What do Episcopalians Believe?

I was having dinner with a clergy friend recently when the question arose, “What do Episcopalians believe?” He said that were he answering that question for someone from his denomination, he could point to their Augsburg Confession of faith. Episcopalians, unlike the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Churches, do not have a formal confessional statement of what the church, its congregations, and its members believe. Nor do we have official teachings, like in the Roman Catholic church, about what one must believe in order to be saved. For Episcopalians, there is no one definitive set of statements or set of teachings by which we can say “This agrees with Episcopalianism, but that does not.” That, however, does not mean Episcopalians either believe nothing in particular or, on the other hand, that Episcopalians believe everything. Rather, it means that the Episcopal tradition and the Anglican tradition of which it is part has not held to the practice of saying what each of its members must confess in order to be a member of the church. No one is required, for example, to profess a belief in the virgin birth of Jesus or that the bread and wine of communion is in real substance the actual flesh and blood of Jesus. 

So, what do we believe? Episcopalians have looked to the early undivided church and the early church councils for providing a variety of statements of what Episcopalians believe. You can find the results of that investigation in our current Book of Common Prayer. On page 845, you will find the Outline of the Faith which is a set of questions and answers about what the church believes. In several locations in the Prayer Book you will find the ancient creeds of the church which are compact statements of our basic beliefs about God. In worship, we use two of those creeds: The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. Our Eucharistic prayers also convey what we believe in their accounts of creation, sin and our redemption by the grace of God through the ministry of Jesus Christ. Among the Historical Documents section of the Prayer Book, you will find both the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and a statement from the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886 and 1888. These documents clarify where the Episcopal tradition differs from others churches but also where we seek to find common ground. I suggest to you that you read or re-read the Prayer Book with an eye for what it says about what we believe. It is simply not the case that Episcopalians believe everything that might be believed about God and the Church. 

In Christ’s service, 
Fr Bill+ 

Conspiring Blessing

The Bible tells us that in the beginning God spoke all that exists into existence. After each time God spoke and something came into existence, God saw and blessed what was. This creation account is not meant to be a scientific account, but theological. It tells us about God. It is God’s revelation of Godself and who we are in relationship with God. It tells us about the importance of the act of speaking and blessing. In church, we often talk about offering a blessing as giving the benediction. The final blessing for our Daily Office and Holy Eucharist liturgies are benedictions. That is, they are “good words spoken,” which is what benediction means. When God speaks, God breathes out blessing. Each time God says, “Let there be ...” something good is expired into being. The goodness of what exists is confirmed when the breath of God expires the words “it is good.” When God created humans in God’s image and gave us life, that same breath of blessing was spoken into us. The breath of blessing that God exhaled is what God used to give us life, to animate and inspire our being. Made in God’s image, we are vessels of that same breath of blessing. Gifted with this breath of blessing, we conspire with God in speaking blessing into the world. 

It seems to me that so much of what we hear reported about the world around us is the absence of blessing. We hear instead bad news about misbehaving people, bad news about someone’s economic condition, bad news about someone’s health. Bad news about our church and political leaders. Bad news about the leaders of business. Bad news from nature or about the environment. Bad news from abroad. Bad news about bad people who seem intent on doing bad things to our nation. All this bad news certainly can lead to a sense of pessimism if not outright fear. One might wonder where is God’s blessing in all this. I suspect it might be closer than we realize. In fact, it might be at the tip of our tongues. As those created in the image of God and blessed with the breath of blessing, we should speak more good words. It would probably do all of us some good, and some of us a lot of good. 

May God bless us as we speak blessing into a world that needs to hear a good word. 

Fr Bill+ 

Elements of Worship

The Episcopal Church is blessed to be comprised of worshipful folks who bring with them the customs of their previous church and denominational affiliations. This adds a richness to the texture of our liturgical practice, but may also lead us to wonder at times what exactly it is that we should be doing. “Should I stand or kneel for prayer, or can I sit?” “Is it okay to genuflect when I enter and exit my pew?” “Do I make the three crosses at the announcing of the Gospel reading?” “Should I reverence at the name of Jesus or the Trinity?” “My back is aching and my knees hurt. Can I stand to receive the host?” The short answer is that these are individual acts of piety, which often become part of the collective customs of a worshiping community, and which are often given a theological explanation. As acts of piety, the rule should be to do what makes you feel closer to God. Do what ritual action you hope will bring you closer to God, whether you feel it or not, but in a way that is considerate of those around you. That said, here are some historical data that may be helpful. 

