Visiting Preacher/Presider

This Sunday you're in for a treat. Jennifer Phillips, Rector of St. Augustine's in Kingston will be here to preach and preside, while I head there.  Jennifer is a gifted preacher, and someone with a deep faith practiced over many years, so I know she will share the gospel with insight and skill.    I hope you'll come and make her feel at home.

This "pulpit swap", as we've taken to calling it, is part of a larger effort to get our two churches to collaborate more intentionally.  We're separated by less than seven miles, and we both desire the building up of God's kingdom in South County, but oftentimes it feels like we're totally disconnected from one another.  So last year our vestries met together and decided that it was time to start working more closely with one another.  Ideas started popping out almost immediately, the hugely successful cooperative vegetable garden being among them.  They joined us for the Lenten series on the criminal justice system, and again for the "Celebration by-the-Sea" last month.   In August and September they have a couple great events that we are invited to enjoy and host (more by clicking here).

Rhode Islanders of proud of their sense of place.  Town distinctions are important to people here in a way that continues to both puzzle and delight me.  But that sense of parochialism may have kept our churches from working more closely together, and generated a sort of subconscious tension between fellow Christians.  This has been played out in the decades-long "South County Shuffle", or the migration of people from one Episcopal church to another, anytime the dust starts to fly.  But rather than perpetuate those age-old divisions, I think its time we helped them crumble.

I can't help but think that the mission of the gospel--sharing Jesus' miraculous and transforming story, and helping reconcile people to God and one another--would be helped if we came together more often.   In every way I can think, we would be stronger and better equipped to do God's work and be God's people if we were united in ministry.  So welcome your neighbor and fellow disciple Jennifer on Sunday, and start praying about how we can become one church in South County for the building up of God's kingdom.