Looking Ahead

 Looking Ahead

The phrase “Looking Ahead” means something different to me now that I have made my retirement plans official. It brings transition into the foreground for us both, priest and parish.  We are fortunate that we can include those larger concerns involving restoration and preservation to what could have been a more basic focus on growing back into those “numbers” of people and financial resources we remember from the pre-COVID past.  

The recovery is happening. Our numbers are creeping up.  And we are now including several new faces in these slowly rising numbers.  It helps to relieve some anxiety to know from Canon Lowrey that a slow recovery is the norm in this nearly post-COVID world of “American religion.”

Now “looking ahead” means considering more than one outcome on the horizon for me, for the parish and for us as fellow travelers.  I’m thinking, first how ambition gets to take a turn for us all.  For me it means that I cannot just bide my time until June 30, 2023.  It also means that we must broaden our perspective and understand that: selling the rectory, restoring the church steeple and windows, installing a new roof on the parish house, possibly renovating the PH to provide weekday and Sunday support to ALL ages, etc. while calling a new Rector is not all we have to do.

I’m thinking of what we’ve been reading these Sundays from Matthew’s gospel. Bigger than everything on our 2023 agenda is “the kingdom of heaven.”  Please understand, I am not meaning to add to our list of concerns and duties.  I want to bring them together within the context of what I believe God has in heart and mind for us and for the world that God created, is already loving and will continue to love through us.  

In short, ambition is not our only mandate.  Let’s remember whose we are.  Let’s understand that we are not alone, we are stewards of so much more than this block on Academy St. in Madison, GA.  We are inheritors of a promise much larger than our properties, and history, and aspirations.  Everything we will do in the days ahead is just this part of our response to an eternal calling.  We are so fortunate that God has so much for us to do.

FrDann