The main program of the Synod was the presentation of the new Episcopal ad campaign “Come and Grow With Us”, designed to attract those who are un-churched, particularly young adults and Gen-x-ers.  A break in Friday’s agenda right before lunch provided an unscheduled opportunity for delegates to share with each other and with C. Richard Parkins, Director for the Episcopal Migration Ministries, the work that dioceses and parishes were doing to assist in the hurricane relief efforts and particularly in sponsoring displaced Americans and helping them find a new place to call home.  There seemed to be lots of questions about the process and how to organize effectively to accomplish this challenging yet exciting mission. 

I had the occasion to share a sponsorship program that my home parish, St. Luke’s in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was doing to relocate evacuees from Camp Gruber, a Red Cross Shelter in Oklahoma, to a fully-furnished house or apartment in Bartlesville, to provide financial, emotional, health, transportation, food and clothing, education, employment, and other resources in a long-term partnership with our parish that would go beyond sponsorship to one of lasting friendship.  I shared the various program documents which provided the organizational framework for our Flexible Sponsorship Plan written by our priest, Fr. T. Lee Stephens, identifying the commitment of the parish, boundaries and expectations of the Church and the family, team organization, and a sponsorship agreement signed by both parties.  And I shared the faith that God had truly blessed and enriched the life of our parish by this mission of love.

 We broke for lunch at that point and the excitement in the room was palpable.   There was a tangible sense of hope and possibility. Many deputies, both lay and clergy, asked for copies of the documents so that they could consider a similar program in their parish.  I found my mind thinking of the words of our Prayer Book: “And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you”. 

I was further honored to be asked by Fr. Morgan Allen to come to St. Barnabas in Lafayette, Louisiana, to share this sponsorship program with his parish and other churches in the community as they struggled to assist those stranded at the shelter in the Cajun Dome.  Three days after returning to Oklahoma from Synod, I was on a plane to Lafayette, and was privileged to witness the excitement spread further as the fading ember of hope was rekindled in a community that had begun to feel overwhelmed and hopeless.  That evening, as I flew home watching the setting sun over the flood-ravaged landscape below, I was humbled to have been a part of what God calls his Church to do. 

 But for those moments of great joy and hope that I experienced at Synod, there were also moments of sorrow and dejection, when the focus of the Synod floor shifted from the message of “Come and Grow With Us” to the ever-present haze that hangs over our Church:  the divergent view of what Scripture, our tradition, and the Spirit says about the place where non-celibate gay Christians can be full-members in and serve God in His church.   As I listened to delegates on both sides of the issue discuss their views and the threat of fracture in the Anglican Communion, my mind thought of the words of the closing hymn at the opening Eucharist for Synod, “The Church’s One Foundation”, written in the 1800s:  “Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed, yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up, “How long?”  And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”
 

My first experience at Synod left me joyfully tired knowing that the Church is so much bigger than the box into which we try to confine it.  I have been fortunate enough to be a small part of the Church at its best, to be able to share the Good News of the ministry that one small parish in Oklahoma was doing with the larger audience representing the National Church structure, and seeing the spark of love and service ignite and grow in another diocese and another small parish in Louisiana.  May we always awake to the “morn of song” and to set our focus upon the hope that unites us, rather than that which divides us, as we carry Christ’s message of love into the world.