In the early church, no one sat in pews, no one kneeled, and there was no altar rail. Fixed pews did not enter the church until some time before the Reformation. They were in response to the development of lengthy sermons. In the early church, prayer was done in the traditional Jewish manner: standing, eyes open, head raised to heaven, and arms extended. You still see this in the Episcopal tradition when the priest says the Eucharistic prayer. What the modern church has come to recover is the understanding that the whole of the worship gathering is liturgy, where “liturgy” means the work of the people. That means that it is not just the priest who prays, and it is not the role of the priest to do the work of prayer on behalf of the people. Rather, all the gathered are called to participate in prayer. Imagine the early church where all the faithful would stand with their hands raised in a communal act as the priest reads the Eucharistic prayer. Kneeling during worship was actually forbidden by the Council of Nicea in 325AD. That was the council that gave us the first version of Nicean Creed. Being that the Feast of the Lord’s Day celebrates his resurrection and our redemption, it was to be a joyous rather than penitential affair. Later, in England, kneeling to receive the host was banned in the Anglican Church by the Protestants who were in power at that time because they saw it as too Catholic and expressing the wrong Eucharistic theology. 

The modern church certainly has its customs. Sit to listen, kneel to pray, stand to sing, for example. In some churches, they kneel for all prayer during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent, but stand during the other seasons. In others, they never kneel or they never stand. The Episcopal custom has been to look to the early church and its practices, but it has also been a church of the “via media” or middle way between piety of Roman Catholicism and that of the reformed Protestant churches. As a via media church, we welcome various acts of personal piety. Mine happens to include standing for prayer because I want to be connected with ancient practice standing during communal worship. Believing penance has its place, I kneel for confession and during penitential seasons. I encourage you to think more about what brings you closer to God and to practice those things. And let us all be gracious toward others who have different expressions of piety. 

In Christ’s service, 

Fr Bill+

The Mission of the Church

In the Prayer Book catechism, we read “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” This is our Episcopal way of repeating what St. Paul said to the church at Corinth when he wrote, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” As I reflect on our life together, I am hopeful that this parish will continue to practice reconciliation and will seek out new ways to make reconciliation happen so that this faith community will grow into its full potential as an instrument and sign of God’s kingdom already present, and that more and more folks in our community will know the love of God for all people. Thankfully, that unity does not mean a conformity of thought or action that would impoverish rather than enrich our life together. Like the beauty of our healing garden and fountain, the beauty of our community comes from the many different varieties of people and their voices that work together in Christ. It is through baptism that we all become “in Christ” and it is through acts of reconciliation that we seek to remain “in Christ” and with each other. So whether we eat meat on Friday, raise our hands in worship, speaketh Rite I, spend our weekends feeding the poor, drink wine and eat shrimp, or not, we neither pass judgment on another nor boast in ourselves. Rather, we find our common ground in being “in Christ” and we cherish and honor the diversity of life that is a gift of God to this parish family.

This month marks one year since I arrived at Good Shepherd. Thanks be to God. For the opening hymn of my first Sunday service we sang “All are Welcome.” It’s a beauty hymn and happens to use in its title the words that are something of a motto for the Episcopal Church. Let us continue to work together toward the mission of the church, keeping in mind our common grounding “in Christ.” Let us celebrate our differences and continue to make this a place where all are welcome.

In Christ’s service,

Fr Bill+

Discipleship 101

Although I am sure God could have done it all without our help, that was not God’s plan. Instead, God went through the joyful and messy business of calling flawed folks just like us into his service for fixing the world. I am not one to think that God bothered to come down from heaven, become incarnate and do all he did, just to end up dying to make things well between us and him. Rather, I think God also came to show us how to live and how to bring others into the family of God. A big part of that is called discipleship. It is about showing the new folks and folks who have been around for a while how to live and how to die. It is about the learning of who we are and how we are. 

