Grounded in our common life
Following the wisdom of Phillipians 2, we must empty ourselves and look past superficial narratives and our own projections. The foundations of our parish are incredibly strong, and that basic grounding supports us as we do the real spiritual work – Grown-up Church. How can we stay grounded in our complex world to do the work we’re called to do together?
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Transcript
What’s ours to see in this life we live,
what wisdom is yours that you now give?
In earth and air, water, fire, and spirit, your voice speaks,
and in our hearts, we hear it.
Amen.
If you open up your bulletin to page 3, there’s a line from the collect that just caught my eye. The collect is the opening prayer of the day. It’s the prayer in so many ways which helps situate us on any particular Sunday. For those who may not know where these come from, the collect means to collect, to gather, to focus in.
So, there’s a line here: “Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have the grace to take up our cross and follow him, follow Christ.” Who glory in the mystery of our redemption.
So, as Brandon said that prayer, I took out my ink pen and started scratching out notes, and he said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I’m writing my sermon.” Because it hit me: What does that mean? What does that mean? What does that line mean to you, that image that’s there? What does it mean to glory in the mystery of our redemption?
Not something far out at the end of time, but something here. There’s something about that prayer that points us, directs us, gathers us, collects us here in this time and space to wonder, to lean into the tension, perhaps, and reflect on what does that mean to glory in the mystery of our redemption.
That’s what I want to spend a little time this morning looking at.
To start, I think it’s helpful to situate ourselves with where we are. I think when we’re called and we’re challenged to do deep work, to do deep heart and soul work, it helps to actually take the time and situate ourselves and say, what is the actual context in which we are doing this work? To make sure that we’re actually doing the work that we need to do and aren’t running off someone else’s script, or holding on to some misperception or illusion that misguides us and deflects us, if you will, away from the true focus of what our practice is called to be.
So to start, if you turn in your bulletin to page 10, I took some time over the past few weeks working with the team to actually gather something that we have not done in this way in my time here at the parish, to actually put together a dashboard, if you will—a dashboard, a true dashboard that gathers basic, grounding information, even data, and puts it in front of us to say, what actually is our context as a parish church within this diocese? What are just the facts, the lay of the land, out of which we are living and operating? Because I think by doing it this way, it will actually help us to notice where we are and what the Spirit is calling us to do.
So what I hope that you do is actually to take this home, take this page and stick it on your fridge. Stick it on your fridge, because my assumption from now on, having put this in front of us all, is that this is our actual lay of the land. So, conversations and all that we have going forward, I’m going to point us all back to this and say, is this actually a conversation and a topic that is grounded in the truth of who we are and where we are as a parish church, or is this some of your own internal script that’s being projected outward?
That’s deep work. As Bishop Wright said this last week, that’s grown-up church. And it’s time for grown-up church.
So doing this this way puts this in front of us. So if you look through this: The average Sunday attendance for a typical parish, I actually went back and double checked this, it’s 60. The actual attendance average on a Sunday morning is 60. The average in-person attendance at Grace is 215. There are 43 on average more on any given Sunday online, so keep that in your mind. 260, 270 total; 215 on a typical Sunday actually gathered here in this room.
The average attendance for the outdoor service remains about 40. So that one outdoor service that we have as a parish comes close to the average attendance of a typical church denomination-wide. Keep that.
We average 12 at the Wednesday noon Eucharist.
We average 15 to 20 in youth on a typical Sunday morning. 15 to 20 youth, that is the 90th percentile in our diocese. So the size of our youth group, just facts of the ground, lay of the land. We have Godly Play for the younger children with a team of teachers as well.
Like we said, the online platform is an average of 43 who are joining on through those little bubbles that are put on the walls. And all of us, from time to time, have been the bubble people joining in online.
On top of that, we have a podcast and other areas of online engagement that are—that have become essential pieces of our life.
Approximately 54% of all parishes in the entire denomination—so well over half now—only have one part-time priest. Think about that. A majority of the parishes in this church have one part-time priest. Grace has two, and we have five retired priests who are able to rotate through and help us all out as a parish.
On top of that, we have four full-time staff, four part-time staff, and the Children of Grace preschool team—shout out!—and a separate custodial service contract who manages cleaning up the building. So think about that.
Grace is in the 97th percentile for church size in the entire denomination. Only 3% of churches in the entire Episcopal Church are larger than Grace. Think about that.
We have the seventh largest budget in the 96 parishes in our diocese. Seventh largest budget.
We have a monastic presence in the parish, which is very rare and an enormous gift.
We have community relationships with wonderful interspiritual partners around town.
St. Brigid’s School, our new framework, offers an integrated ministry for Care Circles, meditation groups, retreats, book studies, and classes that nurture the essential life of spiritual imagination.
60 people attended the recent Park Lecture, so there were more people sitting in the parish hall than are typically in an entire parish church on Sunday morning.
