Chapter 11, Unabashedly Episcopal, by  Bishop Andrew Doyle

God’s hand with them, lead them, serve you, dwell with you, through Jesus.

Harvest is great, laborers few;  Prayer is fate, let us renew.  from Luke 10:2

Asking is not praying and a harvest is not always bountiful.  You may sometimes ask for help but you should always pray for it.

Mark 4:3-9  Some seed sown is eaten, Some seed sown without depth and had no roots.  Some seed sown and choked immediately and did not yield.  Some seed sown good and produced.  The parable does not say that sowing with wild abandon resulted in fruit coming up all around.  Great harvests are due to great care in the sowing and great production from good soil.  There is always a harvest but the harvest is not always good.  From a good harvest, one only prospers in fruit.  From a poor harvest, one might prosper in knowledge…Missioners can be found in the halls of Congress or sacrificing in a crisis and more, each and all a heritage.

— Many have Labored Before Us

A mission of healing, preaching, and announcing the reign…A wooden box can be many things, or it can be just a box.  It can hold books that instruct.  It can be a bookshelf, a piece of furniture.  It can be a coffin for the laborer returning from the final harvest…be a sower of seeds…in a variety of places and in all kinds of soil…

• Jackson Kemper – first missionary bishop to go West.  One man can build a college, seminary, outreach, and inspire…are we doing at the present moment even one tenth part of what we are capable?…Many owe birth and life to the missionary spirit.
• Julia Chester Emery – A Century of Endeavor – a chronicle of the great missionary age…provide hospitality…faithfully care for the infirm…coordinate and encourage…the first foreign field of the Episcopal Church, the strange new land of Texas…those whose hearts burned for mission and whose giving under-girded the proclamation.
• James Theodore Holly – the first African-American bishop…serving in the new Diocese of Haiti…freed slave…namesake…a dispute about ordaining local black clergy…as the last surviving apostle of Jesus was in tribulation on the forlorn isle of Patmos…to free before emancipation, to bring a better life before they could achieve it themselves.
• Lillian Trasher – she canceled her wedding, sure that God had called her to serve…Acts 7:34…send thee to Egypt…pray for a life that reflects the light.

— Called to be Missionaries – caring for abandoned and malnourished…reconcile love with the world in word and in action…Lucien Lee Kinsolving…help others to find respite…accumulated masses of debris were visible on every hand…remaking and reshaping and re-imagining.

— Generous Evangelism – mission is creative and energetic, adventurous and inspirational, and it is inevitable… I am a better person because now I know that my value is not based on the world’s calculations…Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell…faith we would inherit…a few people making little changes will happen steadily, organically, and exponentially through generous evangelism…movements are more like an epidemic than an economy of scale…renewing, restarting, renovating.

— Taking the Message on the Road – Gospel news…makes a lasting difference…we have each had resurrection moments, and thanks to our own personal evangelists, we could understand just what was happening…The only way the tipping point occurs…is through us…people in pews with private, polite, personal Jesus…seekers can smell inauthenticity a mile away…The harvest is outside…Matthew 23:37…The world needs a vital, living missionary organism.

— Unabashedly Episcopalian – How will we know…?  We will know we are making progress when evangelism…and caring for others become the hallmarks of the Episcopal Church once again…We will know we have turned a corner when our leadership…is more diverse ethnically…the only way we find is to walk outside…even while we look it may cease to be an unfinished vision by becoming transformed into a consummate reality.