The Loose Canon

“If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill, more knowledge, better health and fitness, you never lacked time. You lacked the discipline.”

Variations on this statement are ubiquitous on Twitter and I think they reflect a sentiment being expressed in other ways for those of you blessed to not be on that social networking site. The idea is that if we are not using time sheltering in place to learn Spanish, write the great American novel, and best Julia Child in mastering French Cuisine, we have somehow failed to make the grade. This way of looking at our use of time is contrary to a Gospel suggesting that we are somehow not enough if we are not improving ourselves in amazing ways during this pandemic. It also ignores how dang difficult it is to just do all we already need to get done while we experience the collective trauma of a global pandemic.

I know from talking to many of you that we all have full plates. For some, this includes working at home alongside kids now schooling at home. For others, this means trying to figure out how to take liturgies online. For yet others, it means lots more phone calls and note writing to stay in contact with parishioners. For all of us it means the joy and frustration of Zoom meetings that let us see one another but lack the richness of a face-to-face gathering.

We are going through all of this robbed of using our best skills which we developed for in-person Christian community, pastoral care, and the liturgies of the church. Not to mention how easily we can fall into the trap of seeing what someone else is doing and wondering if we are falling short. That kind of weird message looping around is not from God.

On Monday morning, I was fully whelmed. By exact count, I had 15 new issues to deal with via text, phone, and email between 8 a.m. and noon. Most were concerns and needs that would have been trivial on a good day, with a couple of issues that would have been a bear on any day. I found myself on the verge of tears in a conversation with a colleague that wouldn’t usually warrant crying.

I pushed ahead through my day, making progress on my full plate including finishing getting a first draft of the guidelines for returning to in-person worship out for initial feedback. Then as I wanted to tune out for the evening, our dear Governor issued a less than helpful public order and the work I had begun took on an urgency I did not anticipate. I don’t say this to elicit your sympathy. I say this to offer mine. The flow of your week has been different, but we are all coping with a variety of stressors with which we have little experience in dealing.

I just want to say that I am not okay and that’s okay.
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God loves you and me fully and completely. Your colleagues gathered here care for you and want to support you. None of us has all the answers and we are going to be fine.

There is that great passage in Second Corinthians in which Paul tells of a thorn in his flesh he wants to leave and instead hears from God, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” He goes on to write, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

So rather than trying to prove how strong I am, I am opting to admit that this virus shows that I am weak and need to rely on God. And I am okay with that.

Jesus loves me—this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to him belong,—
They are weak, but he is strong.

We can be so very weak, and that’s okay, because any real strength we have comes from leaning on the everlasting arms. Amen.

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The Rev. Canon Frank Logue gave this sermon
on a Diocese of Georgia livestream
from his home on April 19, 2020.

That you may come to believe
John 20:19-31

This morning, I want to focus not on Thomas’ doubts, but on John’s certainty. For the author of the Gospel just told us in our lesson why he wrote the book saying, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

The Beloved Disciple had seen many thousands of people who had never seen Jesus come to believe. The Gospel of John was written so that yet more people will come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, I want to take this brief time this Sunday to spell out succinctly why I while I know what we teach cannot be proved in the same way one can demonstrate that the world is round, faith in God as known in Jesus is not irrational.

First, no one doubts the fact of Jesus in that historians of various religious backgrounds and perspectives all agree on some basic information on his life. Besides the Bible, we have records of Jesus from other sources, especially from people who were not Christians. Both the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius wrote about Jesus, as did the Jewish historian Josephus.

Even skeptics can agree that:

• Jesus was a Palestinian Jew lived and died in present-day Israel and had a ministry that was connected to the also well-documented prophet called John the Baptist;
• The Romans executed Jesus by crucifixion; and,
• Jesus’ disciples continued following Jesus after his death, teaching that he was the Son of God.

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In order to say that Tutankhamen was a Pharaoh in Egypt or that Julius Caesar was assassinated by Roman Senators we rely on the same sort of evidence that tells us that Jesus was a real man. Of course, making claims about divinity is another order of statement all together. But let’s take this one step at a time.

After all, I can say that I know there is an Outer Banks of North Carolina and I know there is a Kathmandu, Nepal. I just don’t know those two facts the same way. I know there is a Kathmandu as Victoria and I spent two months there on our honeymoon. It’s not too much of a statement of faith to say that the city continues to exist even though we haven’t been there for 34 years. The same sources of information that told me the place existed before I visited, tell me of its continued existence.

To continue reading, follow this link: That you may come to believe

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The Rev. Canon Frank Logue gave this sermon from his home
on Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2020 

1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Luke 22:14-30

Tonight is a night for remembering.

Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” I want to go deeper with our understanding of what it means to remember, because as I prepared for this liturgy, I saw how remembering connects meaningfully to sheltering in place.

Remembering is bound up tightly with the Holy Eucharist, the central act of remembrance of the Christian community. Jesus instituted the Eucharist the night before he died. Through the Eucharist, we remember Jesus as our Passover lamb, whose death and resurrection set us free from bondage to sin.

