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    When I was a teenager living in Houston, my family belonged to the Methodist Church. The Methodist Church places great emphasis upon Christian formation and youth ministry.  Although my home parish was small, it was generous in the things it did to help us grow in our faith.  My youth group was often invited to events with other youth in and around Houston.  During one of those events, I had an enormous personal epiphany concerning the Incarnation.  The realization that God’s love for me and for all creation is most perfectly expressed in this way moved me then and moves me still.

    Not long afterwards, I was invited by a friend to attend a service at the Episcopal Church.  It was another personal epiphany.  Although I was very happy with my own church, I went to the Episcopal Church every time there was an opportunity.  The liturgy and the sacramental life spoke to me in a particular way and I appreciated what I came to know as the via media.  I think I knew even then on some level that I was an Anglican in both heart and mind.

    On Maundy Thursday of 1966 when I was a high school senior, I attended a service at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston.  During that service, I had a clear sense of a vocation for ordained ministry.  Because of family considerations, I pursued my vocation in the United Methodist Church. Following graduation from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, I was ordained and had a fruitful ministry in that church for twenty-five years.

    While I was a pastor in the United Methodist Church, I would occasionally think about exploring ministry in the Episcopal Church.  This always seemed to happen at times when I was discouraged or unhappy.  I always had good arguments for staying where I was and God never allowed me to leave in such a spiritual condition.  Then, on a Friday in September of 1995, at a time when I was very contented in my ministry and following a conversation with a lady about her rector having been called to a parish in another city, I found myself thinking of the Episcopal ministry again.  I immediately started reviewing my usual arguments for the status quo.  None of them worked any longer.  Something had changed within me.  That led to a time of discernment with my wife and the Episcopal Bishop of Texas, The Right Reverend Claude E. Payne.

    We met with the Commission on Ministry, I took the General Ordination Exam, and underwent the customary medical, psychological, and background checks.  While Gay and I were prepared to spend a year in the Anglican Studies program at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the bishop and commission did not think it was necessary.

    On May 28 of the following year, I delivered my retirement speech at the Methodist Annual Conference in the morning and Bishop Payne received us into the Episcopal Church in his chapel that same afternoon.  At the invitation of The Very Reverend Walter H. Taylor, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, and with the consent of Bishop Payne, I was given an opportunity to serve for three years on the staff of Christ Church Cathedral, returning to my spiritual home.  I was ordained Deacon, then Priest, and accepted a call to be Rector of Galveston’s Trinity Church nine years ago. 

    The journey to the Episcopal Priesthood was one filled with many miraculous manifestations of God’s hand at work in my life and in the life of my family.  God opened doors and invited me to walk through them from one place of ministry to another.  Colleagues and friends graciously supported my transition in ways I never could have imagined.  Gay has walked beside me every step of the way.

    The United Methodist Church gave me a theological education and provided a place of ministry for me.  In that experience, I had more than my share of victories and probably fewer than my share of disappointments.  I am grateful to God for those years and all the people who were a part of that season of my life.

    The Episcopal Church welcomed me with my prior experience and added to it the unique gifts of its communion – The Book of Common Prayer, the sacramental life, the historic episcopate, the practical governance, and the Anglican Communion.  Now, fourteen years after that transition, I am more convinced than ever of the rightness of my discernment.  I look to the future with a firm commitment to serving this Church with steadfast devotion and a prayer that, with God’s help, my ministry will be fruitful.

    It seems to me that there are things God wants accomplished specifically through the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.  There are countless souls who are hungry for a Church that presents the Gospel the way we do.  God will bless our efforts if we will remain focused on the mission to which he calls us and avoid anything that distracts us from it or separates us from one another.

Consecration Sunday Sermon 2015

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson, Wyoming

Founders’ Day Sermon 2013

Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Easter Sermon 2013

Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Sermon for Epiphany 3B 2012

The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington, Kentucky

Christmas Eve Sermon 2008

Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston, Texas

Sermon for October 18, 2008

Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston, Texas

Sermon for August 17, 2098

Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston, Texas

This is an interesting event for Holy Saturday.  Wish I could attend!

Between Death and Resurrection: Where Did Jesus Go?
Holy Saturday at Faith House, Manhattan
274 Fifth Ave, between 29th and 30th   
New York, NY
Saturday, April 11, 2009   
5:00pm – 6:30pm

Speakers: John Snodgrass, Samir Selmanovic, Bowie Snodgrass and Mujadid Shah

The Apostles' Creed's most controversial phrase tells us Jesus "descended into hell." Orthodox icons depict the "Harrowing of Hell", showing Jesus pull Adam and Eve out of Sheol. Some believe Jesus died on Good Friday and only rose in sensationalized stories told later. Others believe Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent the rest of his life traveling outside the Roman Empire, dying finally an old man in India.

Come hear about these traditions – and what the Bible tells us – in a contemplative service with ample silence.

People of all faiths and no faith at all are welcome to come reflect on these possibilities in an evening vigil led by Christians and Muslims in the Faith House Community, on this Holiest Saturday in the Christian year, the day before Christ arose.

