Closing Remarks to the 204th Convention
Closing Remarks to the 204th Convention
November 8, 2025
The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
There is no I in Team
When I arrived here at Georgia Southern as a Sophomore, I got jobs shooting photos for the school newspaper and the school’s PR department. This gave me an insider’s view into the football program as I was here as the founding head coach, Erk Russell, arrived to start building a team. I was there for their first practices, the first day in pads, and their first game, played at the Dublin High School stadium. I was aware of his reputation as a defensive coordinator for the Georgia Bulldogs, who coined the nickname “Junkyard Dogs.” After 17 years there, he went out on top. UGA had just won a National Championship when Erk resigned to take the job here in Statesboro.
They had no real inducement for new players for an unknown team, offering neither prestige nor scholarships to drive recruitment. Erk scoured high schools, junior colleges, all around looking for players with untapped potential. My roommate, John Sharpe from Vidalia, who left a scholarship position playing for Georgia Tech to play for Erk. John never regretted the move, as he got to be part of building something special alongside players I got to know well from practices and the sidelines of games. I was there when he named the nasty drainage ditch in the midst of the practice fields Beautiful Eagle Creek. I watched them pour out a jug of this Eagle Creek water to claim a field far from Statesboro as their own home turf.
In those early days, Erk often wore a T-shirt with the word “TEAM” written in huge capital letters that dwarfed the word written beneath it, “me.” Big Team. Little Me. This was Erk’s way of showing there is no I in team. Erk would bring home three NCAA Division I-AA championships. The Cinderella story was possible because Erk Russell convinced the ragtag group of players that, as a team, they could be better than any of them were as individuals.
I could now change to my Youth Pastor’s Voice and say, “You know who turned a ragtag group into a team that transformed the world?” The answer to any such question asked in Youth Pastor Voice is always…[wait for someone to say it]. Yes, Jesus.
Y’all have heard a lot of sermons in your lives. I don’t have to belabor the connection between building a football team and our plan to Encourage, Strengthen, and Love One Another. The Apostle Paul had felt in his marrow the ineffable joy of being in communion with other Christians through being in communion with God, the Holy Trinity. Out of this experience of the koinonia, that essential unity for which we were created, he knew that we, the people who are the church, were not meant to worship and serve in isolation, but as part of a larger community. The Apostle Paul created a powerful image for how the individual members of the church come together to do more than any could do on their own when he wrote about the members of a body. In his rousing halftime pep talk to his team in his First Letter to the Corinthians, where the 12th Chapter is all about how “Y’all are the body of Christ.”
I know whatever translation of the Bible you read does not say “Y’all,” but in Greek the word is plural. Paul meant “Y’all.” Paul wrote to the local church in Corinth that he knew well to remind them that they are part of the larger Body of Christ, which is the total of all the Christian churches. Paul compared the church to a body, because it gave him a great way to show how every person in the congregation is essential. The feet need the hands, the hands need the eyes, and on it goes. The Apostle to the Gentiles goes to almost comic lengths to make his point that no one is better than another in writing: “The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more respectable members do not need this.”
This points to the truth that the Holy Trinity never, ever, not even one time, gives all the gifts to one individual. We are made to be in relationship with God and with each other, which is why so much of the New Testament describes the practical, daily living out of koinonia in how to be in community with one another.
As a new Episcopalian, I was surprised to learn that in the Anglican Communion, the primary unit of organization and governance is a diocese. I grew up here in the Deep South where congregationalism is in the groundwater in a nation that praises the rugged individual who makes their way on their own. Yet, within our tradition, we acknowledge that a parish is not meant to remain in isolation, but within the vital network of connections that exist within a Diocese. This makes sense as every church does not need to maintain the capacity to raise up its own clergy, train them for ministry, and ordain them as deacons and priests. That work, that supports the individual parishes, happens well in a Diocese. The same is true with the many elements of the strategic plan, which build on the strength that exists within our network of churches
As I said last evening, independence is an illusion as we all need others, and we are not meant to be fully dependent on anyone or anything but God alone. What we are meant to be as people and as the Body of Christ is neither dependent nor independent, but interdependent. This interdependence is a way of expressing the close partnership and participation within our diocesan community that is flows not from us, but from the communion already present in the divine life of the Holy Trinity. As individuals, we are interdependent, each of us needing others from time to time, and as congregations, we are to be interdependent as well, each of us much better off for the connections we share.