Through the Eucharist, we retell how our Lord made a new covenant with us on the night he was betrayed. But in the Eucharist, we don’t simply remember the meal, in the sense of recalling that this is something Jesus did one night a long time ago. We take part in that Eucharistic meal. Even now when those worshipping online can’t receive the consecrated bread and wine that are Christ’s body and blood, we all enter into the story to make Jesus’ story our own story.

I remember so clearly one day when I experienced this idea being lived out so seamlessly. I went to Folkston, Georgia to visit Rhoda Maxwell. Her son was King of Peace’s Treasurer, Neil, who I relied on so much when planting the church. Rhoda was in rehabilitation for a broken hip. As we visited, Mrs. Maxwell told me about her life, about her family. But more than once she seamlessly switched from stories of how God had acted in her own life to Jesus’ story.

She could effortlessly go from a story about Neil growing up to say, “Do you remember that time when Jesus was cooking fish on the beach and his disciples did not recognize him at first, then Peter jumped in the water and swam for shore once he knew it was Jesus?” Her quick transitions caught me off guard at first. On subsequent visits with her I found that the story of God’s love shown through Jesus’ life was so integrated with her own story that those sudden switches in conversation came natural for her.

I have thought in the years since, that when I grow up, I want to be like that. In fact, when we all grow up spiritually, we will be something like that. We will weave the story of God’s love through our lives so that our lives and God’s ongoing story of reconciliation found in scripture might form one tightly woven narrative.

To continue reading this sermon, follow this link: A Night for Remembering

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“I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon,” Astronaut Buzz Aldrin told Guideposts of his 1969 moon landing, “symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there too, as man reached out into the universe.”

He shared the idea with the Rev. Dean Woodruff, pastor of Webster Presbyterian Church, where Aldrin was an active member at the time of Apollo 11’s mission to the moon. Aldrin said Dean found him a silver chalice that has small enough to make the trip. Aldrin said, “I hefted it and was pleased to find that it was light enough to take along. Each astronaut is allowed a few personal items on a flight; the wine chalice would be in my personal-preference kit.”

Before Astronaut Neil Armstrong made his historic “One small step for man”, Buzz Aldrin radioed back to earth, “Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, whoever or wherever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the last few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

He would later write,

“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit’….Eagle’s metal body creaked. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

Yet the moment of silence was all he could request as NASA was in a litigation over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. Aldrin arranged to take reserved sacrament (already blessed bread and wine) with him to the moon. Aldrin had earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics from MIT. He was as educated as anyone in the Apollo missions and he could think of no better way to offer thanks for the moon landing than with the common elements of bread and wine. He had permission to bring the sacrament on board as long as he didn’t talk of it for two decades.

Back on earth, members of Webster Presbyterian held a communion service at the same hour so as to join with Aldrin in his prayers from the lunar surface. This communion from reserved sacrament is part of the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon which shows Aldrin taking communion using the notes he made on the card shown at right.

This day marks the 50th anniversary of that communion on the moon. The following prayer for space exploration is appropriate for this day:

Creator of the universe, your dominion extends through the immensity of space: guide and guard those who seek to fathom its mysteries. Save us from arrogance lest we forget that our achievements are grounded in you, and, by the grace of your Holy Spirit, protect our travels beyond the reaches of earth, that we may glory ever more in the wonder of your creation: through Jesus Christ, your Word, by whom all things came to be, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

You can read the Guideposts article here: Apollo 11: When Buzz Aldrin Took Communion on the Moon.

See also the Rev. Bosco Peter’s post, First Communion on the Moon, with a note from a later pastor of Webster Presbyterian Church.

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I am back at work after an opportunity afforded few people—a 12-week sabbatical that offered me a balanced time of rest and renewal. An unexpected benefit of the time away from my day-to-day work was that I came to see how I have been in the church bubble since I started seminary 22 years ago. While that is to be expected of a priest, the skewed perspective of life in the church matches neither the lives of most of the people one serves nor the folks with whom we want to share the Good News of Jesus.

In these few months away, I have spent more time in conversation with people who just don’t give the church a thought. This is not to say I talked with people who are not ethical or even spiritual, but people who find themselves in church only from time to time for a wedding or funeral or to appease a grandmother’s wishes when family get together. During this time, I was also reading on evangelism (as well as books that had nothing to do with the church) and could see the stark disconnect between the lives of the people with no religious affiliation and the church’s ways of reaching them.

While my wife, Victoria, and I did worship, well, religiously, while away from my work here, we could also hear how others find meaning and even spiritual connection. This can be through nature, of course, but also in family and friends, especially through shared meals. While I wish I could report that I have descended from the heights of sabbatical with The Answer, the opposite is true. I have said before that there is no Silver Bullet that will save the church, now I just see more clearly why that is true. Mostly, I found that the people outside the church are as spiritual and in many ways religious, even if they don’t think so (praying routinely for example) as those in our pews.

