Tacoma, WA 98465
Epiphany: a moment of sudden revelation or insight. Some people have mind blowing epiphanies or what is called an AHA moment but for me, my epiphany moment took a bit longer to surface.
I think some of us believed that when the pandemic was “over” we would get back to where we were in 2019, but of course that has not happened. We sort of “made do” for a couple of years. We live-streamed the services and committee meetings; we continued our food bank, and we sent out the Tartan trying to keep people in the loop. We left most of the heavy lifting to our Sr. and Jr. wardens and a few volunteers to do the work. But I think many of us were waiting for “someone else”—a new permanent priest, a permanent deacon—someone to lead the way.
For me, the seeds of my epiphany moment started in the spring of last year.
We had 2 or 3 dedicated people who asked the question “why don’t we have a Sunday school” They not only asked but they organized, raised money for a program called Godly Play, they got volunteers and said “it doesn’t matter if we have 2 kids or 10 kids at church—we need a Sunday school!
Then we had a few men who asked “who don’t we have a men’s fellowship time, and they formed a Men’s Fellowship Breakfast once a month.
Then our music director and some choir members said, “why don’t we have a choir to lead the congregation in singing”. They didn’t care if it was 2 people or 10 people who volunteered, they began gathering people for a choir.
Then new people started attending our church who volunteered to be EM’s or lectors, and volunteered for coffee hour, for greeters committee , became members of the DOK, who volunteered to restart the Care Team, new people who volunteered to lead adult education and to help decorate the Christmas tree in church.
As I looked back to the changes this year, I had my AHA moment:
I realized that we cannot survive by waiting for someone to lead us, and we can’t let the pandemic stop us from doing God’s work . We all need to lead in some way—whether it is volunteering to help one of the ministries, to offer new and fresh ideas to the vestry, or whether it is just to ask the question “how can I help’—we are the hands of God and we can no longer wait for someone else to do the job. God doesn’t command us to Sit and Wait—he commands us to Go and Do. Fr. Scott said last week, all of us who have been baptized and recite the baptismal vows—we have the holy spirit within us and we can step out with faith to do God’s work in big or small ways.