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Join Christina (CC) and Denise (DeDe) on Emissaries of Renewal, a podcast that explores ethical evangelism through radical hospitality and education. Embrace God’s transformative love through Jesus Christ with us as we share inspiring stories, meaningful conversations, and valuable insights.
Well, welcome back, friends, to Emissaries of Renewal. I'm Jessie,
and I'm here with DeeDee.
Today is a really special episode for us. We get to introduce you to someone
who has been cheering us on and literally making this podcast possible behind the scenes.
We're joined by Father Troy Mendez, Executive Director of the Episcopal Evangelization... Well, okay.
The Episcopal Evangelism Society, EES, the organization that's been sponsoring
and supporting Emissaries of Renewal and so many other creative evangelism projects
across the Epistable Church.
If you've heard us thank our friends at EES at the top of every episode,
today you finally get to meet one of those friends and one of my favorite all-time people.
Troy brings years of parish and cathedral ministry, deep experience in theological
education, and a whole lot of joy to the work of helping leaders imagine evangelism,
in fresh, justice-focused community.
We're going to talk about his own call story, how he understands evangelism
today, and what excites him about the projects EES is funding,
and how Episcopalians in formation can join that work.
Well, good morning, Father Choi. Would you mind blessing us with just telling
us a little bit about your story, who you are, and what drew you into the ministry of EES?
Sure. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me.
So I would start by saying, I think what drew me into the ministry of EES,
primarily was some connections that I met with people that I knew were very
active in evangelism across the Episcopal Church for really several decades.
And when the opportunity came along to apply to be the executive director of
the Episcopal Evangelism Society, it was something that immediately appealed
to me. And I'll tell you more about that why in just a second.
So my kind of call story,
that I would talk about in the ministry is uh primarily rooted in i i grew up
in texas um i grew up in a family that went to church all the time i grew up
actually roman catholic and um,
After college, I found the Episcopal Church primarily because I was in search for a choir to sing in.
And it had a lot to do with I had moved out to Los Angeles and the Catholic
Church where I was going, the priest dissolved the choir because he just didn't
think it was worth funding anymore.
And the music minister moved away and they decided not to even pay for a new music minister.
And so I was like needing to find another community to sing with.
And it was totally circumstantial, but at the same time, one of the people that
I was singing with happened to start singing at,
All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, who had a very,
very fine music program and still does.
And so I went there and I auditioned for the choir and I got in and I just realized
how much I started liking it.
But then I started realizing all of these aspects of, I guess I would say church
baggage, my upbringing, I grew up on the west side of Houston.
Most of the people I knew were like really either Southern Baptist or some type
of even more kind of conservative biblical fundamentalist.
And so there was a lot of, there were a lot of things about faith and claiming
faith as a young adult that I struggled with. And what I found though was in the Episcopal Church.
Such a ministry of presence that it's like God wants you here,
but people weren't entirely trying to change me or to manipulate me into thinking
something that I didn't think or I didn't believe.
And they gave me the space to continue to help me grow my own faith.
I think that expressed itself in a lot of different ways. One was obviously
through music, but others,
were times of just gathering and talking about issues of life with the 20s and
30s ministry that was thriving at the time with the Reverend Christopher Martin,
who's now in Northern California.
Well, Diocese of California, but he lives up north of San Francisco.
And through doing service projects, through really innovative ministries that
were taking place all throughout Los Angeles at the time, from anything from,
a priest who decided to go into a neighborhood that didn't have an Episcopal
church to start a thrift store.
And through starting the thrift store, he also began a church community there.
And it thrived and flourished and totally transformed the neighborhood completely.
So these were some early examples that I saw of real evangelism taking shape
in the world in ways in which I would say were not the kind of,
if you believe and sign on the dotted line, then you can be part of us.
It was a very different approach to bringing God's love in a way that was pragmatic
and helpful and life giving to people in a way that they could could automatically
like what what I found is that people were showing me how their lives had been
transformed by Jesus, by who they were.
And by doing that.
It gave me permission that I could be changed by Jesus as well.
And that really made all the difference. So fast forward, I went to seminary
after many years of debating of, do I really want to do this?
And am I really called to the priesthood?
And I have to say that my congregation put me through a lot before I was actually
ever granted postulancy in the diocese.
My congregation was really adamant that it's like, this is something that you're
really going to commit to.
And so if you really want to commit to this, it's like, you really need to kind
of think through, is this something that you want to do as your vocation in your life?
And through sorting out a lot of different questions that I had,
I remember the first day I was at seminary, I went to Virginia Theological Seminary
in Alexandria, Virginia, You know, all the new students, we gathered in the
circle and we had a facilitator that was talking to us about why we were here
and all this kind of stuff.
And I just remember feeling a sense of purpose that I knew that most of the
students had in one way or another.