What those on the outside looking in do not see in the church is people whose lives are better. That doesn’t surprise me, but it does leave those not in church wondering why we bother. It’s not that those with no religious affiliation don’t know Christian churches. They do. They are just not that into us. Photo of Frank and Victoria Logue is a cooking class given in Spanish only at the language school they attended in Costa Rica.
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None of what I have written will surprise most readers of this Loose Canon as you no doubt spend less of your days in the church bubble than I do. But I return happy to be back at fulfilling work and ready to assist our congregations in being healthy, effective means of grace. For while I rediscovered how the other half lives, I am no less convinced that the forgiveness, mercy, and love found in our churches is what those on the outside need no less than us within the church. And I have some glimpses at how it is we can and do connect to some folks and am interested in working more at sharing those best practices as we seek to be the Body of Christ in a lost and hurting world.

Peace,
Frank+

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Returned wanderer

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“After all, death is something empires worry about, not something resurrection people worry about;
not when our God is in the business of making all things new.”
–Rachel Held Evans

A nerdy Bible geek who lost her faith in the messages of the church of her youth without losing sight of Jesus, Rachel Held Evans emerged as a winsome warrior for a way of being Christian that was life-giving for those wounded by the church, but still longing for a connection to God. The C.S. Lewis for post Baby Boomer generations, she articulated a progressive Christian faith that took the Bible seriously. Rachel endured withering assaults from people who had not read as widely or thought as deeply about the truths she articulated in her writings.

Through her books and speaking tours as well as her outspoken blog posts and tweets, Rachel built a platform, but that is not what makes her unique. That she invited other women, persons of color, and LGBT Christians to share that hard-won platform is what revealed her true character. She advocated for conferences that would put these too-seldom heard voices as headliners.

In February 2017, I was intimidated to serve as a second plenary speaker when RHE headlined the Church Leadership Conference co-sponsored by the Episcopal Church Foundation and Kanuga Conferences. Her keynote was wise and vulnerable, taking the theme of the gathering, Finding Your Place, well beyond her then latest book, Searching for Sunday as she spoke of the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism and how they help people find their place in the church. Then she warned, “If you’ve found your place, don’t get too comfortable. God has this annoying habit of taking you to new places.”

I was busily trying to play it cool while totaling fangirling at being around a writer I admired. I had served as the number two speaker at one of these conferences a few years earlier and I already knew the keynoter would breeze in without a chance for me to meet them and then breeze out after a quick round of signings and selfies. I could not have been more wrong as Rachel spent quantity time with those who attended the conference. She not only listened to my talk from the front row, but could not have been kinder about how much she enjoyed my way of storytelling woven into the talk. She gave me such a boost of confidence. While the world did not need a more confident white male, it showed me from the inside what she has given to so many other women whose voices she encouraged and amplified. (Photo of a nationally-known speaker kindly listening to the guy further down the bill).
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On Palm Sunday (April 14) she went into the hospital for the flu and a urinary tract infection, where she experienced a severe allergic reaction to antibiotics. Constant seizures followed and by Good Friday, her blog was hosting her husband Dan sharing health updates with the thousands praying for her. She died in the early morning hours on May 4. I don’t need to articulate how her death squares up with a loving God, as she already did that. But I know that I find three things I feel challenged to do:

1. Share the Good News of Jesus with my own voice, encouraged by a woman who help inspired others to find their unique ways of articulating the ancient faith to new generations.
2. Amplify the voices of the women, persons of color, and LGBT Christians we have not been made room to be heard.
3. Support the Go Fund Me page set up by friends to support her now widowed husband and their one and three year old children.

If you have yet to discover Rachel Held Evans, her books remain as a testament to an authentic faith from a woman who had a way with God’s word that angered many while offering a healing balm to those who most needed Jesus’ love.

peace,
Frank

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“Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.” These words are from the Collect for today, Wednesday in Holy Week. This is theologically sound, yet very difficult to embrace. When we are suffering, it can be easy to think that God is absent. Why can we pray and feel nothing but silence when we most want peace?

On the cross, Jesus feels the depths of abandonment and cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” In so doing, he reveals the length God will go to in order to reconcile all creation to God. And yet we know that God the Father did not abandon Jesus, nor will he abandon us.

On the night before he died, Jesus told his disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you” (John 14:18) and after the resurrection he said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

We know that Jesus died on Good Friday and was sealed in a tomb through Holy Saturday. His followers were confused and scared. All seemed lost. What humans did to God the Son was not unusual, but God’s response was world changing. The amazing gift of grace is that while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us, and that is not the end of the story. Spoiler alert, God raised Jesus from the dead, bodily. This is not a metaphor but resurrection.

There at the hinge of all human history, we learned how far God would go out of love for us. But we shouldn’t jump ahead so fast this week that we fail to see how Jesus is abandoned by most everyone he knew, though the women stayed close to him and were at the cross. If we don’t sit with Jesus’ abandonment and death, we could miss how much our Savior understands betrayal, alienation, and grief. We don’t worship a distant God standing in judgment over us, but a risen Lord who knows our very real sorrows and understands more fully than anyone.
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It can be difficult to see how God is present as we careen toward problems with no view of the Divine ahead of us through our windshield. Yet when we look out the rear view mirror, we find God’s fingerprints everywhere. So we know that Jesus has not left us comfortless, but is with us to the end of the age. When God seems absent, we can look back on how God has been present in our lives up until now, knowing that even in the silence, God is there. God loves you completely and has not left you alone, even in that solitude.

