Encourage, Strengthen, Love One Another

In the listening process, our consultants began with 16 one-on-one interviews, held 10 in-person and online listening sessions with 215 participants, and conducted a survey to learn more; nearly 500 of you answered that call. Then we used the convention last year to hone our responses to what we heard. What came through clearly was a desire by many for more connections with one another and a need from most for greater support in some areas of our common witness to the love of God we have found in Jesus.

The Primary Goal

Our primary goal is to so embody the Good News in our individual lives and in our common life as a church that more of our neighbors come to find that same redeeming love we enjoy. Our Reformed Catholic approach to Word and Sacrament, in which we are seen right in God’s sight through faith alone and then nurtured through practices of faith created to assist us in becoming more Christ-like over time, will not be for all of our neighbors. Yet, some will never be able to follow Christ in the way they feel compelled to do without the Episcopal Church in their community. 

This theme comes from the 43 verses in the New Testament which describe how followers of Jesus are to treat each other, as fellow members of a community where very different parts are described as being members of the same body. In the convention, the strategic planning committee will share the ways in which we will:

Encourage One Another

These are the new ways we are responding to the challenges of this moment when an ongoing decline in church attendance in general meets up with an even longer ongoing downturn in population in many of the rural communities we serve. The new approaches include the Lay Worship Leaders’ training that brought 47 people together from across the Diocese to develop skills in leading the principal service on a Sunday in the absence of a priest. This also includes a new Resource Hub to give leaders scattered across the broad Diocese equal access to good tools that will keep every congregation from “reinventing the wheel.” 

Strengthen One Another

This area of the plan is about shifting how we engage with some areas of ministry where we have long been active—like youth programs and college chaplaincies—so that we are better able to care for these essential ministries. This also includes the look underway now to tend to the sustainability of Honey Creek.

Love One Another

This love is what the plan aims us toward. Our new ways of being and the strengthening of long-standing commitments will assist us in engaging our communities in becoming the Beloved Community that reflects the very heart of the Holy Trinity. We enjoy the unearned grace of our loving and compassionate God who loves us as we are too much to leave us as we are and we know our family, co-workers, friends, and neighbors need this gracious love as much as we do.

There is so much more to share, but know that this work provides us with a dynamic direction rather than a static plan. Even when we share in convention the initial plans for how we will live into this call to be the Episcopal Church needed in our corner of the vineyard in this moment, we see how the Holy Spirit will further lead us as we continue in this direction aimed at greater faithfulness. I trust that when we look up in a few years, we will be able to name yet more ways in which this plan unfolded in ways that we can’t yet see.

Peace,
+Frank

The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Georgia