But some were completely freaked out by being at seminary and,
oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm here.
And my experience was primarily that I was fairly confident as far as that I
knew that God wanted me to pursue becoming a priest in the church and.
Furthermore to pursue.
To really learn as much as I could and be in community with all the people that
I was around. It was such a blessing.
So I served in ministry at various parishes in California, and then I got called
to be dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, Arizona, a place I had never lived before.
And again, the people that were part and are part of the cathedral community
there were the example of evangelism that gave me a stronger calling to be there.
The people through their, I mean, they started one of the most successful outreach
programs in the entire area for.
Food delivery and food and clothing and helping people get jobs and helping
people minister to others in the community.
When I was there, we started an outreach to a local public school we're not
talking about some private school we to a local public school that needed our
help and we created a community partnership with them that,
uh continues to this day i'm extremely proud of it and i'm extremely proud of the,
uh deacon uh myra kingsley and um my associate at the time whitney kirby who
helped me get that started and that ministry continues and um,
It was through this outpouring of love that the community was always willing
to give of themselves to others, which was that whole notion that Jesus does
the kind of self-giving love.
The agape-style love that he always poured out into the world and all of his ministry.
And to have people actually modeling this and living it out was not only something
that gave me energy and enthusiasm, but it also showed the active.
And living power of God coming into the world and continuously coming into the
world and filling our souls with new life, with new energy, with new sources
of love that we could share that love with others.
And so I was there over 10 years or so.
And at one point, the opportunity to become the executive director of the Episcopal
Evangelism Society emerged.
And I knew that what I needed for my own ministry and for my own purposes,
was to really seek out the work of what I would call our para-church organizations,
organizations that support the Episcopal Church, that do amazing ministry and
furthering the ministry of the Episcopal Church. Seminaries are part of that.
Seminaries, forward movement publications, even some of the monastic communities,
are part of the church, but their work and their publishing houses and stuff
are very much the type of parachurch organizations that support the formation,
and the development of how people think of themselves, how people think of God,
how people think of the world, and what is possible when we partner with Jesus.
And so I wanted to kind of step out of congregational ministry because I needed
to see more facets of the church.
I felt that,
Part of evangelism is really about innovation and really about finding and listening
to God and seeking out the ways in which the church is actually responding to the needs of the world.
How the church is actually proclaiming real good news to those who need good news.
And being in a congregation, you can do many of those things very effectively.
But you don't always have the same lens.
If you're in the same place, in the same ministry context all the time,
you don't see the depth and the breadth of the variety of what's really going on around the church.
And so when I started really taking a deep dive into what is this whole EES thing—,
I started seeing how God was literally acting in people's lives and taking programs
and ideas and expanding them and healing the world through the work.
Because ultimately, evangelism is part about bringing the kingdom of God here
and now, just as Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God is here and now.
It's about identifying how God's holy kingdom is here around us,
with us, in us, through us, and how,
we can be God's ambassadors in the world to truly achieve and to accomplish
and help God accomplish God's own purposes here on earth, just as we pray in the Lord's Prayer. And.
I have found it incredibly positive, incredibly fulfilling.
And I am so excited to be here and talk with both of you today because,
there's truly a gift in being able to not only have the time and space and freedom
to explore this world of ideas and
this deep discernment of calling, but to do it in such a way that what we're
doing actually is partnering with God,
to kind of highlight and showcase how God's kingdom is in the here and now.
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I see that the EES defines
evangelism as seeking, naming, and celebrating God's presence in the story of all people.
Can you speak a little bit to how we can make that practical as,
as, you know, everyday Episcopalians, or maybe how EES has made that practical
through some of their, um, accomplishments?
Sure. I mean, you don't have to go very far other than to read many of the grants
that we have supported throughout the past few years. But what I would say is,
there's so many opportunities as far as how God has truly informed the church.
I mean, the reality is that I would say that every evangelism idea starts very,
very much within the context of prayer.
The more that someone develops or a community develops their prayer life and
prays together and listens to the voice of God and how God still speaks in the world,
is really the focus and the origin of where many, or I would say all of these ideas come from.
You know, it doesn't take far to look when you look through our grants that, you know.
Some of the work that people are doing are things like seeing the need for,
children with disabilities to not only have an activity over the summer,
but literally for children with disabilities,
to see and to know and to bring the church into an environment or create an
environment for these children in such a way.
That they are told and reminded and cherished for being beloved children of
God and made in God's image exactly who they are.
And one of our grantees did just that with creating a dance camp over the summer
for children with disabilities.
The outpouring of that was not only did the,
But there was something that was learned in that process, and that was that
the parents of the kids didn't realize how they also needed a deeper sense of community.