Just as the dawn follows the night, light will break through into the darkness you are experiencing, even if it does not come when or how you wish it would. But don’t hear me saying this in a way that dismisses the very real pain, for God knows what that absence feels like far too well for us to need to act like the sufferings of this present time do not matter. And when others around us experience pain and loss, we can be Christ’s arms to hold them knowing that the peace that passes understanding is in the midst as you sit with someone in grief or sorrow beyond words to comfort.

peace,
Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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On Easter Monday, I begin a 12-week sabbatical as a time of renewal after nine years in the Diocese of Georgia as Canon to the Ordinary. Sabbaticals are intended as a balanced time of rest and renewal often with a given focus or purpose. As one serving in church leadership, I plan for this time to assist me in preparing anew for serving the church at this present moment. That means I will balance times of rest with both immersion training in Spanish language and time reading and reflecting on sharing the Good News in the context of central and south Georgia today.

I will have times of just ceasing to work, so Victoria and I have taken Kanuga up on their generous offer to for free room and board in Easter Week so that we can begin with a pause. We also look forward to studying in a language school in Heredia, Costa Rica and then our daughter, Griffin, joining us in Panama for a week in which we will get to further use our Spanish. I have also set aside reading to do during the sabbatical and will be writing on evangelism as I look toward a more realistic way of discussing how Episcopalians can share the Good News of Jesus with those we already know well.

This is my first opportunity for a sabbatical after 19 years of ordained ministry. I look with hope to the example of colleagues who have taken this time of rest and renewal and returned ready to engage in some of the same problems with new perspective and energy. I give thanks to the Diocese for this benefit of my work on your behalf and especially for Bishop Benhase who has made sabbatical provisions normative for full-time priests.
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In the meantime, we enter Holy Week, which seems the perfect preparation for a sabbatical. For in Holy Week, we see how the grace of God we enjoy is not because of what we have done or can do for God. The grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and joy we share is because what God has done for us. So the life of faith is not about earning or deserving that love, but embracing it more fully.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Hidden within the simple framework of Invite, Welcome, Connect is an insight into lasting connection with a congregation. Certainly, to make a home for oneself in a church community one moves from connecting with the clergy to making connections with other parishioners. These relationships usually gets firmed up outside of worship with the smaller groups within a church. This is the initial connection which will change and deepen over time as you bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s joys.

Yet we should not think the cycle is complete as someone has been invited and then welcomed to your church and finally connected in coming each week to a Bible Study or serving as a Reader or joining the Altar Guild. The truth is that sometimes a person can get connected to a church and then their life changes and they find it difficult to move in their roles. For example, a faithful parishioner can make the flower arrangements week after week, but then have trouble speaking up when she needs to start taking care of her aging mother. Or the Acolyte Master enjoys many years of organizing worship, but can’t find anyone to take on the task so he can sit in the pews and just worship.

Wonder why it is impossible to find a treasurer? It may be because other members see that the person who takes on that job will be stuck for decades. Connections should change over time and this takes intentionality on the part of the clergy and lay leadership.

A helpful task for the priest and wardens is to look across the congregation’s faithful to consider who the church relies on for their volunteer time. Map out one-on-one check ins to see

1.  Is the person finding the work fulfilling or a chore?

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2.  Could the person use assistance, or some other support, such as new tools or a space to store  needed items at the church?
3.  Is it time to start training someone new to take on the tasks?

In any case, the main goal should be to make sure the people serving faithfully know that they are appreciated and that a given role is not a life sentence. The cost of not tending to this part of Connect is that a person who has selflessly given to his or her church can start to resent the congregation they love. A yearly check in can be life-giving as an opportunity for a change.

Peace,
Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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The Rev. Canon Frank Logue preached this sermon at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
in Savannah, Georgia on March 15, 2019

Steadfast Love – A Eulogy for Roger Kelly
Lamentations 3:22-33; I Corinthians 15, and John 11: 21-27

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The Prophet Jeremiah writes of the steadfast love of the LORD, and of mercies that never come to an end. We gather today to give thanks for the life of Roger Kelly and in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, we know that our gracious God’s steadfast love for Roger has not ended and his mercies for Roger will never come to an end.

Roger faced a test of faith last week. He could see where his path was headed and he decided to put his trust in God and not take further treatment for cancer. He made the decision, but as his wife Bonnie recalls, he wanted to know what she thought and what Kevin thought, to make sure it was okay with them. They understood and treatment moved to palliative care. Bonnie said, “How brave and courageous,” then she added, “That is how he had always been. Brave and courageous.”

