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We are thrilled to announce that Olivia Abernathy will be joining our staff part-time in January as our Minister for Community Engagement, a role we’ve long needed to fill. Her primary responsibility will be to envision and catalyze our church’s “for the life of the world” efforts.

Our worship of God through Word and Sacrament is at the heart of our life together, and with the construction of our new nave, we will now be able to share in this worship as a family in one service instead of two. We have been looking forward to this day since we transitioned to two services back in September of 2016.

Around seven years ago, we at All Saints Anglican Church began to dream about what it might look like to develop our 10-acre property as an outgrowth of our mission “to share in the life of God for the life of the world.” And we did so by giving special attention to the two components of our mission: the inward or contemplative component, “sharing in the life of God,” and the outward or active component, “for the life of the world.”

Our bishop plans to retire in June of 2024. In a conventional diocese, the typical procedure would be for the diocese to elect someone to become a bishop coadjutor, that is, the one who would become our next diocesan bishop. However, we are not in a conventional diocese. Our diocese was originally formed to help our province, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), fund a provincial position, the Dean of International Affairs. Bishop Bill Atwood has been serving in this role since 2009 while at the same time serving as the bishop of the International Diocese.

It’s really unbelievable. We hired Fr. Ben Williams as our Curate for Church Planting back in June of 2021 for a two-year season of discernment, during which time we planned to use those two years to explore together whether the Holy Spirit was leading us to pursue a mother- daughter, church-planting relationship. And yet even before these two years have ended, the Lord has rooted a small group of people, nurtured and grown them into a mission congregation, so that they are reaching others with no church home, bearing enough fruit so that there is now a critical mass to launch weekly services! Thanks be to God!

Whether we live in the church calendar which began on November 27 with Advent, or in the secular calendar of January 1, it is still time to reflect on last year and consider what we desire for the coming year. Why desire? Because the gospel leads us to rightly ordered love. New Year resolutions tend to emphasize discipline and will power, which is why they so often fail. Desire is at the core of following Jesus and at the core of what it means to be human. Like the psalmist, when we seek God often enough and long enough, our desire for God increases. The more we sit at his feet, the more we long to be with him.

Is it a nave, a church, a Mission Abbey, or what? This isn’t just semantics. How we talk about what we’re doing on 212 McClellan Road is important. Using the right words and having a shared understanding of these words will only serve to galvanize our church’s mission. So then, what is it exactly that we are building?

Currently, it is nice and cool in my office as I sit down to write this update. Behind me is a construction crew that is laboring on our new nave in near-triple- digit heat and humidity. This is significant for two reasons. First, building something is exciting, and second, these workers are longing for a new season. As construction continues on our new church building, we continue to build a new church congregation, Mission St. James. And just as we are looking forward to a new season with cooler weather, we are also looking forward to a new season in church planting: Preview Season.

Once or twice a year, Bishop Bill Atwood visits All Saints, and it’s always a big event. For many of us, this may be the only time of year we think about the fact that our local church is a member of the International Diocese, over which Bishop Bill presides. Even so, you may have wondered, what exactly is the International Diocese, and how does it relate to the Anglican Church in North America and to All Saints and the broader Anglican Communion?

In recent months you may have heard someone mention the phrase “Sunday JAM.” Let me explain. Janie and I returned to Jackson in June of last year as church planters and immediately set to work establishing relationships with as many folks in our community as possible. The Lord has crossed our paths with so many new people that it has been difficult to keep up. On October 15, 2021, we held a retreat with the Vailes and Denker families who committed to our planting efforts early on. We all agreed that we needed a weekly gathering to which we could invite friends old and new. Thus was born Sunday JAM.