Early in the Gospels, we see Jesus calling ordinary people to follow him so that he could show them what he was doing and explain to them the how and the why of it all. When it came time for them to give it a try, he did not leave them to figure it out by themselves, but he gave them the challenge and stood by to help them when did not know what to do. Recall, the feeding of the masses. He told them to feed the hungry and when they could not, he told them what to do and each helped. The point is that Jesus is slowly building up their capabilities, not just handing them the keys to the church and wishing them luck. Following, watching and learning from the master, Jesus mentors his disciples. Only after following and seeing are they called to help. Then he watches as they work, like a master supervising a student. Lastly, he sends them out in pairs to try it for themselves. It is this tradition of discipleship that we see again in the Book of Acts. John-Mark mentored by Barnabas, Timothy mentored by Paul. And who knows about the stories of the women? I am sure that Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Lydia and more showed other women and men how it’s done. 

My own experiences with mentors have been invaluable. From professors who shared with me the culture of academia to clergy who showed me how to be a priest (you know, all the stuff they do not teach you in seminary), mentors helped get me where I am. As our mentors did for us, it is our responsibility to do the same for others. As someone taught you the faith, you now teach someone the faith. As someone taught you how to engage in doing social justice, you now bring someone into the work of social justice. As someone taught you the beauty of church music, you now show someone how they too can experience the beauty of music. As someone taught you how to care for the sick, you now show someone how that is done. It’s discipleship 101. Jesus did it. The early church did it. You, me, and all of us should try it too. In this 
Easter season, invite someone to learn what you have to share and consider for yourself where you might be mentored into a new area of service. I wonder how much patience Keith has for mentoring a non-musical priest?

Grace and peace,

Fr Bill+ 

Discernment and Vision

I had the privilege and blessing recently to spend time with your vestry discerning the past and present of this most wonderful parish community and to begin conversation about the vision we share for the short and long term life of our church. These discernment and visioning practices should be an on-going discipline of all areas of our faith community, from the parish as whole, to its various ministry groups and committees, and to each individual as we all seek to be faithful to and live out God’s will for our lives. 

In our discernment conversation, we recognized that this parish community has been from its beginning a place significantly composed of and shaped by faithful people who are not originally from this area and folks who were not originally Episcopalians. We have been and remain a faith community of newcomers, exiles and sojourners, and it is a particular gift of this community that we take seriously our welcome and hospitality to those who come here seeking a place of fellowship and refuge, and a place where they too care share in the love of Christ by loving others. It is our legacy and it is one of our hallmarks that we practice excellence in hospitality and care. To mention just some of those practices, our hospitality includes the work of our Newcomers Ministry and our Ushers, our Coffee Hour ministry, our Grazers groups and the many events led by our Parish Life committee, the work of our Communications committee, even the simple smile and hand shake you offer to each other. I am sure you can think of many more ways that we remain faithful to that legacy of welcome and hospitality. Likewise, we have been and remain a place dedicated to caring for each other, those who join us, and extending that care to our neighbors, even if at times we do so imperfectly. Our pastoral care ministries, our healing ministries, and wide ranging outreach efforts have been a blessing to this place perhaps as much as they have been to blessing to our neighbors. 

While it is true that we walk by faith, not by sight, it is also true bearing fruit is a sign of walking in the will of God. In our visioning work, we shared our thoughts on how we can not only remain faithful to God’s call upon this parish to the practices of welcome, hospitality, and care that have borne much fruit, but how we can also enhance our efforts in these areas to grow more deeply and more broadly, and indeed how we can use all our existing resources more strategically toward those ends. In short, our challenge for the next three years is to think and act more strategically toward maximizing the many gifts God has given us toward a greater realization of God’s will for Good Shepherd. Toward those ends, I have called together an Ad Hoc Space Use committee to provide the vestry with an updated narrative on how we currently use our existing space and a recommendation on how we can best use that space to enhance our practices of welcome, hospitality, and care. I have also called a Strategic Planning committee that will develop a set of growth goals and strategies for the next three years. I ask your prayers for these committees and that you also pray that a spirit of cooperation blanket this parish so that we might all work together to the greater glory of God and the blessing of all his people.