Roger put his full trust in Jesus Christ who told his friend Martha in our reading from John’s Gospel, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Lamentations extols the steadfast love of God. In our epistle reading, Paul exhorts the Christians in Corinth to be steadfast. Roger Kelly knew more than a little something about being steadfast. But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, we have to appreciate that he almost certainly did not know what he was getting himself into in marrying Bonnie.

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I am not thin enough, fit enough, handsome enough, smart enough, rich enough. Everything around me tells me I am not enough. And anyone who lived through middle school has been told this in many ways by others. Worse, this can be something we tell ourselves. I was reminded of this while reading Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly as I serve on the team planning the next Clergy Spouse Conference which will reflect on that book.

This reminded me of the summer when I served as an intern in the Anglican Church in Tanzania. While there, I did not have the problem of having enough food to eat, but the opposite. I was always the guest, relying on the hospitality of others in a very hospitable society. Many times I would sit down to a meal to be told that the family did not always eat like this but it was a special meal as they had a guest. I found out soon enough that the guest had to have seconds or the hosts would be offended. This was not an option. I did adjust to get little on the first pass, so that I could get seconds or even thirds without having eaten too much. I could come away having eaten less food, but my hosts would feel better about it. I also learned the secret word to get me out of being begged to take more food. After having seconds, and when being pressed to take more, I would say in Swahili, “inatosha” which means, “it is sufficient.” The hosts would beam. They had given me enough. All was right in the world.

It dawned on me that “it is sufficient” is theological as well. God tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). We try our best, but we still fall short of the glory of God, which is a fancy way of saying, we sin. We hurt others. We hurt ourselves. We mess up, sometimes quite badly, tragically. And yet, God offers the opportunity to turn around, to walk back to God and ask for forgiveness. And that prayer uttered out of a real desire to change, that prayer is enough, because God’s grace is sufficient.

Psychological conditions like anxiety can be brought about by a blocked flow of sinus drainage, these headaches may be the result of sinus infection, which is mostly made of decomposed plant matter, ooze out of the mountains. generika levitra In fact the Share Mania in India began with the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA). overnight viagra viagra purchase no prescription Lately, sexual deeds get obstruct in due to several reasons. Fulvic acid is responsible buying this order generic levitra for rejuvenating your health. While in and of ourselves, we are not good enough to earn God’s favor and love, God loves us. This is the gift that I cannot earn and neither can you, but we both so desperately need. This is the message our friends, family, co-workers, and the person who just got on our last nerve first need to hear. They are not enough either. They too know the way they have hurt others and the ways they have disappointed themselves.

In worship, we enter sacred space in which we are fully known and fully loved, as we are now, in the tender compassion of a creator who wants better for us, but for whom we are enough. When we invite someone we know to join us in worship, we are offering the gift of a sacred time and space in which they are fully known and fully loved. It may seem we are offering them little, but God can use that worship to let those you love know that his grace is more than enough to make them whole.

Peace,
Frank

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Faith in Jesus in its earliest days was something more like an infectious disease. Disease, because those who came to see the world as Jesus saw it were put at dis-ease with the world as it is. Infectious because the sense that the world was upside down and needed to be turned aright spread effortlessly from person to person, rapidly taking over families, communities, and in time the whole Roman Empire with a subversive message of all being worthy of God’s love, the last being first, and the least in society-the widows and orphans-should be the concern of all.

A Mild Case of Christianity
It is easy to get inoculated with a less virulent strain of the dis-ease with the way the world is. One can catch a mild case of Christianity and so end up immune to a more virulent strain as if by a vaccine. We can get a mild dose of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” and end up feeling that I am okay and you are okay and the way the world is, is probably more or less fine. But I am not okay. And while you might be okay for all I know, our society is not.

We don’t have an opioid crisis by accident.We are surrounded by people wounded by people who were wounded by wounded people. We need healing. The pain can come from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, sometimes suffered even in the church itself. The pain can also come from feeling like they never measured up, having disappointed themselves, or acting in ways they know to be wrong. Jesus offers the antidote to a destructive way of life as he calls us to repent, turn toward God, and gives us the grace, the power, to amend our lives. In this, we find the healing and wholeness that come from God alone.

Anxiety Over Church Decline
I write this because as I am in contact with people in our Episcopal Church across the country and here in the Diocese of Georgia as well, I hear concern for the church. Our congregations are aging. Membership is declining. This is true, of course. But I worry that focuses on decline in Sunday attendance could lead to quick fixes that hurt rather than help. It is my experience that when a church focuses too much attention on the finances, giving drops. When we talk about attendance numbers, the numbers go down. That is when these data points become the focus of our life together.

At left is Chinese Christian artist, He Qui’s painting, The Great Commission.

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What One Can Do
Our churches are to be places of worship where lives are transformed for good by the life-giving good news of Jesus. And I know that I can’t change others. I can only change myself. So it has dawned on me more and more that the main way I can work toward transforming lives is to focus a bit less on the church and a lot more on staying connected to Jesus in reading scripture, praying, worshiping, and serving. So I am working on my own spiritual practices and the beam in my eye instead of worrying about others and the speck in their eye.