And one of the byproducts of just the grant itself of having the summer camp,
the day camp, was that all of the parents became friends and then became a new
community of love that previously didn't exist.
So, I mean, and that one really does not only seek out a need,
but it also does a tremendous job of.
Celebrating the possibilities of new life, new possibilities,
new opportunities for our community.
There are many others. I mean, there are many that are focused on the environment,
about seeing needs in the environment and then being able to do something,
whether it be something around growing food with the community.
Others can be about restoring the environment through planting trees or harvesting bees.
We have people that have really even taken, you want to go from the very practical,
like growing food, to something more kind of theologically or reflective.
And someone else saw a need that college students had of really grappling with,
the ways in which there are many different people of different faiths or none
at all that we live around in our communities, in our university communities,
in neighborhoods, and to really put together,
a type of discussion and program,
that seeks to...
Call forth the presence of God in seeing how God is speaking in the world and helping
people, no matter their religious affiliation, really discern ways in which
God is still living and moving and breathing,
and healing the world and bringing new sources of love and reconciliation to everyone.
And through these forums, you know, the people that participated in them found this to be,
not only deeply enriching academically or even maybe,
in a prayerful way, but they found that it gave them guidance to then have a
different lens to take on different aspects of their lives.
And, you know, we've heard from people that even after they graduated from school,
that the program helped them really kind of embrace the great gift of diversity,
especially religious diversity, that they were experiencing and observing all
around where they lived.
And because it helped them see how active God really is in the world.
There's many other things. There's plenty of congregations out there that I've seen in my work,
that have, again, they've sought some type of need or seen some type of new
frontier in ministry that had not, either hadn't been thought about before, hadn't been conceived.
People may not have thought it was important in the past.
And recognizing now how these, for lack of a word, these opportunities are really
in many ways low-hanging fruit for ministry.
They're things that Jesus invited his disciples to go.
I mean, one of the reasons why I have to say this. One of the reasons why Jesus
sent out the 72 to all the towns and places where he and himself intended to
go and said, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
So much of that was he didn't want them to bring anything with him because he
wanted the disciples to see how much goodness was actually present in their world.
Even in their world where they were conquered by a foreign empire,
how many people were so poor they could barely feed themselves,
but yet there was still this human sense of hospitality, abundance,
and generosity that literally overflowed.
And so we hear the disciples coming back from that time, and they were filled
with great joy because they were able to see something new for the first time,
how the goodness of God was so present, even in places that might have been
gloomy or forlorn or desperate for more economic opportunity,
that God was still fully present, fully alive.
And continuously revealing that presence of God to others and through others.
And that is really the work of evangelism.
Excellent. When we think about that word evangelism and, you know,
you just went through an excellent definition and working way to to address that.
I know that it has a lot of different connotations and in some ways those are
positive and in some ways those are challenging.
What do you hope to see about.
Change or progress or interaction with this word within the Episcopalian community?
I think that's a fabulous question. You know, I think it makes us go back to kind of the origins of,
that word, because so much of evangelism and proclaiming the good news,
comes from that Greek word, you know,
for gospel, euangelion, which is so much about that.
The context is not a religious context.
The original meaning of that word was about a kind of military victory of something
great that has occurred because of a conquest of sorts.
And so for the early gospel writers to write about this in such a way that Jesus's
good news was the equivalent, or I mean, they would argue and I would argue
better than the equivalent of that connotation of the word.
That is really fundamentally what we need to think about when we think about evangelism.
And I think I bring this up because if you go back to someone who might have read or heard out loud,
the gospel maybe in the first 30 years that it was written,
But that connotation of gospel and good news and as what we've kind of developed
into the word evangelism eventually.
The reality is that could have been considered almost – it was definitely a wake-up call.
But it was also a style of it had a connotation that was something that wasn't
because you weren't part of the imperial powers.
That may not have been a very welcome word at all.
And we need to we need to remember that because. And so when we use the word
evangelism and proclaiming the gospel to others,
we need to be aware that sometimes in our own kind of cultural context now and
in the ways in which the word evangelism has been misused by others,
that there is this stigma, there is this,
fear, there is this reticence and,
almost an automatic requirement that I have to discern, is this real evangelism?
Is this really good news? Is this really something that speaks to me and that's
helpful and that's informing my life and going to bless me in some way?
Or is it going to shame me or to diminish me or to, I used to use the word, slime me?
And so we're doing, I think we're doing some of the work now that the early
followers of Jesus and the early hearers of the gospels really had to kind of
wrestle with themselves.
Because in the Greco-Roman world, that word for gospel was not,
It was automatically something that was welcome for all people.
It was something that was welcome for the privileged or for the citizens or
for, you know, for the elite.
And so we need to pay attention to, I think that there's many people that sit
in our pews that are even part of our extended ministries that we do in our
communities, that when they hear anything about evangelism,
they're kind of like those people in the first century that are like, wait.