When we get out of our parish, as everyone here did to take part in this diocesan convention, we discover the richness of these connections. I have watched the change that happens when a 3rd grader takes part in the Acolyte Festival, a Middle Schooler makes it to New Beginnings, and adults go to Cursillo. This also happens with the Lay Ministers Conference and Lay Worship Leader Training and over the last 15 years, I have seen this in people taking part in the Church Development Institute and Leading with Grace. It is life-giving to find yourself part of a larger group of Episcopalians with whom you are already connected. It is such a great gift to find others whose struggles and joys so match your own. It is a short step from watching the varied people who showed up for a weekend find friendship to enjoying seeing people gather for our convention to see how many of you arrive grateful to see others you have met through these types of gatherings.
This move from a parish focus to seeing our local parish as an integral part of a diocesan community is truly transformational. A given congregation need not be omnicompetent to thrive, as the gifts are likely already present in the Diocese, and if not, they will be found in the larger Episcopal Church. When you realize that you are already part of a bigger team and you make the effort to connect with others, you will find not just an increase in knowledge or capacity, but a greater sense that you are not alone. You are part of an interdependent web of connections that comes from being in communion with everyone that God is in communion with, which Paul described so perfectly as the Body of Christ.
The challenges we face are significant. But we have continued to operate like the church of prior generations, when we could sit back, hoping folks would find us and, in our worship, find Jesus, without our needing to offer a word of invitation or welcome. We could try harder at pretending to be the church of the 1950s, but in so many ways, that ship has sailed, which is great, as that church was not open to the gifts of the whole community.
Our way of being the Body of Christ must respond to the times in which we live, not by bending the Gospel to meet the wisdom of a given age, but by bringing the eternal word to the communities we serve in our given time and place. In the 1950s and 60s, when church attendance was assumed of good people in Central and South Georgia, we could assume that being a successful church meant a full-time professional for every parish leading a congregation with fully staffed committees and a robust Sunday School while being a successful mission meant working with our professional, paid for in part by the Diocese, toward that goal. Yet, the Diocese of Georgia thrived in earlier generations when being the Body of Christ did not assume this model and yet we did in those previous generations assist more neighbors in coming to know Jesus.
Rather than holding out for the ideal of a post-World War II church boom, we are to do what we can for Jesus where we are with what we have now. Right now, with no additional resources, we can encourage and strengthen one another into being the fullest expression of the Body of Christ that our community can sustainably offer so that more of our neighbors will come to love Jesus as we do.
If we work on our own faith, while right-sizing our expectations, we can grow in grace and share the love of God with others. We can encourage parishioners to use their gifts within the church and the community through formation for every age and stage of life that emphasizes the practices we know nurture more Christ-like lives even as we encourage more vocations to ordained ministry. We can support lay leaders, clergy, and congregations in shifting the business side of church to align with our current resources in this new landscape for our ongoing mission and in this effort, clergy and congregations will support one another directly, and through convocations, as well as through the Diocese. And we can do all of this in service of more fully showing love for one another as we get beyond our welcoming red doors into our neighborhoods in ways that fit our congregation so that more people experience this love. I began with what I experienced here in Statesboro, when an inspirational leader pulled off what felt like a miraculous start for a new team. Make no mistake. I am no Erk Russell. I am just the guy using his Youth Pastor’s Voice to remind us that the team we are on is led by Jesus. Y’all are Christ’s body. And I know as we forge more connections among us, the Holy Trinity who created us out of love for love will do more than we could ask for or imagine as we head into the dynamic direction this plan points us toward. As always, I am glad to be on this team with you.