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Editor's Note
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Easter season is a time to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ! One of the ways we celebrate includes renewal: renewal of relationships, renewal of worship, renewal of our studying the Scriptures, and renewal of intimacy with God.
Renewal is therefore the focus of this Easter edition of the Communique. Marcia's second installment of the Signs in the Wilderness Series reminds us to renew our faith by fixing our eyes on the source of our deliverance even when we are in the desert or wasteland. Our Ministry Updates and News from Around the Diocese celebrate renewal, new life and new ministry. Be sure to look ahead to three upcoming events that also offer opportunity to renew our understanding of relationship with each other, the Scriptures, and worship of our Redeemer.
I pray you all find personal, meaningful ways to fix your eyes on the source of our renewal this Easter season.
If you would like to submit material for, or if you have any questions about, the Gulf Atlantic Diocese Communique, please contact Jessica Jones at Jessica@gulfatlanticdiocese.org. Please submit Easter publication materials by March 15, 2015.
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Ministry Updates
 Jacob's Well is a ministry that exists to help men who struggle with sexual addiction to find long-term sobriety, freedom, and connection to others and to the living God. We also seek to empower churches, Christian leaders and organizations to respond creatively, gracefully and helpfully to the increasing challenge of sexual addiction and to provide resources, community, and hope for men to live a life of progressive freedom from lust and addictive behaviors. To further our mission we undertake four activities. 1. Helping individual men who struggle. 2. Providing education for parents and grandparents to meet the challenge of internet pornography. 3. Empowering theological students with the tools necessary to serve the next generation battling lust and pornography.. 4. Providing on-going training and support for clergy and other leaders on the front lines of ministry and mission. For further information, contact us at www.jacobswellhope.com or 904-479-5629. The Executive Director of Jacob's Well is a former Episcopal priest and has been active in the sexual addiction recovery movement for twenty two years.
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Diocesan Youth
 Camp Araminta is a camp intended to support the children and youth ministries of the congregations of the Gulf Atlantic Diocese by offering a short term intense experience of Christian community and discipleship. It takes place during one very active week (JULY 20-25, 2015) with ongoing, exciting programs and activities that keep our kids busy from the crack of dawn until the evening. We are building Christian Community through fellowship, living the Christian ideal from day to day, and learning to hold each other accountable. We also encourage discipleship by teaching youth how to filter the culture around us and discern what we listen to, say, and do (in music, media, and games). We are a ministry dedicated to supporting our youth as well as our fellow Anglicans. - See more at: http://www.camparaminta.org
 The next Dynamos will be October 16-18, 2015. Dynamos is the youth renewal retreat for high school students, run by the students of the Gulf Atlantic Diocese. The term dynamos refers to the spirit in motion, God acting in the world and in our lives in a powerful and amazing way. Have questions? Need more information? You can contact Shaun Lafferty by email or telephone, (904) 534-5118 to find out everything there is to know about Dynamos.
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Around the Gulf Atlantic Diocese and the ACNA
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! (Psalm 118:24)
Palm Sunday 2015 is the day that Incarnation Tallahassee officially opened its doors, and these words from the Triumphal Entry Psalm are deeply in our hearts. It is a day the Lord has made, by bringing together so many parts of his body to take their places in this new ministry in downtown Tallahassee.
Incarnation Tallahassee is a church plant led by Taylor and Karissa Bodoh, Jon and Sarah Hall, and Chris Jones. Taylor Bodoh is the Vicar of the church plant, and he and his family have owned a home in the downtown area of Tallahassee for seven years. Taylor, Jon, and Chris all graduated from Trinity School for Ministry last May. We moved to Tallahassee and began Sunday worship and Thursday planning meetings with our planting team in August. The planting team initially included 22 adults and 11 young children! We began children's ministry on our first week together.
For the first three Sundays we met in the home of one of our planting team families, but then quickly moved into a downtown church building that was soon to be demolished. At the beginning of this year, we signed a three-year lease on a commercial space in the heart of downtown Tallahassee. Thanks to some extremely generous support from inside and outside our planting team, we have been able to build out the inside of our space for worship, classes, and children's church. Both the architect and the contractor for this work are Christians from other churches in Tallahassee who have given their time and talents for a fraction of the usual cost. Praise the Lord!
Over the past six months our ministry has grown steadily, even though we have not been officially public. The Lord has added to us a number of families and individuals seeking a church home and a mission downtown, and we have more than doubled in size. Our nursery and children's church now caters to nearly 20 children on a Sunday morning - such an exciting challenge. Let us rejoice and be glad for it!
