This Week at St. Paul's
Mother Michelle Walker
Dear St. Paul's Family,
How is Your Lent So Far?
I must admit that I am really enjoying the meditations from Episcopal Relief and Development that arrive in my inbox each morning. I've made it a practice to grab my phone, read the meditation, spend a few moments in Lament, and set an intention for the day before I even get out of bed! The perspectives and suggestions are valuable to me, especially as we reflect upon the REST stage of Lament.
Maybe this is all paired with the warmer weather and a bit more sun, but I'm finding this journey nourishing to my soul right now, in this season. I pray that whatever you are doing for your Lenten journey is achieving the same results!
Vestry Retreat Update
On Saturday February 20th Bishop Doug joined us for our Vestry Retreat (via Zoom). We had wonderful conversation on the four questions listed below. The answers were inspiring and challenging. We were joyous and proud for the accomplishments St. Paul's has made, particularly in this last (almost) year of the pandemic.
What have we done?
What have we done well?
What could we do better?
What more can we do together?
We also spent some time learning and exploring areas where we might want to invest our energies in 2021. Bishop Doug shared information on:
consensus formation (particularly in vestries),
inclusive marriage policies,
racial reconciliation, and
evangelism.
As vestry we agreed all of these topics are important. All of them are well worth investing time and energy to prepare and launch St. Paul's into our next season of ministry. With so many different programs already available across the wider church related to racial reconciliation and evangelism, we will research and consider them for later in the year. However, consensus formation and inclusive marriage policy conversations are both topics we can explore now.
Consensus formation is a process by which a group of people, or in our case a vestry, makes a decision on a topic after having earnest conversation and hearing the opinions and perspectives of all of the individuals at the table. Consensus formation strives to come to a decision where everyone may or may not agree, but where everyone feels heard regardless of their opinion. A critical component of consensus formation is that whatever is decided by the group, the vestry, is supported by each member even if they wouldn't have chosen that direction personally. It is a slow and deliberate process of building trust and relationship. It's an important component in leadership.
An inclusive marriage policy, is equally important work. Having a marriage policy gives the priest and church leadership a guideline to follow when, unexpectedly, someone asks to have their wedding in the church because it's so beautiful or because they've heard the Episcopal Church allows same gender marriages. Written guidelines help us all know how to respond to these requests in a consistent and fair manner. I wonder if you are aware of the following:
Did you know the canons of the Episcopal church have guidelines on who can/cannot be married by Episcopal clergy in an Episcopal church?
Did you know at least one member must be baptized?
Did you know if it's a remarriage for one or both parties, the bishop must first provide consent?
Did you know that same gender marriages are authorized by Canons of The Episcopal Church?
Did you know the pre-marital work, or counseling, is required before hand?
And then there's the whole conversation about fees (musicians, church cleaning, officiant) and whether we desire to conduct marriages for couples that are not currently members of our faith community.
As I mentioned to the vestry on Saturday, it might seem like these are not regularly addressed topics so why invest our time now? My response is because we WANT to have these questions asked! We want to be a church full of people desiring to be married and bringing us children. And doesn't it make sense to prepare ourselves for that ... to better know who we are as a community ... so that when we get to those evangelism bullets we are ready to answer both the easy and the hard questions?
So mark your calendars for two socially distanced in-person meetings with Bishop Doug on Tuesdays April 20th and April 27th at 6pm to learn more about Inclusive Marriage Policies. We will learn together. Discuss together. Show kindness and compassion toward each other. And prepare ourselves for the next season of St. Paul's, together!
Prayers and blessings to you,
Mother Michelle
priest@stpaulslaporte.org | 219-575-0226