50 years ago the Bishop of Virginia...

50 years ago today the Bishop of Virginia

At a rock church deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia ordained me into the priesthood of Christ’s Church. John Rodgers was the preacher. In the black and white picture I’m one on the left. In the center is my father, known as Froggie. (You got it. Tadpole…) He was also a French Baron, though he never wore a beret. (You got it, that makes me… But my sisters assure  me that I am no count.) My mother carried her unordained role with her memorable gifts of style, wisdom, and deep faith.

After two years there, Constance and I moved to Brewton, Alabama, with responsibility for two churches. Life away from Virginia was new for us but made sweet by the friends we made there.  

Our family expanded to three children: Channing, Maria, and Eve.  All are now nearby, grown with their own families. The delight that they brought us when at home now has new dimensions with their friends, careers, gardens, and more. And the richest part of life with them, four grandchildren: Sydney, Drew, Ethan, and Cyane.  These bring the new world to us with excitement and charm, and often with them wondering why so many ordinary things seem strange to us. They are happy to explain.

A few reflections on the 50 years of my priesthood, with an emphasis on the influence  two men. 

The first man to turn my life 90⁰ got me in trouble. This was Peter Doyle, Rector of the church in Leesburg, where my girlfriend lived. I squeezed in a conference at the Diocesan Conference Center where Peter was the speaker. That weekend interrupted my weekly Zen Jungian dream analysis group and the Sunday School class I taught. 

Peter gave talks on the Trinity. My religious quest had taken me deep into the abyss of Eastern religion, despairing of a God who speaks, cares, and helps. Peter spoke of the God who does. This God has a face, I learned, shown in the manger in Bethlehem. He still speaks and He helps.  With Peter’s influence I became a student of the Bible and Jonathan Edwards.

The problem with this legacy came with my desire to be ordained. The people supervising the psychiatric hurdles were not convinced that my faith was real. To them I was transferring stuff onto this God that I talked about as a way of hiding the real me. In fact, four of them told me that I should not pursue ordination before getting psychiatric help. 

I decided to pass on that, but I did have that many speech therapists. They were good, but I found that the most improvement for my stuttering was leaving parish ministry. 

My friendship with Peter has yielded two dividends. First, my girlfriend who was his parishioner is still in my life. Second, his brother Wright and I have traveled together for the past 55 years, sharing our calling in mission and enjoying close friendship in many ways.

The other man who left a legacy was David Barrett. He was the leading researcher on world Christianity. David’s work exposed the enormous gap in the church’s mission: 7,000 ethnic groups that lack their own self-sustaining church, and nearly 2 billion people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. 

When I learned that he lived here in Richmond, I maneuvered myself into his inner circle. I studied his writings, digested his maps, his insights, and his conclusions. During that period my calling changed from parish ministry to advocacy for mission to the frontiers.

I saw this omission as scandalous and, with that deep conviction, the next obvious step was to found Anglican Frontier Missions as a channel for the Episcopal/Anglican world to the unreached. That I did in 1993. By the grace of God and the wise and determined leadership of my successors, Julian Linnell and Chris Royer, AFM continues to serve this vision after 27 years. 

I retired from AFM. Given time and about two decades of frontier mission thinking, I started writing.

So three books: The Global Gospel of St. Paul, showing the call to the nations at the center of all that he wrote; The Year of Paul’s Reversal, tracing his move from defending the Jewish borders to seeing God’s grace for all sinners; Roadmap to Unharvested Fields, naming the reasons for not going and adjusting them to mission to unreached territories.

And, may I say, they are really good, every one of them. I still enjoy reading and re-reading them. One thing that comes through over and over is the author’s humility.

In these 50 years almost 45 of them have been connected with St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond. I arrived there in 1976 as Assistant and have moved through all the chairs until now taking a place in a pew. Virtually, of course.  These years have been the richest for friendships and growth. This has been the place of our deep friendships and deep roots for our faith. A real home for us all. 

There was a ten-year break when we lived near the Potomac River, when I followed my dear friend, the Rev. Jeff Cerar. That took us frequently to the golf course and more importantly to Light of Christ Anglican Church in Heathsville. I also learned that my years there cost me an honorary degree. Nominated in June and denied in the Fall, apparently for attending an Anglican church. Tut tut.

All the underpinnings of mission to Muslims were shaken loose by the national leadership of the Episcopal Church. Time to move. I found a church home under the leadership of one of Nigeria’s foremost missionary leader, the Rt. Rev. N. N. Inyom, in the Diocese of Makurdi. That is now my home diocese and he is my Bishop. (Second photo. I’m the one on the left.)

What has sustained me for these decades? Who has brought fun, given strength to pick up and move on, shown flaws without made to feel stupid? Time to point to the one who is kind and forgiving, wise and better. Yes, of course that would be the “One who is high and lifted up.” But He has kindly sent into my life another, and that would be my girlfriend of 55 years and wife of 52, Constance. Wise, forgiving, better, and kind. And in so many ways!

What better companion to all my flighty stuff than one whose chief delight is “a sense of joy and wonder in all thy works.” She has it. She carries that into every sphere of God’s creation, peering within sea shells, loving the overlooked, and photographing every evidence she encounters. When I am on, I find treasures within her and how she sees, and by God’s grace, some have worn off on me. 

The glow of her joy and wonder make it into her paintings.  Before you read my books, you must see how she has put this in her art--for refugees, for water and watermen, for the homeless, for children, and other tokens of His presence. www.ArtByCdeb.com

The great hymn “Joyful, joyful we adore Thee” has this line: “Hearts unfold like flowers before Him, praising Him their sun above.” That is the thread of this continuous journey--having His undeserved love unfold a bit more and more of what He wants this sinner to be. The Sun above gently unfolds me, giving a better vision of  Christ’s redeeming love for me radiating through His cross.