Is this really good? Or is this something that's good for some,
but it's not entirely good for me?
And I think we have to realize that we have to have that lens and we have to see how we might,
continuously be reminded that everything we do, especially when we're focused
on specifically doing ministry that is evangelism in nature,
that we're doing it in a way that we are acting out of love,
not out of self-interest.
We're acting out of sharing of ourselves, our resources, our time,
our talents, and we're doing it as a gift to the world where we truly don't
expect anything personally back in return.
And if we have that mindset and how we kind of frame our own sense of evangelism,
we can kind of step out of the way and let God do the rest.
Okay. I love how you put that. Because you know, basically, that's how our work
started was to make sure people didn't think evangelism was a bad word.
Yeah. Because of the connotations.
But I'll be honest, I never saw it as the fact that we're struggling today,
and we are struggling with the same things that,
early Christians and the disciples had to deal with in connotation to that word.
We like to, you know, we try to frame it in other ways.
We like to use the word excellent announcement to kind of put a more positive
spin on it, but it doesn't change that struggle.
So you naming it that way really is even helping me after two years of this, kind of focusing on.
You know, that that should be a topic. You should talk about why.
And is it perhaps comparable to that? Because it absolutely is.
I mean, that's just a really great on-the-ground theological way to look at
what's happening and what has happened,
in the world of evangelism and, you know, what proselytizing is and those types of things.
So So I loved that.
I really loved that. Well, you know, it's one of those things that we are, even in our own,
this is where I think where Episcopal seminaries are truly a gift to not only
the church, but to the world.
And that is because we're so committed to continuously.
Committing ourselves to kind the newest scholarship, the best scholarship,
to really look and wrestle with these ideas and look at how we interpret things.
It's so important for us in our biblical studies at times to really step out of the Western,
German, 19th century biblical criticism point of view, because there's so many
assumptions in that model, it's not that it's actually very rich.
It's very abundant. I actually love it. And it's like, I can totally nerd out
on that type of Bible study.
But the reality is that we have to push ourselves to kind of think about,
The original hearers of many of these texts and these stories were not people
who had the same, for lack of a better word, freedom as we do.
And so when you hear some of these messages, you have to think about.
How would this be interpreted in a place or in an environment where your livelihood
is always threatened, your life is always threatened,
your well-being of your family is a day-to-day thing.
And when any news is announced, is it news that's intended for me,
or is it really something that's announced so that I can step in line and follow
whatever I'm supposed to do, even though it's not really all that great for me?
And I think that when we start really looking at.
These passages and these stories from contexts that are different than our own,
there's a richness and an abundance of the way that the true kind of living
word of God really can infuse our souls and give us an entirely new perspective.
I, again, it's, you're making me think in the back of my head of like further
episodes and those types of things.
And it, I'll be honest, this is one of the favorite things that,
I love about you is when we spend that time together working on projects or
when you come to the school, when you come to Bexley-Seabury,
you were able to articulate that, and then I was able to articulate,
and I'm not biased or anything, but we've had a few Bexley-Seabury grantees since us.
But these are the deep kind of conversations that we can bring out and then
we can have about the ongoing work that we're all doing.
I mean, we've been blessed twice,
with grants from you guys, and one is to expand out there as, you know,
the Great Commission is asking us to, but again, in, you know,
an everyday ethical kind of way.
So I, you know, like I said, I'm not biased, but those are, you know,
but those are some of the reasons why I say you're one of my favorite people.
I've learned so much from you. And yeah.
Speaking of that.
We did an episode on, like, the history of what EES, where you guys came from and started.
But specifically, how—for someone who's never heard of EES, and there are people
in the church that don't look to that or to grants,
what is this grant, the evangelism for the 21st century?
In, like, a plain language, you know, that, you know, other Episcopalians are
going to pick up on, hopefully, if, you know, if they watch this and see...
Um, give them some creative juice. Like what, what can they do to participate in this?
Yeah, totally. Well, um, I think the, the first thing that anybody can do
is find someone who is studying, uh, theological education, either at Episcopal
seminary or they're studying, uh, for ordained ministry in some type of approved
program through their diocese.
Uh, find the people who are doing the learning right now for the work of ministry.
That is because our grants are primarily targeted towards people when they are
in the process of doing their formation work for ministry,
and specifically ordained ministry or ministry that is being carried out through
studies at an Episcopal seminary.
That's the first piece.
But the second piece I would say is that where I invite people,
and there have been conversations I've been having very recently with some parishes,
in places where there aren't Episcopal seminaries, and inviting them to ask
some really deep questions of their congregations, like, who are we raising up for ministry?
How are we creating a culture where people are called into ministry?
