Introducing the Outreach Team!

In our continued series of using the newsletter to highlight various aspects of the church, I want to introduce the outreach team.  Katherine Heidenthal, Anne Price, Ellen Hardy, Greg Deener, Justin Hendrix, and Erich Rose have all been involved in meeting, praying, and investigating how our church can spread the Kingdom of God in the greater Richmond area.  Our hope and dream is that we do two things: share the Gospel with those who do not know God and take care of those who are hurting and broken.  Both of the desires are summed up in the simple statement (included in our core values)—“care for those in need.” 
 
There are a number of people at Incarnation who already participate in sharing the Gospel and taking care of those in need, but our hope is that this team leads the church in discovering how we can do this together.  As of now, we do not know exactly what this will look like, but our desire is that church becomes deeply involved in the redemption of this community.  We have investigated and prayed about a number of possibilities, but we are still asking the question, “What does God want us to do as a church?”  I believe that God has a something for us to participate in, and am eager to see these prayers answered.
 
As a small part of this, we are planning to visit Deep Run Park on the weekends of March 14-15 and March 28-29.  Our plan is to simply give coffee and hot chocolate away to people who are at the park.  This is a really small investment in the redemption of the community, but it is a good beginning, because it gives us a chance to get to know people who are outside the church and bless them in a tangible way.  This won’t be a “let me tell you about Jesus” event (unless someone asks!), but instead simply a chance to be kind, meet non-Christians, and let others know that our church is here to bless and serve.  We will give you a chance to sign up for this, and hope to have a table at the park with a few volunteers on Saturday and Sunday morning each of those weekends.
 
Pray for this group, and bring ideas about engaging our community to them!  If you want to be a part of the group, let me know.  It isn’t a closed society; instead, it is simply the “tip of the spear” in terms of discovering how we all can be involved together in service and gospel proclamation.

-Steven

Incarnation’s Governance Team

Once Incarnation is ready to be received as an official “congregation” by the diocese, we will form a vestry.  A vestry is a group of lay-people (i.e., non-ordained) selected by the people for the purpose of governing the finances and business structure of the church.  The clergy are responsible for the theological direction of the church, and the vestry responsible for the material resources of the church.  Currently, since we are a “mission”, we are governed by the vestry of our mother church at the discretion of the bishop.  (If you would like to know more about the technical status of “congregation” or “mission” and what it means to “be received by the diocese”, let me know!)
 
In order to help me establish the business structure of the church (basically, its budget and bylaws), I asked a group of people to form an initial governance team, or proto-vestry.  This group will disappear when the congregation selects its first vestry (likely in the summer of 2021), but there are many things that needed to be established now regarding the church’s governance structure and use of money, and so I asked a group to assist me in this before the formation of the first vestry.  (This is standard practice for church plants in the Anglican world.)  All of our work is subject to the approval of Church of the Holy Spirit and the bishop.
 
The group consists of Ruthie Byrne, Elizabeth Ellwanger, Ken Fitchett, Ed Hardy, and Chris Heidenthal.  Chris is actually leaving the governance team, as we decided (in our bylaws) that no one may serve on the vestry who has a spouse employed by the church, and Katherine is our new administrator and children’s director.  (It is safer when no one gets to decide or vote on the salary of their spouse!)  This group will continue to serve until it is disbanded at the selection of our first vestry, and is operating under the bylaws that will govern the vestry.  Sometime in the near future, we will have a church meeting where the group presents its work, particularly the church’s budget, to everyone.  In the meantime, if you have questions about the governance of the church, please do not hesitate to talk to one of them!
 
Lastly, my desire is that this church is a place where everyone feels free to talk to me about what we are doing and why.  I want the ideas and suggestions of the all!  This is not my church; it is God’s.  I genuinely believe we will be strongest when we listen to each other in good faith.  Do not hesitate to bring me your questions, ideas, and dreams.  Not everything that everyone wants can be done, but I do believe that your wisdom will help enrich this church.
 
In Christ,
Steven

Scripture Reflections

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. ”

— Luke 2:34-35

Last Sunday we heard Simeon prophecy, “a sword will pierce through your own soul,” to Mary.  In my sermon, I spoke about God piercing the hearts of his children and even causing them to fall when we begin to trust in the wrong things or walk down the wrong paths.  This chastening is painful, yet is intended to draw us back to the place of putting our hope in God and God alone.  We frequently pursue something other than God, and God is faithful to keep correcting us, because he knows that only in him will we find the anchor of our souls.
 
Yet this raises difficult questions.  Is everything bad that happens to me God’s chastening?  Is God the author of evil?  Is my suffering his fault?  These questions seem to follow from the idea that God pierces the hearts of his children.  Yet even though these questions seem to follow, the Bible testifies that God does not cause evil and he does not seek to harm or destroy.  Much of the suffering we experience is not his chastening; it is instead the result of our sinful actions, the natural product of a sinful world, the effect of other’s sin, or the direct assaults of the devil.  In other words, God does not harm us; his chastening is not the same thing as the evil we suffer.
 
Yet in the mercy and wisdom of God, even those evil things that God has not authored are captured by God and turned into instruments of his mercy, correction, and faithfulness.  The early church was so convinced of this that they proclaimed, “O blessed fall, that gained for us so great a Redeemer!”  We see this most magnificently in the cross, where Satan sought to destroy God himself, and yet God used Satan’s attack to accomplish the redemption of the world.
 
And so, as we look at the pain in our own lives - broken families, lost jobs, loved ones who die, sin that causes shame - we do not say, “God did that.”  He is not the author of evil and suffering.  But even as we declare that he did not cause the evil, we can always say, “Yet he will take this evil, and transform it into mercy and goodness!”  The greatest attacks of the devil can become those tools that God uses to pierce us, so that our hearts would rest in him and him alone.  When confronted with suffering, we may not be able to say why it happened (other than the basic explanation that the world is fallen), but we can always say that God will use it to bring our hearts to a place of rest in him.  And so we are left with a question: Am I allowing suffering to harden my heart, or I am clinging all the harder to Jesus because of it?  When suffering becomes something that causes us to cling to Jesus, it loses its power, even if it still hurts deeply.