Email Contact:  Bowie Snodgrass

* photo from flickr.com/photos/jimforest

That's Dallas down below the wing of an aircraft. 

I took this picture from my seat aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to Houston on Friday night.  My eye thought we were perfectly still but my iPhone thought we were moving about 200 miles per hour.  I often think we are not making any progress while, from the perspective of other people, we are changing things at a breakneck speed.

It's how you look at it.

That doesn't mean that perception is reality but it does mean that each of us perceives reality in a different way.  When we share our different perspectives, look at reality through the eyes of the other, eventually we gain insight and understanding.  Eyes are opened, we see more clearly, hearts and minds are transformed, things are changed, and a new reality emerges.

It's how you look at it.

Brian McLaren

Here, from my notes, is the gist of Brian McLaren's March 9 presentation at The Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin.

In this time of extraordinary change, the Episcopal Church has

ADVANTAGES

~ A Via Media Mindset (many never surrendered to modern reductionism)
~ A Celtic Mindset (vestiges of non-Roman Christianity, non-imperial expression of faith)
~ A Diverse Mindset (space to differ)
~ A Liturgical Mindset (space to experience God, portal & exercises for experience of God)

DISADVANTAGES
~ An Upper Class Mindset (elitist, civilized, uniform, colonial)
~ An Institutional Mindset (centralized, controlled, change-resistant, risk-aversive)
~ A Christendom Mindset (people ought to come to US)
~ A Bi-Polar Mindset (Liberal vs. Conservative, etc.)

In order to overcome the disadvantages and leverage the advantages, the Episcopal Church needs

~ A "Bring Them In" spirit
~ A "Let's Experiment" spirit
~ A "We're Beginning Again" spirit
~ A "Transcend & Include" spirit
~ The Holy Spirit

There is no cosmetic or surgical solution to our problems.

We need a radically new/bold understanding of the Gospel.

The Gospel is NOT about self-enhancement.  It is about "God so loved the world."

The church does not have a message of the kingdom of God, the message has a church to deliver it.

It is not about getting people into heaven, but getting heaven into people – getting the heavenly will done on earth.

What kind of example are YOU?

Would you rather be motivated by desperate necessity or surging creativity?

What would it take for you to be excited about inviting your friends to church?

Our work is forming disciples as agents of the kingdom of God.

Plant new congregations: new ones innovate, old ones imitate.

Find out what "Anglimergent" means…

We need to stop being worried about being Episcopalians and start worrying about people who've written off Christianity as they know it.

The Baptismal Covenant (BCP) is our strategic plan:
~ We believe the story! (Apostles' Creed)
~ We will practice what the story tells us.
~ We will embrace a personal spirituality.
~ We will share the good news liberally.
~ We will work for peace and justice.

We need to abandon civil religion, which blesses and validates the state, and embrace prophetic religion, which may confront the state.  Dr. King had it right, the church should not be either the servant or the master of the state.  It should be the conscience (and imagination) of the state.

We need to avoid sub-contracting our conscience.

We need to stop making "The Church" the issue and make "Jesus Christ" the gift we offer.

RDP+

Today's daily Lenten meditation from Episcopal Relief and Development offers this statement of Jesus: "You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"   (Luke 12:56)   Then, the following commentary:  "Jesus is not contrasting worldly knowledge with spiritual knowledge to its disadvantage; he's merely pointing out that we will learn those things we consider important and will remain ignorant of the ones we don't care much about." 

What's "important?"  One test might be to see if we are learning anything from whatever we like to think is "important."  If we are not learning anything about an item on our list of "important" things, perhaps it is time to either scratch it off or pay better attention.

Driving home from Austin late yesterday, I noticed that the Texas Bluebonnets are beginning to bloom along our highways just in time for Texas Independence Day, March 2.  The sun was beginning to set as I approached Chappell Hill in Washington County and I was able to snap this photo of a field of Bluebonnets before it became too dark.  Aren't they a beautiful sight?  One of the first signs of spring in these parts!  They come back year after year, with or without the help of the Texas Department of Transportation.

There's an epiphany in Bluebonnets!  They remind me of what Jesus said as he was looking at some kind of flowers blooming along a roadside, "Can worry make you live longer? Why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow. They don't work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn't as well clothed as one of them. God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you! Why do you have such little faith?" (Matthew 6:27-30 CEV)

Jesus used those flowers as a sermon illustration to say how God is "the source of all life and ground of our being."  Christians believe that.  We know that God deserves the credit for everything we have.  Our anxiety about not having enough is probably a sign of our own unbelief.  I wonder if we want to hedge our bets by accumulating more than we need just in case God doesn't provide for us after all.

But more importantly, I'm wondering if we, who live with abundance, have difficulty trusting God to provide for us, how is it for those who live in poverty?  Is there something God wants us to do so that they too can believe Jesus' lesson from the flowers?  Are there ways we can make it real for them?  What are your thoughts?