And by doing so, being able to maybe identify people among them or around in
their diocese who might be, for example, if I'm talking to somebody who's at
maybe a bigger church, but there's somebody at one of the smaller churches that.
Is in as a postulant to be a deacon or to be a priest, and they have this big,
bold idea that their congregation might not—,
have the people to really kind of make that big idea happen,
how could they actually partner with another congregation and that student or that postulant,
in order to write a grant to where EES could be able to fund?
So what EES does is we have, we've set aside money in our.
In our foundation to be able to fund programs and projects,
where people have ideas on how might they cultivate a new community or how might
they set up a ministry that either
hasn't been done in ages or hasn't been done before or how might they,
come up with a way of,
teaching people something new about how God is living and moving and breathing among us.
This can be extremely broad. This can be anything, anything from writing some
type of new curriculum that you're going to teach a class and invite people
from the greater community to be a part of.
It can be about literally pushing your own boundaries of your congregation,
taking risks perhaps at times where you're looking at how do you minister?
I mean, one of my favorite examples is a church in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, that was primarily.
An Episcopal church in kind of a more suburban area of Baton Rouge that was
primarily at the time ministering to,
at one point, primarily either white people or African Americans,
but they started noticing in that neighborhood, that neighborhood was becoming primarily Hispanic,
primarily Spanish-speaking people.
Well, nobody in the congregation, I don't want to say nobody,
but very few people in the congregation had the wherewithal or the knowledge
or the language base to be able to just automatically start doing ministry in Spanish.
It wasn't, not only did they not have the resources to do that,
it wasn't entirely practical and there wasn't entirely buy-in by the entire
congregation that that was what they needed to do. However, they saw this need and this...
This wonderful community springing up around them that they were like,
God wants us to be a part of this community and we have to figure out how we
fit into this community, not how they fit into our community.
And so what they ended up doing was creating.
These Sunday evenings of shared meals and language lessons where people who
were primarily Spanish-speaking could enroll in ESL and learn English.
And also people who were primarily English speakers could enroll in classes
that were at the same time at the church to learn how to speak Spanish.
And so these classes started with just a few people and literally mushroomed
into well over 100 people that would come to them every time they were offered.
And of course, the kind of...
The unifying factor in all this is that everybody still met for a meal all around the same table.
So the ministry was called La Mesa, which is, you know, in Spanish for the table.
And so it's exactly the type of work that Jesus in his ministry does all the time.
And it wasn't this ministry is
about food, but it's not necessarily about feeding people who are hungry.
It's about providing a safe space, a welcoming space, an inviting space that
allows, again, God to do the work, for God to show up, and for people's hearts to be opened because.
They're engaging in a common purpose, which is to learn how to be more united
to one another, which is ultimately one of the main missions of the church,
if you read what it says in the prayer book.
Which all people, to unite all people to Jesus Christ and to God and one another.
And so this is helping fulfill that in a very pragmatic way, in a way that.
Is so thoughtful because you're looking at demographic shifts in your area.
You're looking about your own talents and capabilities within the congregation,
and you're able to also identify who might be our ministry partners in the greater community.
So, for example, I just want to share real quick.
With this, for example, they have people from the local YMCA,
because one of the priest goes to an exercise class there.
And so all these people have volunteered that one of the Sundays that they do
this every couple of months, that people from the YMCA cook all the food. They bring it all in.
You've got another group that's part of a school that they have seen the joy
of this ministry, and they've decided that they want to be part of it too.
These are not people who are intrinsically part of the Episcopal Church or are
Episcopalians, or these are people who are seeing how God is loving the world
and they are wanting to be a part of it.
This is very exciting, and this is exactly the heart of evangelism and what EES really,
wants to help people find in their own ministries so that seminarians and people
who are currently studying can see, yes, my ministry is deeply informed by all
of what I am learning today.
But we want to also give people a lens to where they can see that no matter what we know,
that God is so much bigger than our own realm of knowledge, that we need to
train our eyes and our hearts and our ears and our minds to really
see how God is working and then choosing,
to partner with God and to partner with God in the mission that God is up to in the world,
and to promote that in any way that we possibly can so that we as EES are really
equipping those who are studying for ministry to be even,
I mean, I could use the word better ministers, but I think I'd rather use that
we can equip people to be ministers who always discern how God is working among the people.
I think it's just absolutely vital.
Yeah. And I have to say, you kind of answered my next question.
So then we'll hand it over to Jesse. But because I was going to I was wondering,
you know, without breaking any confidences, some of the favorite newer projects
there. I mean, besides us, obviously.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you've been so innovative in all that you've been doing,
and it's really fantastic. And it's such a much needed conversation around the church.
And what I'd say is, the more that Episcopalians can talk about,
evangelism, especially, I would say, what makes them uncomfortable about evangelism
without totally shutting down and saying, I'm not talking about this.
