Faithful, Healthy, and Effective

This Sunday marks the beginning of a new liturgical year, when we once again tell the story of Christ’s incarnation, passion, and resurrection through the feasts and fasts of the calendar year.

The Christian life is marked by seasons and cycles, including this beginning of a new church year. While not exactly a time for ‘new year’s resolutions,’ the holy season of Advent can be a time to recommit to things we value, to open ourselves more wholeheartedly to the presence of Christ, and to approach our everything in our lives with what mystics of many traditions call the beginner’s mind.

In recent months I’ve begun to share with you teachings and resources from the College for Congregational Development (CCD), a learning community that approaches ministry as something that is cultivated and practiced, with skills that we can all develop to make Trinity Cathedral the place God calls it to be.

As we turn towards another year, I invite us all to lean into CCD’s definition of congregational development – to become as faithful, healthy, and ‌effective as we can so that we can truly be a sacred place for all people.

This doesn’t mean at all that Trinity loses its distinct witness in our community. Rather, these values only help us to be more expressive of our unique and vital ministry.

This means “fostering a culture of transparency, courage, flexibility, collaboration, and forgiveness in which the congregation and our leaders have a greater sense of choice, to use the words of CCD itself.

Let’s begin again, with a new liturgical year and new commitment to become more faithful, healthy, and effective in carrying out the life-giving cathedral ministry with which God has entrusted to us.

The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens, Dean