Date: June 18th 2010

June 18, 2010

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I write to announce that a project on which the vestry and I, along with the guidance of the Canon to the Ordinary, have been working quite diligently for the past several months has finally come to fruition. Beginning Sunday, August 1, 2010, we will be adding an 11:00 a.m. service in the Parish Life Center for the Spanish speaking community from St. Francis.

As many of you know, the Hispanic mission at St. Francis was started at St. James and was sustained for several years at St. Francis. However, due to many factors with the property and buildings, this important worship community is in need of a home.

Because of our historic ties to the St. Francis community as well as our ongoing support, St. James was the natural place to turn for a new home for the Spanish service and the community that it serves.

This matches well with our mission statement: “St. James Episcopal Church is, above all, a welcoming, caring community. We are dedicated to worship, outreach, fellowship and growth in the service of Christ.” This is precisely the radical hospitality we are called to in the Gospel. We are called to share our life with all who come to us in need and in fellowship of the Risen Christ.

Amongst the many gifts that the people of St. Francis will bring to St. James is the addition of more children in our Sunday School and Episcopal Youth Community. We have the Sunday School programs in place, and they have children who want to partake of those programs. This goes to the very heart of what it means to be a church that is part of a diocese, a church that is called to mission and outreach not only in places as distant as Haiti but also in places as nearby as our own neighborhoods.

It is important to me that no one sees this merging of two vital congregations as a “we-them” situation. This is in every way imaginable an “us” situation. We will provide a worship space for the people of St. Francis and we will welcome them into our programs. They in turn will give us an opportunity to see a more complete picture of the new creation that has been brought about through the mighty power of Christ’s Resurrection. They will bring us the gift of their culture and their community, and we will be made stronger for it.

I look toward a day that acolytes are shared, serving both the English services of St. James and the Spanish services of St. Francis. I look toward a day that the clergy of St. James take their turns assisting Father Taylor at the 11:00 Eucharist in the Parish Life Center, distributing the Blessed Sacrament with words that are foreign to our tongues but dear to our hearts. I look toward a day when the people of St. Francis and the people of St. James see no more of a difference between the Spanish service in the PLC and the English service in the sanctuary than we do between our current 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services.

I look forward to the day that coffee hour is a shared event in which the common languages of fellowship and family transcend the small barrier of different spoken languages.

As the father of two youth, I look forward to the day that by being together in the service of Christ, our children no longer see the differences between our communities and see, instead, all that we have in common as children of God.

I am not naïve, and neither is your vestry. We are aware that every wonderful opportunity comes with its own set of challenges. We know there are many questions that you will have, and we will take the time to answer them as best we can. We will be stretched both in physical space and in our own comfort zones. But it is in facing such challenges that we grow as people of faith. It is in seeing those challenges as opportunities that we develop new understandings of what it means to be servants of Christ by serving one another. It is in facing those challenges that we learn what it means to be always in the process of becoming a Christ-centered community rather than simply a worship center.

Challenges often bring about frustration. That is natural. However, I can think of no better words of advice on how to face such challenges and frustrations than these words from the prayer attributed to St. Francis, “Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.” (BCP p. 833)

An event as important as this in the life of two worship communities should never pass uncelebrated. Thus, on July 25, the Feast of Blessed Saint James, our Patron, we will have a celebratory luncheon in the Parish Life Center immediately following the 11:00 a.m. service. We will be joined at that celebration by all our brothers and sisters in Christ from St. Francis. The agenda will be straightforward – we will simply sit down, break bread together, and celebrate and prepare to set out on this exciting journey together.

Finally, I want to tell you that every day I give thanks to God that I was called to this place. This parish has been growing rapidly in the past year, and as I told the vestry last week, churches do not grow by accident. Neither do churches grow because of priests. Churches grow because the very people who are the Church live lives of integrity, live lives that speak volumes to other people, live lives of radical hospitality, and thus create a Church in which others experience a palpable sense of the radical, unconditional love of Christ.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Geoff +