Trinity Episcopal Church
Dear Friends at Trinity,
Last Sunday, we held the last of the “Get Acquainted Conversations”—the formal
conversations I have been holding with members of the parish over the past two
months. Over fifty people have attended at least one of the coffees and shared
with me and one another what drew them to Trinity, what defines Trinity for
them, and their hopes and dreams for Trinity.
People have been drawn to
Trinity by many different things. Some of you have come because you are
Episcopalians and
Trinity is your parish church. Others of you have grown up here and find
Trinity to be your second home. Some are drawn in by the beauty of our
church—the sculpture over the altar, the graceful liturgy, the light and airy
feel of the church, the stained glass windows—and some by the sermons they have
heard. Some people have come to Trinity just because someone invited them.
As I listened to people talk about what defines Trinity for them, I was struck
by how important an invitation issued or smile
exchanged were. Several people referred to times a person invited them to
coffee hour and then
walked with them across the courtyard. Others defined Trinity in terms of
a person who asked them to do a job. There are those for whom the Risen
Jesus above the altar, the silences in the service, the Palm Sunday procession,
or the Christmas Eve Service serve to define Trinity. For some Trinity is
defined by a special moment in a special service or a program like the Poetry series; for others Trinity is defined by that feeling of
being at home they
experience when they are with Trinity.
Just as we have dreams and hopes for our own homes and families, we have dreams
and hopes for Trinity. Some of these hopes and dreams are very concrete—a
new refrigerator, a sexton, bringing back the gifts to visitors, week-day evening
programs for people who cannot come to Sunday programs, a children’s choir, a
youth-led Eucharist. Many people hope for greater involvement with our
larger community through service to those in need, through greater participation
in ecumenical events, and through reaching out to the unchurched. Time and
again I heard people talk about reaching out to the Latina/Latino community.
Yet the hope that surfaced more than any other was the hope for growth—growth in
a diversity of age groups, growth in families with young children as well as
young adults, growth in the diversity of the congregation. People hope to
see new faces among us and old faces return to us.
As I reflect on all these conversations, I’m struck by three things—the power of
an invitation, the hunger for growth, and the recognition that, as one
parishioner put it, “A lot of what we want has to be done by all of us.”
Time and again when Jesus encountered someone on the road—a person curious about
who Jesus was and what he was about—Jesus said, “Come and see.” Our own
lived experience as individuals and as a community of faith teaches us the power
of those words. For us to live into our hope and
hunger for growth, each of us needs to say in our own way, “Come and see.”
How do we do that? I believe we do that by living into and living by
our baptismal promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in
Christ. Yet even as we do this, we must remember the response we make when
we affirm our baptismal covenant. We say, “I will with God’s help.”
As Paul wrote in the first letter to the church at Corinth, “I planted, Apollos
watered, but God gave the growth”(3: 6). Let us plant and water in the
faith that God will give the growth.
In Christ,
Susan +