This Week at St. Paul's
Mother Michelle Walker
Dear St. Paul's Family,
In the first weeks of my time here at St. Paul's I discovered a lovely brochure that depicts the story of our stained glass windows. It was written by (now Fr.) Joel Steiner when Fr. Paul was your priest. The pictures are beautiful and the writing is clear in it's explanations. I read it over many times and decided if I enjoyed it that much, others might as well. One evening I recreated the entire pamphlet on our website, which I'd recently redesigned and relaunched. You can find the windows page here: https://www.stpaulslaporte.org/our-windows.
I share this with you because I LOVE our windows. I am incredibly blessed to be able to simply sit in the church and breathe it all in, at different times of the day. I sometimes sit in the pews, or on the bottom altar step, and pray with my eyes open. I often imagine, or maybe really experience the Holy Spirit speaking to me through those windows. I appreciate the morning light, the midday light, and even the thunderstorm light from last Sunday. The windows are ever changing in the light, while they also remain exactly the same.
Do you ever wonder if WE are like that as well? Ever changing in the light (of Christ), while also exactly the same (in our love for and faith in Him)? I'm fairly certain the faithful of St. Paul's would not have imagined even a year ago:
a female priest-in-charge,
a pandemic forcing us all to social distance,
LIVE STREAMING from within our church building,
our 91 year old parishioner watching Sunday services on a tablet Sandra delivers to her (& retrieves) each week, and
that we'd had VISITORS at 2 of our 3 in-person services of 10 people in July!
And yet we are exactly the same. We still love God. We still love each other. We're still sending in our pledges. We're still praying for each other. We are still the faithful of St. Paul's. We ALL have been forced to change and (like it or not) we are surviving, maybe even thriving (time will tell).
I think about all of this in the context of our commission, our desire, our mandate to share the Good News of Jesus in any and every way we can. In my role with the Diocese I am fortunate enough to be on the Commission for Evangelism. (You'll hear more about that later.) Evangelism often gets a bad reputation as something difficult or extreme. It doesn't have to be.
Evangelism is a simple as sharing our love for Jesus is small, measured amounts to people who might be interested, even in the slightest. Just today I met a woman while I was waiting to be called for an appointment and (because she asked, mostly!) I proceeded to tell her (just a little bit) about faith, The Episcopal Church, OUR faith community. I didn't push it on her or ask for any personal information. I simply listened and shared about my faith, my church. I wrote our website and my contact information on a piece of paper and gave it her, because she asked. THAT'S evangelism.
I share this with you today NOT because I did anything terrific. I share this with you we have a unique opportunity in these days. We can invite people to church in the easiest, least intrusive way ... by sharing our live stream or sharing the St. Paul Facebook posts to each of our personal Facebook pages (or sharing our YouTube link via email if you don't use Facebook). If you recently found a great new restaurant, you would be excited to share that with your friends. I hope and pray that you find our live stream services something you would also be excited to share with your friends.
The truth, for us at St. Paul's, is multi-faceted:
we love Jesus and want his grace and peace to spread all through LaPorte County and beyond;
we have a beautiful church building, even if we can't be in it right now, and we can share it by sharing pictures and inviting people to our live stream;
we have a congregation that could use and would welcome some new members; and most importantly,
we have a world, here in LaPorte alone, that needs the experience of a loving God and a loving church.
In my interview to be your priest-in-charge I was asked what my 5 year plan was for St. Paul's. My response was something to the effect of "What is YOUR 5 year plan for St. Paul's? I plan to join the community, love the community, lead the community AND it will be up to all of us, listening for God's will, to plan the rest." If you love St. Paul's and want our ministry here to continue and to grow, will you embrace a little evangelism? Will you share our Facebook posts? Will you invite people to our live stream? Will you listen for the possibility of sharing a tiny bit of your faith when the opportunity is right? I promise it gets easier the more you do it!
Blessings!Mother Michelle
priest@stpaulslaporte.org | 219-575-0226