Tending our Soul-Fires

Beloved in Christ,

I'm very excited that the Right Reverend Bonnie Perry, Bishop of Michigan, will be our guest at next Thursday's BISHOPx Forum. Bishop Perry is an amazing leader who understands and lives out congregational vitality as deeply as anyone I know. Before becoming Bishop of Michigan, she served as the rector of All Saints Church in Chicago for nearly twenty-seven years. During her time there, the congregation experienced an amazing story of renewal. I've heard her speak on a few occasions, and she has a truly contagious and joyful passion for how ordinary congregations can be places where lives are transformed by the extraordinary good news of Jesus. Every time I listen to her I feel my own energy and commitment renewed.

Learning from Bishop Perry seems particularly timely as we find ourselves in the exhausting and unlikely place of the highest Covid rates we have ever experienced in Minnesota and around the country. Many of our congregations have made the decision to return to virtual worship for at least a few weeks, and all of us are so very weary. I hope our time with Bishop Perry will help us reconnect with the deep passion we all share for reaching people with the message of Jesus, and enliven our weary souls by reminding us of what we can, by God's grace, continue to become, no matter what obstacles we might face. As we tend to the fires in the hearths of our homes during these winter months, our time together next week can be a way of kindling the fire in our souls in the midst of this long pandemic winter. Learn more and register here.

Just as the deep darkness of winter is even now beginning to recede by just a few minutes each day, so too will the present darkness be scattered by the light of God's love, which we pray each day and each week will come fully on earth as it is in heaven, with all the glory, beauty, and rich diversity of the Minnesota spring that, believe it or not, lies waiting just on the other side of the horizon we can see. 

Grace and Peace,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in Minnesota