In Christ’s service, 
Fr Bill+ 

Fr. Bill Breedlove

“It is our legacy and it is one of our hallmarks that we practice excellence in hospitality and care.”

Unapologetically Episcopalian

“This is a church where the grace of God trumps the wrath of God and this is a church where God’s love has the power to redeem any and every one.”

Epiphany is a season of revelation, of revealing things unseen or as yet seen only dimly. It is a season in which our lectionary readings and worship help us once again enter into the mystery and grace of God revealed in Jesus and our common call to follow, come and see, stay with him, and invite others to do the same. As Episcopalians, and perhaps especially as Episcopalians tucked away into these surrounding mountains, we may sometimes feel like our common way of life is something unseen by the unchurched or as yet seen only dimly by our non-Episcopal neighbors. It may be helpful to those interested in creating an “Epiphany of Episcopalianism” to have some ready ideas on why many of our neighbors would find our way of life to their benefit and why some should truly come and see. So, I share the following from my former Bishop, mentor and friend who spoke unapologetically about why one should be an Episcopalian. 

“You should be an Episcopalian if you believe men and women are fundamentally equal in the sight of God and that women as well as men should be able to serve in every office in the Church. In the Episcopal Church there are women who are acolytes, women vestry members, women senior and junior wardens, women deacons, woman priests, woman bishops, and even a woman Presiding Bishop. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you believe age, race, sexual orientation, or disability shouldn’t keep anyone from having an equal place in the House of God. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you believe in the power of both the Word of God preached and in the Presence of God as revealed through the sacraments. If you find solace and strength in hearing God’s word preached with power and in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ on a regular basis, you have come to the right place. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you believe that the glory of God can be revealed through beautiful architecture, beautiful music, beautiful liturgy, beautiful art, and beautiful literature. Episcopalians believe God is fully revealed in the midst of such beauty and we seek to support and value the aesthetic in all of life. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you are serious about hearing and learning about the Word of God. If you attend Episcopal worship regularly, you will hear the largest part of the Bible read over a three-year cycle. Episcopalians hear lessons from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, as well as from the Gospels. Episcopalians also bring a scholarly mind to the study of the Bible and most Episcopalians take the Bible too seriously to take it literally. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you think churches should be built around the worship of God and not around the charisma of any one clergyperson. In the Episcopal Church it is God, and not the clergy, who remains the center of our focus. 

You should be an Episcopalian if you believe frightening imperfect Christians with the fiery flames of hell or with crushing, unrelenting guilt is not only un-biblical, but un-Christian. This is a church where the grace of God trumps the wrath of God and this is a church where God’s love has the power to redeem any and every one.” 

In this Epiphany season and for all of the coming year, let us rejoice in our Episcopal tradition and let us not forget to invite others to come and see. 

Fr Bill+

The Future of the Church Looks Old, and I Think that's Good

“Recovering what they believe to have been true of the earliest faith communities, these contemporary faith communities adopt and adapt those principles and practices to life in the modern world. ”

It goes by at least several different names: the Emerging Church, Emergence Christianity, the New Monasticism. Take your pick, they all are used to describe a modern and growing form of Christianity community that looks to the future largely by looking to the past. Recovering what they believe to have been true of the earliest faith communities, these contemporary faith communities adopt and adapt those principles and practices to life in the modern world. What they have recovered is the church that existed before dogma and doctrine, the church before creeds. What they have recovered is the church of relationship and caring for each other, the church that was passionate about sharing what it had with others. Luke describes it this way in the Book of Acts:

44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Meeting with people, sharing with and caring for all the people, and praising God for that privilege and all else they were given - these were the hallmarks of the first Christian communities, and people joined them in large numbers. More a movement than an institution, the earliest Christian communities were communities in the world, responding to the love of God and sharing the love of God. They were communities that fully embraced what we mean when we say “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

In their ministry to and conversion of the pagan people of Ireland, St Patrick and the Celtic monks who followed him, employed a model of evangelism that brought them into close relationship with the Irish people. They lived on the land with the Irish. They listen to their stories and came to see the world through the eyes of the Irish. They took care of the basic needs of the Irish and explained the Gospel to them in a way that made sense to the Irish world view. Like the Celtic monks, new monastics do not seek to save their souls by separating themselves from the evils of the world, but rather they live in the world and engage the people of the world.