As we officially launch our Sunday service, we have three active missions to invite people to be part of. The first is to young professionals, the second to residents of the downtown neighborhood of Frenchtown, and the third to international students. These missions host meals and events, Bible studies, and Alpha courses. We hope these are just a foretaste of the kinds of ministries that will arise from our church as we continue to train and empower leaders in our congregation. As a congregation, we have a particular heart for multi-ethnic community and a desire to live and serve among the local poor.
This is the day that the Lord has made. He made it by calling us to be his children and by gathering his people together in one body. He made it by providing everything we have needed to start a new ministry: money, space, furniture, equipment, and favor with our neighbors; our thanks go out to all the churches in the diocese that have helped us. He made it by the abundant outpouring of his Holy Spirit, the giver of all good gifts, who has equipped his saints for ministry. Rejoice with us and be glad!
DIOCESAN ORDINATIONS
 By the grace of God, The Rt. Rev. Neil Lebhar ordained Taylor Bodoh, Jonathan Hall and Daniel Holloway to the Sacred Order of Priests, and Chase Campbell, Christopher Jones and Nicholas Krause to the Sacred Order of Deacons on Saturday, May 14, 2015. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! We rejoice and celebrate with you all!
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Songs of the Season
As you enter into the Easter season, the pastoral musicians of the Gulf Atlantic Diocese suggest the following songs to include in your personal worship time.
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Forever (Kari Jobe)
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Easter Song (2nd Chapter of Acts/Annie Herring)
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Overcome (Jeremy Camp)
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O Mighty Cross (Integrity Music/Baroni, Chisum)
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The Power of the Cross (Getty, Townend)
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Alive (Mary Magdalene) (Herms, Nordeman)
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Hallelujah, from Christ on the Mount of Olives (Beethoven)
If you are a music minister in the diocese, please consider joining our Facebook page: Pastoral Musicians in the Gulf Atlantic Diocese.
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The Gulf Atlantic Diocese is on Facebook!
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The Communiqué Easter 2015 Newsletterof the Gulf Atlantic Diocese
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The Gathering, Diocesan Picnic, May 16
Dear Diocesan Family,
A key moment has come to celebrate what the Lord has done in the past and pray about what the Lord may be asking us to do in the future. To that end, I invite you to The Gathering on May 16,10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. This will be a wonderful time of reunion, worship, fellowship and seeking to discern the Lord's plan for future diocesan retreats. We will have time to thank God for all the ways in which the Holy Spirit worked among us through Anglican 4th Day and its predecessor Cursillo. Please come and be a part of this diocesan family event. And please pray ahead of time that we will glorify the Lord Jesus in it. In the Messiah, +Neil
For more information, please see the attached flyer.
In the Messiah, +Neil The Rt. Rev. Neil G. Lebhar NLebhar@GulfAtlanticDiocese.org |
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SIGNPOSTS IN THE WILDERNESS SERIES, APRIL 2015
SIGNPOST #2 - Assume Deliverance!
by Marcia Lebhar
So here are the people of Israel, a million strong. Having experienced the miraculous deliverance of Passover and hurriedly left their homes in Egypt, they have been driven in to a desolate and fearful dead end by the God who has pledged his love to them. Now they are caught in a chasm where there is an idol to a demon god. They are in full view of an enemy watchtower at Migdal. With only the Red Sea before them, they can hear the Egyptians thundering in behind them. And as the enemy closes in, night falls.
Later in Deuteronomy 32 Moses describes the wilderness they have entered into in intense language: a desert land... an empty howling wasteland. The Hebrew words convey void, desolation, confusion and chaos. One commentator says the language gives the sense of a ransacked room.
And how does everyone react? How would you paraphrase it? We know this story. They respond with panic, anger and blame. My paraphrase might be, "Get us out of here!" Exodus gives us both the peoples' complaint to Moses, and God's response.
Here are the people to Moses (Exodus 14:11-14 NLT):
They said to Moses, "Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren't there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? Didn't we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, 'Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It's better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!' "
Moses reassures them that God will fight for them, and then he turns to the Lord, who asks him a question I find mystifying (Exodus 14:15):
Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!
Why is he crying out to you? Did Moses think this was a strange question? Could he be crying out because he is leading a million people into what looks like certain death? What are we to hear in God's question? What else did he expect of Moses?
The scene reminds me of a similarly dark and chaotic scene with Jesus and his disciples. The gospels report that they were caught in a fierce storm, with high waves swamping them. The boat was filling with water and was clearly sinking into a violent sea. Jesus was asleep. One writer reports that he was asleep in the stern. That makes me smile. Isn't that where the steering happens? Does it feel like God is asleep at the wheel while they prepare to die?