I don't want any part of it. Goodbye.
Which, sadly, there is a whole strain at times of total disdain for evangelism
because people are that afraid of it and they don't know how to engage with it.
And what you are doing Jesse and Denise, is that you're primarily,
you're helping people enter that conversation.
You're opening a window to where people are not shying away,
that people are able to say, no, this is something that's important.
And yeah, it's uncomfortable because maybe we've kind of misinterpreted it in
the past. Maybe we've practiced it incorrectly in the past.
Maybe we've done something that actually hurt somebody else in the past.
Well, we are human beings and we do hurt one another and god is constantly a
god of forgiveness and mercy and love and so what about what would just happen if we kind of.
Uh uh kind of sat with within the context of god's mercy and love and grace
and decided we were going to give it another go and see what this really this
evangelism stuff is all about and you both of you do exactly that and And I think it's,
one of the ways in which you're furthering,
the gospel and the sharing of really the good news of Jesus Christ in the world,
in a redemptive way and in a very liberating way that helps people confront their fears, face them,
and then allow themselves to be changed by God.
Okay. So, you know, I can ask you to write another review for us,
right? You know, post on it. No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. Really? No, but I appreciate you acknowledging that and honoring
us with that. I wasn't really fishing for a compliment, but I appreciated it. Of course.
You can go.
I really love these stories about or these examples of spaces where people who maybe have been,
not in the mainstream not given a lot of these spaces and to kind of go back
to that definition of God's presence in the stories of all people I know it's
a focus of the board to kind of heal some of this hurt. Like you say, I mean, we're humans.
When we interact with the world, we're not always going to do that in a perfect and loving manner.
So how are we.
See, how do I phrase this? How are you seeing the spirit show up,
in these ways, in these examples of hearing those voices that have maybe not
been heard or repairing some of that hurt so that there's more equality and
there's more space in the way of love for all of God's children.
Oh, I mean, thank you. That's a
good question. I mean, it can go a lot of different directions with that.
I think the easiest way that is in my immediate sphere to answer that has a
lot to do with conversations that I've been having with people who are,
currently thinking of taking on some new grants,
and writing new grants with us.
One that we have awarded, one I just love is a student from New York.
Who is Afro-Caribbean, and he is primarily very interested in spirituality,
Christian spirituality,
of an African origin that predates European Christianity in Africa.
Very interesting. A little hard to kind of research, but he is doing the research
and he is developing this contemplative community that practices these very
ancient, very indigenously
African expressions of Christianity,
primarily for an African and Afro-Caribbean and African-American audience of
young people in Harlem and in the Bronx and New York.
Um, and I, it's, you know, this process, this program is in its infancy, but I'm so,
impressed with it because what it's doing is it's not only inviting people into
a sense of, uh, pride about their heritage.
It's also a way of revealing how Christianity and the Christian faith and life
is actually something that is life-giving for all people of every culture.
And especially when you take out,
perhaps some of the previously or historically coercive elements,
and you're replacing them with authentic and original expressions by people.
Who are developing their faith as an expression of their own kind of cultural
heritage, I think is a really beautiful thing and very exciting to see.
And I think it will ultimately, down the road, really shape the way that the
church is able to view how we minister to people of many different cultures.
Because it's one thing that this is still very much, I'll call it the mission field.
And it doesn't mean that we need to identify people who are different than we
are and then say, this is how we do church and you're going to do it exactly
the way we do. That's not what I mean.
It means that we're going to learn how to be adaptive leaders,
how we're going to be able to do the deep listening and to really be able to...
To promote and bless and encourage people to develop their faith in ways in
which God speaks to them in the most liberating and life-giving way.
So there's that. But the other thing is.
There's one that I haven't received the grant request yet, but I've had this
conversation with a student, and I find it really interesting.
This person grew up in a very kind of closed Christian community,
very, I guess I would say, somewhat Pentecostal, although not officially in
any kind of Pentecostal denomination,
and also in a very kind of tight group of people who did not really want to
engage with the outside world very much,
and how this person's life has taken on this huge divergence from that religious
experience to where now they find themselves attending an Episcopal seminary as a postulant for,
holy orders, and.
How this whole context is literally,
informing and inviting this person's personal experience is inviting them to
think through very unique and very particular ways in which they can unpack
what their own experience is.
And obviously, it's been a very life-giving, but also a very painful experience.
But unpacking it in such a way that they might, instead of bringing any more
kind of pain into the life of someone else,
bringing some type of new life into conversations with other people and to to
find new ways to hold these conversations um.
I say this because there are people that are really putting themselves out there.
They're taking pretty tremendously great personal risk.