We averaged 40 people—40 people—during the summer Sunday School forum on The Fellowship of the Ring.
There are well over 30 in the choir, which is very unusual in a parish church within the wider church these days, as well as a robust Friends of Music ministry for concerts and special events.
There are 51 on the mailing list for the Daughters of the King. Our Daughters of the King is the size of the average Sunday attendance in a parish church. Think about that.
As well as having Community of Hope, Eucharistic visitors, and flower delivery teams.
There are 45 parishioners who live at LVE, Lanier Village. That is its own church in the typical layout of the wider church. The group who lives there is the typical size of a parish church.
Our outreach team is heavily involved in community partnerships, working with a $100,000 line item as well as 40,000 in endowment funds and 9,000 that we’ve given so far to date out of my fund for nimbleness, for needs that come to us. We’ve given 9,000 just out of that fund.
Here’s the shift: The annual parochial report asks not only for average Sunday attendance—that’s not what it actually asks for now. We’ve been saying this for a while, but just to put it back in front of you, what it asks for is average weekly participation. It still asks for the Sunday number, but it puts it in the wider context of what is the average weekly participation of the church. If you’ve been here during the week, you know there’s a lot of people coming for, uh, chocolate. They’re just coming in off the street looking for chocolate. It’s wonderful.
That is a key shift for how we understand the parish’s life. It’s not just about Sunday morning, although Sunday morning is key because that’s the grounding point of our life, all coming together to share communion and prayers to ground ourselves.
There are 53 people on the POWs newcomer list for the past 16 months. 53 people have come to visit Grace and filled out a card. That is the size of a typical parish church. Think about that.
And now we know, by gathering the numbers, that we have had more people coming from the community at large to our retreats and our classes than actually come and fill out a visitor card on Sunday morning. Think about that. There are over 80 so far that are going to be here this coming Saturday for our retreat day. Over 80.
I want you to put this on your fridge, because I hope it does many things for you. I hope it gives you an enormous amount of hope, of hope, and it grounds us to say, this is our common life as a parish church. This is how the Spirit is at work within the life of this parish. This is what community and depth and practice looks like in this place. Much work to do, and what good, solid bones to build on.
So I hope it gives you enormous hope, and I hope it challenges us to make sure that we’re checking ourselves to do the work that we actually need to do instead of running into older scripts that aren’t actually backed up by who we are. Make sure we’re doing the work that we need to do, rather than carrying forward a narrative or a story that we’ve heard from somewhere saying something has gone terribly wrong, when the truth is we now know: This is who we are, there is much work to do, we have muscles to stretch and to grow.
That, I think, is the link with this text from Philippians. For me, this Philippians 2 text and this text from the Gospel of John, those are the keys through which I see ministry and life. Philippians 2 challenges us and actually puts it in front of us, what it looks like to have a posture that actually follows Christ and looks to Christ if we want to know what a practice of Christianity, what it looks like.
We look at this text, and this text is about what? Emptying ourselves.
So go back to that collect: What does it mean to glory in the mystery of our redemption? What does that mean? What practices do we need to cultivate? What inner work do we need to do? How do we need to manage our own projections? How do we need to cultivate a sense of doing shadow work, to pay attention to areas in our lives that need attention paid to them, rather than deflecting, St. Paul would say?
So this text from Philippians is so radical and so challenging for us because it calls us all on the carpet to ask ourselves: What am I aware of in my own life that needs to be emptied so that I can participate more fully in the redemptive life of the Spirit that is always at work, swirling around our lives and holding each of us in a grounded way, and holding us together?
That’s why I think this day is fascinating and it’s such a pivotal day for us, because it gives us an opportunity on this Holy Cross feast day each year to pause and assess and ground ourselves and say, for what are we thankful? For what are we thankful? For what has this parish worked for 199 years to grow and build, and thanks be to God? And what work is there to do? What true and deep and good and holy work is there to do to build on this strength, to pay attention to those ways that the Spirit is actually convicting us in our lives to reorient the way we are living, rather than deflecting out the blame onto someone else? You need only turn on the news for five seconds to see that playing out.
This is our work, and the Spirit empowers us to do it. And on this day, we remind ourselves once more.
So as a practice at the end of the service, as you noted, we will roll back the altar cloth, and there’s a stone embedded in our altar from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. So there’s a stone from that sacred place embedded in our altarpiece here. And I invite you, at the close of the service, during the postlude, to come forward and make your way up and touch that stone and let it reground you into this deeper work that we’re called to do.
And then, on your tables in the parish hall, there are stones in the trays there that Meg has put, and you’re invited to take one of those home, to keep it in your pocket as a talisman, as a reminder of what it looks like, what it feels like to nurture a grounded practice of faith in the world today.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Stuart Higginbotham
September 20, 2026