Dear saints,
This week I’ve been attending online the annual CEEP network conference, a conference we are slated to host next year. CEEP is a network of variously resourced congregations that imagines the future of the church often in conversation with voices beyond the church’s usual world. While we have heard this week from ecclesiastical leaders including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, we have also heard from Henry Timms, CEO and President of the Lincoln Center, and Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation. The question I hear being raised as we imagine our own futures—whether that be our individual futures or the future of All Saints’—is the one that asks: who is it that we are talking to? If your experience is like my own, one new conversation partner tends to lead to another, and in that is the gift of widening the circle of people who discern what God is up to in our lives and the possibilities before us that take more than just our own pair of eyes to see. As the coming of spring inclines us to look for signs of new life, I pray that we may also receive the gift of other’s eyes on our journey ahead.
Peace,
Simon+