We had a priest in Africa that was a student at one of our seminaries here that took on a project to,
minister to young people who identified as LGBTQ or who were living with HIV AIDS.
And who had no connection to the local church communities because there was no way,
That's not the right word. There was a way, but the person's local kind of governance
in their church community were not allowing clergy to directly address any of this publicly.
And this person still found a way to cultivate a community of people that desperately
needed to talk about this.
And even though the initial expectation was to only gather maybe 50 to 100 people,
over 800 people participated in these conversations.
So this is how when we read these Bible stories of like 5,000 people were baptized
that day and stuff like that, when we read that in the book of Acts,
these stories have their modern day equivalent in many ways.
People's lives are being changed. And when there is this convergence of the
spirit with the people of God and trying to bring this real sense of evangelism
and good news, this proclamation
of some kind of new life transformation that is available to everybody.
This is very specifically where God is not even just alive, but,
God's love and God's abundance is manifest and present and visible in a way
in which sometimes we very much take for granted or we think,
oh, that was a very quaint idea that they wrote about.
And you're like, no, actually, this kind of stuff can still happen today.
It's like, we have to pay attention to what we're being called to do.
God will bring the people. It's like, we need to be paying attention to what we're called to do.
That, again, the way you brought that idea to the ground is,
you know, so you can ground your ideas in Scripture and understand,
again, in a sort of teaching way,
exactly what we're trying to do and what we're supposed to be doing.
And so I guess.
One question I have is how,
you talk about everybody's dignity, belonging, and, you know,
you put it in this and how the spirit moves still today and that fruit.
How can congregations back home support grantees?
And it doesn't – I mean I'm not necessarily talking about money or space.
What other ways that when they're raising somebody up that this can really –,
they can be supported through trying to do these things?
I know that one of the reasons I knew of you was because one of our professors,
Eileen Shanley Roberts, who I speak of often, really puts it out there.
And we also had a professor who was our dean at the time who has done programs.
You know, we created a program entirely, you know, through you.
And so just seeing those examples of that, it was very important for me to find
you and come up with ideas.
So how can a congregation also step in and it not just be seminary?
I think the best way to address that is to share an experience that I've had
recently with talking to leaders around the church.
I have talked to, one of the things is EES grants. I mentioned people need to
be connected to theological education and official program being a student at seminary and so on.
But what a lot of people don't realize is that people are eligible even up to
a year after they graduate from seminary.
So I've been talking to leaders around the country who are either in charge
of congregations or part of larger congregations
and saying, if you get a new person that's just graduated out of seminary and
invite them to apply for a grant and use it to experiment and to see new mission
fields in your own community, it's, it's,
I mean, for them, it's free money.
And the reality is that there is so much good that can come out of this.
And what I often, not always, I often am met with a lot of enthusiasm, but not too many ideas.
And I have an idea of why that is. And some of that is because in our own formation,
we are very much taught to do things in a very particular way.
We are also very much taught to study in a particular way. I mean,
most Episcopal churches you go to, you pray in a very particular way.
And it's all in a very kind of programmed—it's.
Very abundant and rich. I love it. That's why I'm an Episcopalian.
But there are times that our style of formation and even our style of worship—,
we are not keeping our eyes and
our ears open to really how God is acting around us in the world because
we're so focused on doing it our particular way that we were taught that we're
supposed to really follow.
And there's no—we need to have, you know,
culturally in Episcopal Church, there are many things that we need to—we need
to be a united church, and we need to be able to do things together and have
a common purpose and a common ministry and so on and so forth.
But the reality is, is I think that congregations could most contribute and
support seminarians by creating environments where people allow themselves to
dream, to really have that dream of God.
I don't know if either of you have read Bernard Jozier's Dream of God.
It's a book of some classes that she taught when she was at Washington National Cathedral.
But really looking at what is God's dream for us?
What does God hope that we can do by Christmastime this year to raise the pledge
campaign, which is very, very important, but that's not ultimately the dream of God.
The dream of God is something that's filled with some type of fullness,
some type of unity, some type of, you know, basically rebuilding the Garden of Eden in a new way.
And as the book of Revelation tells us, like,
it all ends in a city where everybody
loves each other and everybody is worshiping God and is filled with,
this abundant and abiding sense of healing and reconciliation that isn't really
ever entirely known in this life on earth.
But that's the kind of dream of God That we should be paying attention to And
thinking ideas that are like How do we get from where we are now To that And Yeah,
What I think would be most helpful is if congregations who had grantees, maybe as a part of them,
really thought very broadly about how might they be partners with God in helping
that real dream of God come to reality.
And there will be multiple ideas for grants.
There will be multiple ideas for ministry that spring out of that,
but really having that sense of openness to how the Holy Spirit can really truly
inspire and form and change us,
that's the kind of stuff we really need to be focusing on.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie. Like I said, you had me thinking of some things
and I thought of multiple things.