The world needs more people who are not just at dis-ease with how things are, but who are open to God transforming them to be more like Jesus. While I want to see changed lives across all our churches, the best way I find at present to work on this is by working on me. I suspect this might apply to you too. I also figure if we do so, we might just find our faith more infectious.

If you are looking for resources for this work, try The Way of Love. Today a video series premieres from the Episcopal Church created with my friend Chris Sikkema as host: Traveling the Way of Love.

Peace,Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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The answer is not found in books. That truth revealed itself to me while in seminary and this adage keeps coming back around. I read quite a lot, usually a book a week, but I have learned that I can’t depend on books to give me answers. Books instead tend to give me more perspectives as well as questions I had not yet begun to think through. Lately, I have been following a thread that I think matters quite a bit and I want to share not any answers, but the new questions arising.

Anyone in the church today can see we are undergoing a great change in which younger generations are attending less frequently at best and often not at all. But I have been working through the thoughts of some helpful guides. In his book Learning to Speak God from Scratch, Jonathan Merritt shares how we can no longer assume someone knows what we mean when we use words like “grace” and “gospel”. He then begins the work of reclaiming theological language. While I am less sure of the later half of the book, I know he is writing of something critical when he names that we have lost a common language of faith. It is far too easy to end up with buzz words and theological babble. So we have to work on speaking in ways we can be heard if we want to share what it means to us that God became human and lived among us as Jesus of Nazareth.

My friend and fellow Episcopal priest Kit Carlson points to these same issues, while providing a way forward. In her book Speaking of Faith, she describes how to walk with a small group through constructing their own language for talking about faith. Any short treatment here will not do her book and leader’s guide justice. Kit has crafted, tested, and honed a five-week discussion group designed to assist someone in discovering how God has been active in his or her life and then finding language to put this into words. Kit mostly helped me see clearly the very real internal obstacles to speaking about faith at all.

Information that is often needed on this paperwork includes: cialis price both parties’ full names, contact information, employment and income information, dates of birth, social security numbers, past addresses, as well as applicable information for your children. These cialis cheap fast medications might not fix your erectile dysfunction. This viagra online samples is like the biggest blow to a man’s ability to control his orgasm. Free shipping is available if you reach a cheapest cialis http://www.heritageihc.com/help certain age of life. Two other Episcopal priest friends, Melody Shobe and Scott Gunn, write Walk in Love: Episcopal Belief and Practices which walks the reader through the liturgical year and the sacraments of the church to teach the Christian faith from a distinctly Anglican perspective. With straightforward language and in a compelling way, the authors demonstrate how prayer shapes our beliefs and draw us closer to Jesus. This is the perfect companion for newcomers curious about the Episcopal Church and a helpful boost to an adult forum in a church. Their book challenges me to reflect on how formative liturgy and private prayer practices are in shaping my faith.

Finally, Rachel Held Evans once more shares her own journey and struggles in a way that really resonates with me in her Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again. She rises to the challenges named above to reclaim the Bible for herself and along the way helping us see anew the value in the old, old story.

While I haven’t found answers in these books, I have discovered some new truths I only held dimly and been challenged to let go of some easy answers when it comes to sharing the Good News of what God is up to in the world, through us and often in spite of us.

peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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A woman leaving church, shakes the priest’s hand at the door and ask, “How many services do I have to attend before I start seeing results?” This cartoon both amused me and, if I am honest, haunted me when I was a parish priest. I wanted the people who worshiped with us to experience the joy and freedom of a life transformed by the power of the Good News of Jesus. Yet, I knew that the ability for any given sermon or Eucharist to change someone’s life was something the Holy Spirit could do, but was beyond my ability to make happen.

I knew that in my own life some individual sermons really got my attention. Real change, however, came as I made more room for my faith in my daily life through taking up spiritual practices of intentional prayer, reading the Bible and more. That’s what led to real results for me.

I am in Minnesota this week for a meeting of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, which serves as the Board of Directors for our denomination. In his sermon for our opening Eucharist Presiding Bishop Michael Curry called Council back to the Way of Love. This summer, Curry introduced the Way of Love, Seven Practices for a Jesus Centered Life. Rather than a new program, this is a renewed focus on practices that have been tested through the centuries by millions of Christians. 

“Everything we do must flow from a relationship with Jesus,” Bishop Curry reminded us. And then he pointed to how turning back to God, reading the Bible, praying daily, gathering to worship with others, passing on the blessings we have received, going out beyond our comfort zones, and having times of intentional rest are life giving. These are the practices of Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, and Rest that are the Way of Love. 

How you can engage with the Way of Love
Rather than one set program, this is a challenge that 10,000 Episcopalians can enter into in 15,000 life-giving ways. In fact, he told us that more than 10,000 different computers have already downloaded the materials. I write this to encourage you to go to http://episcopalchurch.org/wayoflove. Watch the short video introduction from the Presiding Bishop. Download the materials and find a Bible study or other discussion group at your church to discuss these with.

