, though the Rt. Rev. Julio César Martín-Trejo, the Canadian-educated Bishop of Southeast Mexico, is an advocate for changing this, and his diocesan synod passed a motion in February 2022 calling on the national synod to change the provincial marriage canons and liturgy to allow the practice.

The church has ordained women to the priesthood since 1994, and in November 2021, the Diocese of Mexico elected the province’s first female bishop, the Rt. Rev. Alba Sally Sue Hernández.

Creative Ideas for the Family Eucharist A Round-the-Year Resource By Sarah Lenton Canterbury Press, pp. 384, $40 As an Amazon Associate, TLC earns from qualifying purchases.

Review by Emily J. García

Creative Ideas for the Family Eucharist by Sarah Lenton, a priest of the Church of England, is the latest of many books since the 1990s that offer ready-made resources for those looking to lead child-focused worship. Unlike so many of those other texts, this one will provide worship leaders with clear and sound guiding principles, as well as scripts for focused, interactive sermons.

The best part comes first: the introduction and the opening three chapters (“General Principles,” “Setting up a Family Eucharist,” and “The Eucharist Step by Step”). Following these we find the bulk of the book, 35 sermon scripts for the whole liturgical year and major feast days. The closing appendices include Common Worship’s Eucharistic Prayer H, a short liturgy for “Children’s Mass,” intercessions for each season, a “Children’s Liturgy for Good Friday” (essentially the biblical Stations of the Cross), and then a script for the stations with children.

The opening chapters are reason enough to buy the book, especially for a worship leader who is either new to High Church liturgy or looking to involve children more authentically in worship. These chapters are full of concrete pointers for newbies and old hands — about how to work with minutes-long attention spans, about how some parents are actually more disruptive than children, about how to channel energy usefully rather than trying to tamp it down.

Throughout these chapters we see her affirmation that a service of the Eucharist is always an ‘all ages’ service, and she points out how to heighten and involve children in the most sense-heavy and interactive bits of a solemn celebration. For example, she notes that “[t]he Eucharist typically comes with costumes: venerable, colorful — and useful,” and in fact “wearing ancient garments is both fun and interesting.”

Making the sign of the cross and genuflecting are suggested for those who fidget, and in solemn worship one can more easily “give competent kids some glamorous tasks.”

Working with children also involves a bit more planning than most adults are used to, and here too she walks leaders through considering their space and adapting for their particular needs and preparing for whatever the congregation brings. Lenton teaches with great encouragement and humor.

The sermons that follow, too, are on the whole admirably focused — the questions, jokes, images, and props generally point back to the central theological topic she has chosen. (Many of us regularly hear sermons intended for adults that do not do this.) In these sermons, too, Lenton is teaching readers how to interact effectively, how to speak simply and clearly and in age-appropriate ways, and how to focus, for children, on one thing.

There are two weaknesses that may require adaptation. Many of us who want to include different sorts of households will choose to revise some of Lenton’s language around families. This is most notable in her Mothering Sunday service, in which the only reasons she offers for “your mother” not being there is that she’s dead or “couldn’t make it.”

When describing a biblical family shown with one father, she suggests something must be missing, and asks, “Didn’t the boy have a mother? Who cooked the fatted calf”?

A more serious weakness in the sermons that will occasionally be harder to adapt is her thoughtlessness toward Judaism and Jews. The two most obvious of several examples are in the sermons for the Feast of the Presentation. In one, she says, “The Jews thought” that “people should present their little boy to God — and buy him back.” Some brief reading (like in the footnotes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament) will correct this notion.

In the second sermon, she suggests asking for a member of “the Chosen Race” to come up and be “congratulate[d] on their privilege.” Regardless of the intent, the harm is the same.

On a more practical note, our Book of Common Prayer will require some small tweaks to Lenton’s plan: if this will be the main Sunday service, then Common Worship’s Prayer H cannot be used. However, for those who would like to start or strengthen their interactive Eucharists with children, this is an excellent resource and teaching guide.

The Rev. Emily J. Garcia is assistant rector of Our Redeemer, Lexington, Massachusetts, and a children’s ministry consultant.

By David Baumann

A Reading from Romans 2:25-3:8

25 Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 So, if the uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 Then the physically uncircumcised person who keeps the law will judge you who, though having the written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law. 28 For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something external and physical. 29 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.

1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much, in every way. For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Although every human is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written,

“So that you may be justified in your words
and you will prevail when you go to trial.”

5 But if our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my falsehood God’s truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”? Their judgment is deserved!

9 What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it is written:

“There is no one who is righteous, not even one;
11     there is no one who has understanding;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
there is no one who shows kindness;
there is not even one.”
13 “Their throats are opened graves;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of vipers is under their lips.”
14     “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16     ruin and misery are in their paths,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Meditation

If it is “doing” the law by which one pleases God, whether one knows the law (Jews) or doesn’t know the law (Gentiles), and if a person is a “true” Jew (i.e., one who does the law) “inwardly,” because “circumcision is a matter of the heart” and “spiritual, not literal” — then what advantage do the original holders of God’s law have?

Well, as we saw in yesterday’s lesson, the one who has the revelation from God, has a responsibility to be “a guide to the blind.” As Paul recites the advantage that the Jew has over the Gentile, we see that the advantage is to be the first entrusted with the favor and oracles of God — the root system by which God’s plan is generated and his love spread in the world. The favored people of Israel received and hold the revelations that God gave, and not for themselves alone, but on behalf of all the nations.

Underneath it all we see God’s sovereign power and invincible love dedicated to the redemption of the world — as we saw earlier this week “to the Jew first but also to the Gentile.” And this is the point. God’s plan unfolds for his people, his purpose is not thwarted, and his promises are faithful and lasting. However his stewards succeed or fail — Jew or Gentile — “let God be proved true” in every circumstance.

♱

David Baumann served for nearly 50 years as an Episcopal priest in the Dioceses of Los Angeles and Springfield. He has published nonfiction, science fiction, and short stories. Two exuberant small daughters make sure he never gets any rest.

To receive a TLC Daily Devotional in your inbox each morning, click here.

♱

Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer

Today we pray for:

The Diocese of Maine
Church of the Holy Faith, Santa Fe, N.M.