St Thomas

My Doubters of Great Faith, We find ourselves on the horns of another national holiday, Labor Day, the veritable conclusion to the trilogy of summer’s secular holiday Trinity. This Labor Day finds us all in a place that feels in many ways so different than Labor Days past. The things upon which we reflect this year are not the adventure-filled excursions, time away with family and friends, and the joyful returns, recanting stories of the road. Those things were much fewer and farther between, if at all this year. Instead, themes of this year’s reflection all seem to revolve around strife, division, and “apart-ness.” A virus necessitates much of the physical separateness. Deeper wounds of ongoing racial injustice are exacerbated by COVID-19, and by political and economic responses to and around the pandemic. But there is something we as Christians can, should, and must do, as a part of our…

My Doubters of Great Faith, Downtown areas, the central business districts of major metropolitan areas, are, in many ways, the heart and soul, the very canvas upon which the art of life gets played out. Ticker-tape parades and fireworks accompany victory, signaling joy; angst and sorrow are punctuated by protest and lament. The ebb and flow of the homeless population indicates how we do, or do not, take care of our sisters and brothers. For better or worse, downtowns are statements of our communal life together. And so, it is fascinating to me, as I hold a bit of a unique view of this statement, at this particular junction in history, having chosen to locate my home-life in the central business district of our community, Dallas. My reasoning for this is rooted in my deep sense of calling to urban social justice ministry, these dense urban areas so often being…

Dear Doubters of Great Faith, I write from the beautiful confines of our St. Thomas the Apostle inner courtyard on one of the rare August “chamber of commerce” days when the heat and humidity abate, ever so slightly, a bit of crisp freshness hovers briefly in the air, and the hopefulness of fall begins to stir in my own heart. The promise of new beginnings lifts me upward from the heaviness of “Corona-tide” that so often these days seems to keep me moored solidly earth-bound. A hope found birthed in the simplest of locations has, after all, provided the impetus for an entire faith movement! The advent of COVID-19 has borne witness to the confluence of several crises simultaneously, and our mutual isolation, quarantine time, continues to provide us front-row witness to a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a crisis of social injustice. Each is intimately interwoven within the…

My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, In the age of COVID-19, it is amazing how time seems to move in a completely different way. It was only January that I was making plans to come join this wonderful congregation, St. Thomas the Apostle, as your fifth rector. Yesterday, and a lifetime ago, all at the same time! One of my first meetings as “rector-elect” was with Bishop Sumner, and as a first-time rector, I inquired as to what he would recommend a new rector do in his/her first call to a church to get to know the parishioners. His answer seemed simple, and beautiful. The Bishop said, “In my day, I would have called on each family in their home, having tea with them around their kitchen table, listening to them tell a bit of themselves and vice versa.” He continued, “Christopher, parishioners will probably get mad at you from…