Then they awaken him, he calms the storm, but has this similarly mystifying question for his disciples: Where is your faith?
'Where is your faith?' I think to myself as I read this. Where was their faith? Their faith was going down with the boat! How else did Jesus expect them to react?
In both cases, God's people had seen him work wonders on their behalf already. Yet they now faced real danger and what looked like certain death. Yet God seems almost disappointed by their panic. He is loving, completely ready to do mighty things to protect and save them, but still there is a note of dismay or judgment about their fear. Ironically maybe, this unnerves me!
How do I respond to what feels like threat or danger?
Recently Neil and I were driving together (We have lots of hours of that!) and I was (typically) hyperventilating over some looming crisis or difficulty. He asked me calmly, "What outcome are you envisioning right now?" The answer was ... disaster! Catastrophe!
I thought of these two biblical scenes, and I have begun to wonder, deeply and with the Lord, how he would respond to my catastrophizing. (It's a word now.) What God seemed to expect from his people in both these scenes was that they assume deliverance.
Assume deliverance, despite the fearful circumstances. Assume deliverance, but based on what?
God constantly exhorts his people to stir up the memory of his past deliverances to fortify their faith in the present moment. Remembering, as we've seen before, is not limp nostalgia. It's a muscular and active summoning of courage based on what we've already seen of our God. Elsewhere in this wilderness story God says, "They have seen my glorious presence...!" (Numbers 14:22) He expected that their past experience of him would affect their faith in a challenging moment.
As well, he asks them to focus their hearts on what he has promised ... who he has promised to be to them ... instead of the frightening facts on the ground. In a wonderful and paradoxical comment in the book of Hebrews, Moses is described as walking through the dark chaos of the Exodus because he "fixed his eyes on what could not be seen." (Exodus 11:27)
As Lent has closed, we come to the end of our focus on the wilderness season of Jesus, as well as in the lives of other saints of the Scriptures. Yet in a larger sense the wilderness is meant to be a guide to us for our whole life of faith, between our deliverance from slavery to our arrival at the place God is preparing for us. A practical wilderness takeaway from this scene, for me, is to learn to ask myself this question whenever I find myself catastrophizing: What will God do now, in this situation? How can Iassume deliverance? Either I will fix my eyes on whatever is distressing me and project disaster, or I will fix my eyes on the unseen realities of God's love and past mercies and project his constant and present mercies rightly. This is not a presumption of rescue on my own terms. God allows, even causes, some pretty challenging and frightening circumstances, ones which I would write out of my script if I could! Rather it is an assumption that he is not out of control, though he has allowed me to be, and that he will act for my good.
This is Gethsemane. Jesus facing the fearful facts on the ground, relinquishing himself to them in full confidence that his Father was trustworthy and that his Father's will would be done ... assuming deliverance on the Father's terms.
I hope we can help each other practice this wilderness warning: Assume deliverance.
Marcia Lebhar's Signs in the Wilderness Series applies to all of life, not just the Lenten and Easter seasons. Signpost #3 will be included in the next Gulf Atlantic Diocese Communique.
 For more information regarding Marcia Lebhar's The Bare Branch, please visit the Amazon.com website.
All proceeds go to the ACNA Church Planting Fund.
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Looking Ahead
Archbishop Foley Beach will be leading a tour of Israel from May 30 to June 11, 2015, and it is open to all. Please view the attached brochure and give it prayerful consideration. It will be a life-changing experience with a great group! Read the brochure.
The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies hosts semi-annual worship seminars that are open to the public and are intended for those in ministry or for those who are interested in ways to make all of worship, not just music, more meaningful. The June 2015 seminar, "Worship that Shows and Matters," will be presented by Dr. Mark Labberton, and will be held June 15-16, 2015 in Orange Park, FL. Please see the following site for more information and to register, click here: IWS June 2015 Worship Seminar
IWS is the only accredited graduate school in the world dedicated to worship studies. IWS exists to form servant leaders in Christian worship renewal and education through graduate academic praxis, grounded in biblical, historical, theological, cultural and missiological reflection in community. IWS graduates are academically and spiritually formed servant leaders who participate intentionally in the story of the Triune God, fostering renewal in the local and global church by shaping life and ministry according to the fullness of that story.
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We hope you have found this issue of the diocesan newsletter to be helpful and enjoyable. If you have received it directly from us, you are already on our mailing list and you will continue to receive future issues unless you choose to unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of this page.
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Sincerely,
Dr. Jessica H. Jones
Editor-in-Chief, Communique
Gulf Atlantic Diocese of the ACNA |
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