If you don’t set your own priorities, others will set your priorities for you. Nowhere is this truer than with your spiritual life. If you don’t set your own agenda, life will overtake you and leave no time for God. The Way of Love is a challenge to set your spiritual priorities. Begin by assessing truthfully where you are now. Then consider the one, or at the most two small changes you wish to make. You can always revisit the rule in six months. For now make small changes.  You will be better off to start too small. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself only to end up making no changes at all.
Don’t look for an individual sermon or Eucharist to change your life, just keep returning to the altar. I have no doubt that God can use the Way of Love to transform lives by the power of the Gospel of Jesus.

Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Visitors to your worship bring their own expectations, and often some emotional baggage to church with them. Training your greeters not to offer the same welcome to all will assist your church in offering genuine hospitality. You just need to watch for the clues offered by the visitor as to how best to welcome them.

The visitor who arrives early and begins by looking around is asking to be engaged in conversation. Early arriving persons not known to the official greeters, or other regular attenders, should be greeted with something like “Hi, My name is Frank. I don’t believe we’ve met.” This won’t offend the long-time member who usually attends the early service, but popped in for the 11 o’clock this week. It is also the perfect opening for the newcomer with questions.

The visitor who makes a beeline for the nave without hardly making eye contact if at all, should not be stopped and asked to talk. Remember always that someone may not quite be sure they want to be in church yet, and so may not be ready for a conversation on their first visit. Folks in this category, will often, though not always, arrive close to time or just after the liturgy has started. A photo of Bishop Benhase greeting worshippers at Christ Church, Valdosta.

After the Eucharist, the greeters should be on the lookout for the visitors they noticed arriving. Perhaps the person who zipped into the service is now going slow and looking around on the way out. This is the time to welcome him or her, to offer to go with them to the coffee and refreshments and connect them to others.
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For those who are not greeters, remember the five-minute rule. For church members with a gift for hospitality, the first five minutes after the liturgy are your time to introduce yourself to those you don’t know. Take the time to get to know the person and to connect them to others in the church, including the clergy. After that you can talk with friends who will still be there, while the visitor may slip out if not greeted. Then on later weeks, look for the visitor to return so you can greet them again.

The goal is to balance a genuine welcome with not wanting to overpower visitors. We do not do this in order to grow a church. We do this because hospitality is part of who we are to BE as Christians. This is the God’s House on the Lord’s Day and all who come should be welcomed as if we are welcoming Christ.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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I knew that painting would insinuate its way into my life. The colors were too garish, the captions too graphic for it not to do so. I sat under that painting time and again as I studied during three years of seminary, it was bound to work its way under my skin.

The painting was a fairly crudely done piece of artwork on the Martyrs of Uganda. You didn’t have to study the canvas to determine the subject matter; it was printed out in large letters across the top, “Uganda Martyrs 1885-1887” flanked by an image of the outline of Uganda and a cross. Beneath that headline, there is a central painting of a group 19 people being burned alive for their faith. Surrounding that group of martyrs are two other panels of slightly smaller size and then eight smaller scenes each showing martyrs being killed in various ways, with descriptions too graphic for a family newspaper. The painting is impossible to ignore and hard to forget.

My first year in seminary, I took Hebrew. I joined a study group and we grabbed a table in the back of the student lounge for the hour before class. We used the time to quiz one another on vocabulary and grammar. The painting was right over us as we worked.

I could never nail down the origin story for the artwork, but I found out that a student from Africa, probably Uganda, had painted it while studying at the seminary. Learning about the Ugandan Christians was straightforward. I discovered that a handful of Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries went to Uganda sometime shortly after 1877. These missionaries preached the good news of Jesus to the court of King Mutesa, who was curious about the faith.

Mutesa’s successor King Mwanga was suspicious of this strange teaching. Mwanga discovered an Anglican Bishop whose missionary work had penetrated to the Ugandan shores of Lake Victoria. Mwanga had Bishop Hannington’s group tortured for a week and then put to death on October 29, 1885. The Bishop’s last words were, “Go, tell Mwanga I have purchased the road to Uganda with my blood.”

Fellowship Pastor Ed Young does not limit your performance in bed The kamagra jelly see here cialis samples is one of the best treatments for erectile dysfunction in men. Cholesterol is also found ideal in changing the sun rays in to vitamin D.But the excess formation and release of cholesterol in the blood system diminishes generic viagra germany strategically. The satisfied sexual relationship between male and female is very important, but sometimes due to some sexual disorders purchase generic viagra out of which the one that is making people stressful and quite upset and is also leading to breakups and problems in their personal physical relation. If you are treating something sensitive like http://foea.org/newsfeed/page/2/ purchase levitra erectile dysfunction then you can buy the medications directly from our medical store without any hassle. Mwanga found the Christians within his own court to be even more disturbing. The converts to Christianity placed their primary loyalty in Jesus Christ rather than in Mwanga as their king. Then on June 3, 1886, Mwanga forced 32 young men of his own court to renounce their faith in Christ or die. On the day the sentence was to be carried out, the young men walked to the place of execution singing hymns and praying for those who killed them. Those who looked on were inspired to seek out the remaining Christians for instruction in the faith. The number of conversions rapidly increased. Uganda became the most Christian nation in Africa.