This is the emerging church of new monastics: non-dogmatic, in the world, caring for the needs of others in response to the love of God revealed in the life and death of his son, and gathering to rejoice in the good that God is doing in and through his people.

My hope in the coming year for our Good Shepherd family is that we can begin to find our future in something that looks very old.

Fr Bill+ 

Happy Advent! Happy New Year!

With the coming of the Advent season we begin a new year in the life of God’s people. Advent, as the name suggests in its Latin meaning, is a season where we watch for the coming of God’s promised messiah Jesus. While this watching might first lead our thoughts to the baby to be born on Christmas in Bethlehem, there are other aspects of the coming of God that we also watch for with renewed hope during this season. The Greek word for Advent is parousia - a word not

referring to the first coming of Christ, but to his promised second coming in power and great glory. And so also we watch in thanksgiving for where God’s Kingdom is already being made manifest in the hearts and lives of God’s people through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

A new year allows for a new start, so it has been customary for Christians to use the Advent season as a season of reflection, repentance, and preparation. What is done is done. What is past is past. We give thanks for our many blessing, we make reconciliation where that is needed, and we now look again with a renewed hope in the coming of God who has and who will again dwell among us.

A few thoughts on your participation in a holy Advent:

Prepare for the gift of God’s son by giving the gift of yourself. Who are some people in your community who need to know and experience God’s love for them, and how can you be the bearer of that love?

As God came to us as a powerless infant, expressing great humility and emptying himself for the
sake of all, how can you experience and express your own humility? What privileges or rights, or use of resources and riches can you forgo for the sake of others during Advent as your own participation in God’s great act of humility?

Greater watchfulness requires putting away distractions during a season when sights and sounds and the call of commercialism and materialism are louder than ever. What busyness can you let go, what noise can you silence? Turn off the social media, take out the ear buds. Turn off the television and spend some time each day looking and listening - indeed, using all the senses - for signs of God’s Kingdom present and yet to come.

God bless you with a holy Advent,

Fr Bill+ 

The Family of All the Faithful Departed

Growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina meant that I grew up with friends and neighbors like myself - people who also were not natives of that community and who had no nearby kin. There were some exceptions, but it was rare to find extended families living together in that community. Rather, because of their connections with the military, most people I knew were from somewhere else. The familiar southern question “You any kin to ...?” just did not make sense in that community. 

Things changed when I moved to a small town in South Carolina. As a newcomer, many people wanted to know who I was “kin to.” That connection to family was apparently vital for establishing your place in the existing order of outsiders and natives, the honorable and the disreputable, trust and suspicion. The importance of those family ties extended not just among the living but also to the dead who remained in the memories of the living. This was brought to my attention in a delightful way when I moved to Charleston, South Carolina. Someone shared with me the observation that Charlestonian are a lot like the Chinese. They eat a lot of rice and they worship their dead ancestors. 

For members of Good Shepherd, our faith community plays something of a similar role. It helps define who we are as Episcopalians. We have our Episcopal family history and our Episcopal traditions. We practice and celebrate those, and they make us distinct. And like other family systems, we also recall those who have gone before us when reckoning our kin-ties. We remember the martyrs and official saints of the church on All Saints day and other appointed days, but we also remember those departed with whom we lived more closely. These are, for many of us, the true saints of the church and the ones who helped define who we are more than those officially recognized on any church calendar. At 5:00 pm on November 3, we will gather to remember and celebrate the lives of all these faithful departed. It is a time for us to give thanks for the lives of those now departed, yet who still make us family. 

In Christ’s service, 

Fr Bill+