My Dear Sisters and Brothers at Christ Church,
After church last Sunday Will Scott and I hosted a newcomers' gathering to talk about how the Episcopal Church became the particular way it is. One person asked us how Christ Church was doing with diversity. I noted that like most Episcopal churches, our congregation no longer reflects the demographics of our neighborhood. We tend to be whiter, older and more affluent than many of our neighbors. Clearly we have work to do to make our church more relevant to the people around us. Another newcomer commented that diversification was really a challenge of evangelism. That's an excellent point. I truly believe that we have something wonderful going on here at Christ Church. As Will likes to say, we're a unicorn. But we obviously have some difficulty inviting people into the story of our church.
To me, the issues of diversity and evangelism roll into the larger question we're talking about this Faith Full Giving season: Who is God calling you to be? Put differently, how can we as individuals and as a church reflect God's character, and how can we share that with people we don't see on Sundays? Frustratingly for someone who likes to pretend he knows everything, I don't have the answers to those questions. We're doing something new here at Christ Church: bringing the beauty of our tradition into conversation with the experiences of people who don't go to church. There's no script for that, so we have to write it ourselves.
I want your help writing that script, that love letter to God and our neighbors. As we look ahead to our Faith Full Giving Sunday, I invite you to join me in answering the question, "Who is God calling you to be?" and in sharing the answer with our lives.
God bless you all!
-Stephen