In my second year of seminary, I studied Greek under the painting. Sometime during that third and final year of seminary, the meaning of it all sank in. Deep within my bones I became aware of why I needed that painting watching over me as I deciphered ancient texts. These were not just any words I struggled to learn to translate. These were the ancient words of our Old and New Testaments. I was not giving myself a headache to understand some dusty old academic text. I was working to gain a deeper understanding of the living, life-breathing word of God.

In case I was ever tempted to think of my work as solely academic, with no on-going message of life and hope for the world, the Martyrs of Uganda were there to watch over me. My African brothers and sisters in the faith kept me focused on the cost that had been paid to share these words with the world.

I continue to study the very life-giving word that caused a group of pages for a Ugandan king to go to their deaths joyfully singing songs of praise to God. I remain humbled and challenged by their witness.

Peace,
The Rev. Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Perhaps we are, as Episcopalians, rightly bothered by the idea of evangelism. While Jesus constantly told everyone, even the most unlikely people, that the Kingdom of God had come near, he never did anything that looked like an evangelism program. The early church likewise seemed to think the Good News of Jesus was something one caught and how to make that happen wasn’t something they taught. Like a laugh that proves so infectious that everyone around is soon smiling and laughing, the joy of knowing the love of God as revealed in Jesus was never meant to be one more thing to do. This is why I was pleased by the Evangelism Charter for the Episcopal Church which is not a program, but something that flows naturally from a life of faith. The three components are evangelism of the church, by the church, and for the church.

Evangelism OF the Church
The idea is that I don’t start with anyone but me. I have to get the Good News of Jesus in my bones first. To live into that, our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry offered The Way of Love, Seven Practices of a Jesus-Centered Life. This is a pattern of life that begins with continually turning toward God, repenting of our sins and changing our lives, and moves on through reading scripture, prayer, and worship before moving out to bless others and go beyond our comfort zone, only to return to rest. In the process of private and corporate prayer and reading scripture, the Church itself gets the Good News anew. Only after I catch the infectious joy of Jesus can I in any way share it with others, so sharing the Good News starts there.

Evangelism BY the Church
This is what our Baptismal Covenant means when we are asked, “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” and we respond, “I will with God’s help.” Our way of sharing the Gospel can be through the works of mercy Jesus called us to in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison and so on. What we often refer to as outreach fits within sharing the Good News. But we also need to add our words to the example, so that the prisoner knows we came to visit out of our love for Jesus.

Forget every idea of talking to strangers about Jesus. No one is asking you to go door to door handing out Forward Day by Day. The best way to share your faith is simply not to hold back when you are having conversations with close friends, family, and co-workers in times of crisis and doubt. It may be a friend facing a parent going into Hospice care or a co-worker whose child died in a car accident. No matter how it happens, the Holy Spirit can use you if you will just be open, honest, and know better than to pretend to have all the answers. Because you do know that Jesus has gotten you through the tough times in your life and you shouldn’t hold back when talking to someone you care for who is groping for answers to questions that matter. Sure, invite the person to church. But first, just be honest that your faith in Jesus makes a difference to you in dealing with these problems. That is all there is to sharing faith in Jesus. Pictured here are two parishioners hugging at the peace following confirmations on Easter at St. Anne’s Tifton.

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When we do invite new people in, the church is always changed, made more fully itself. People new to the faith have that infectious passion that comes with new love and so they always transform a church. Evangelism is not just something that changes someone else. This Good News also makes a difference for those of us who share it.

The Evangelism Charter
Click here to read the Evangelism Charter for the Episcopal Church. Consider whether this is something your Education for Ministry (EfM), adult Sunday School, or other group could discuss as you next gather (here are some ideas). For while we should be wary of an Evangelism Program as a thing in and of itself, we need not be afraid of falling in love with Jesus again.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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In his opening sermon for the General Convention, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry called on Episcopalians across the church to take on spiritual practices. Using the seven words Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, and Rest, our Presiding Bishop called on the wisdom of centuries within monastic communities which create a rule of life to guide their walk of faith. He emphasized that this is not a new program, “We got programs and there’s nothing wrong, but we don’t need a new program.” Instead, this is a way of faithfully following Jesus.

Last December, I was asked to be a part of a small group meeting with the Presiding Bishop to reflect on evangelism work to that point in his nine-year term. The group felt the Holy Spirit leading us to make an “ask” to go with our sharing the Good News of Jesus so that evangelism leads to discipleship, which begins with turning toward Jesus in repentance. I am grateful to see spiritual practices lifted up by our Presiding Bishop as we know nothing transforms lives like daily prayer and scripture reading, routinely gathering with others for worship, and the other practices in this framework. I have personally found my own life continually transformed by following my own rule of life, which fits well within the seven practices in The Way of Love.

You can watch a short video of Bishop Curry talking about this initiative, read more about The Way of Love, and find further resources at The Way of Love webpage.

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Peace,
Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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