A few days
after I accepted the call to serve as your rector, I met up with Kathleen
Alexander for some orientation to our new home.
Just before I left, she told me that she had some reading material for
me—and I’ll say she did. She presented
me with a stuffed jumbo-sized three-ring binder entitled, “The New Century
Project,” circa 1998. This was followed
by a tall ream of printed sheets. These
were the collected comments from your rector search survey and a transcription
of all that had been written on newsprint sheets posted around Saint Francis
Hall at a big parish meeting held just about a year ago.
I went
home and dutifully set to work, and I read it all. And as you would expect, there was a great
deal of continuity. At the beginning and
end of nearly two decades marked by great change, the people of Saint Francis
placed their central focus on faithful Anglican worship, beautiful traditional
music and inspired preaching. Then and
now, you wanted to learn together, to grow in your relationships with each
other, to form the young, and to serve the poor. Of course, many of the people who were
leading the projects and making the comments were the same, a remarkable thing
in a part of the world where everything often seems to be in flux.
But there
were also great differences.
