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Dear friends, I am just off the heels of a planning retreat for the Great Commission Committee (GCC), the team charged with keeping the vision of church planting and leadership development before the diocese. We met to reflect on the past year with COVID and a leadership transition, as well as our hopes for the coming year. It was an important time of reimagining and reengaging work that was slightly on hold while I transitioned fully to my work as Canon and work still impacted by the pandemic. Leadership development and church planting are distinct but complementary areas of ministry to which the diocese is committed. We come alongside congregations to fund internships, church planting residencies, and curacies that create space for both growth and discernment of calling. One of our recent grants to Restoration Anglican Church in Arlington, VA is for a curate role aimed at cultivating greater diversity among the clergy of the diocese and the province. You can read about their program here. Chris Lupo has now joined their team and will serve over the next year completing his ordination and discerning next steps in ministry. We are also involved with Redeemer Anglican in Richmond, VA which is doing similar work with a distinct focus on church planting. This past summer Danny Hindman joined their team after serving as a campus minister with Reformed University Fellowship in Wisconsin. He and his family relocated to Richmond this summer and are laying the groundwork for launching a new congregation in South Richmond sometime in the next 18 months. Several other congregations are in discussion about developing similar residencies and curacies. One of the surprising experiences these first months of my work with the diocese is the number of phone calls or emails we receive about starting new Anglican churches in some part of the region. Surprising, because it is so common to think of church planting as the work of a parent church that wants to birth a congregation or a planter that desires to go to some new city or neighborhood or area. But lay people start churches, too! We have at least a few stories in the diocese of this happening successfully – Christ Anglican Church in Orange, VA and Church of the Resurrection in Baltimore, MD both were initiated and cultivated by lay leaders sensing a call and desire to help plant a church. In some cases, the lay persons still express the surprise of realizing they were the planters! Over the last two months I have had calls and emails from lay persons living in Chambersburg, PA, Frederick, MD, Virginia Beach and Charlottesville, VA. The questions are similar: Can you help us get a church planted in our area? During our planning time last Thursday, we discussed creative ways in which we might help lay persons begin to gather for prayer, and what type of lay-focused training we might provide to stimulate their imaginations for mission in their neighborhoods and cities. Stay tuned for upcoming training opportunities. Thank you for partnering with us in the work of leadership development and church planting. I am grateful for your prayers and financial gifts. Blessings,
Tuck
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