For my congregation right now that we could look at.
And, yeah, I think that is the one thing that they don't dream of.
And they, you know, I shouldn't say don't because probably many do.
Sure. But they're so used to, again, their programming or what they have time
to do and their size of their congregation that they might not do enough dreaming.
Mm-hmm. Right.
But that's exactly what we're, you know, when we're fulfilling the kingdom is
that we need to dream of what that looks like so we can put it into action. Yeah, yeah.
And to really do that listening to the spirit because the knowledge or the awareness or the discernment.
It's all very possible because God is helping us come up with these ideas.
We're not doing this alone. We're not acting as some type of silo or an island.
It's like this is part of something far bigger than any of us.
And to give ourselves the grace of really thinking about, you know,
I have this kind of faint idea, but I don't know what this would really look like.
Well, that's where discernment comes in and where other people will listen to
the Spirit of God, and they might have a very similar inkling,
but they have a piece of the puzzle that you don't have,
and so, likewise, you have something that they don't have. This is the importance of community.
Amen. Jess, you want to wrap us up?
Sure. Again, thank you so much, Father George, for spending this time with us
and for all the great work you've done with EES and supporting us here at Emissaries of Renewal.
It's just been so heartwarming.
Absolutely. And the floor is really all yours, Father.
Is there anything else that you'd like to add, anything that you would like,
to promote or just share with the audience what your prayer and hope is for
the future of EES and evangelism in the Episcopal Church?
Well, let me just start by saying
that I would love to invite people out there to apply for our grants.
And if you know somebody that is studying in any kind of theological education,
and has an idea to contact us, you can contact me,
through an email office at ees1862.org.
You can also look at our website, ees1862.org, or.
You can also just reach out in any way. I really encourage you.
There's many professors. You can look on our website for our board members.
There are many who live near you, and reach out to them and talk to them as
well about our grants because I know they would be more than happy to talk to you about them.
I would say I want to thank you for the opportunity to be on this podcast today
because there is always a need for more evangelism in the world.
Our grant cycles are always the third Monday of September and the first or second
Monday in February are our due dates for our grant cycles. We give out grants twice a year.
And I really would like to invite people to consider applying if you are eligible, or even if you,
don't know if you're eligible, if you want to check with me,
please, please, please reach out because we want to be a ministry partner with you.
We see the good works that you are doing that are glorifying God and building
up the kingdom of God all around you.
And we want to be a part of that. So as we can help, we are here to help and we want to help.
But I'm very grateful to be here today with all of you.
And we'll be sure to put those links in the episodes when they will be released.
And so we're going to go ahead and wrap up. And how we always wrap up at Emissaries
is we want to connect and ground everything we've heard in a bit of Scripture and reflection.
And today's Scripture is John 15, 4 through 5 and 8.
This is the NRSV translation, and the scripture is, Abide in me as I abide in
you, just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.
Neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear
much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.",
So, Father Troy has generously said he will do the reflection for us.
So, when you hear this passage in light of your work and our work, what stands out for you?
Well, thank you. So I would start by saying that...
This passage is one that I come back to quite often, and this whole concept
of abiding in me as I abide in you,
the language is understood, but if we think about it, it's like we don't really
use this type of word very often anymore in modern English, abide.
It means to kind of stay, to remain. A lot of Bible translations use the word remain because.
We don't use this in our everyday speech. Abide with me and we shall have dinner.
I mean, we don't talk that way.
And I had a priest one time that was talking about this, and she used the word,
instead of abide, she used the word marinate.
And she used the imagery of when we are cooking, we often soak chicken or something
in lemon, or we might marinate vegetables in some type of seasoning that has
maybe a really strong presence.
But then once the marinade is washed off and everything's cooked,
it just flavors the food.
And in many ways, what Jesus is asking us to do is to marinate in his love,
to marinate in the goodness of God, the abundance of God, the possibilities
of God that are all around us,
to where the more we can actually just be with and soak in.
And in many ways, it's the Mary and Martha story of the Mary character soaking
in everything that Jesus says.
And, you know, even to the point that that story has so many,
I could use the word baggage, but has so many levels in it.
And sometimes it's been very misused by the church.
But there's a real truth in the fact that the character of Mary in that story
is really soaking in the wisdom and the grace and just allowing Jesus to be
present with her without worrying about anything else.
And we're invited to do that. We're invited to kind of be that way a lot,
often, always in our prayer, but often out outside of that time.
When we're alone and we think that we're feeling lonely,
the reality is that the presence of God is not only with us,
but that the love and the wisdom and the grace of God is also always present
to teach us something else as well.
And I find that if you think about in cooking, which I love to do,
when you cook, when you marinate things,
it gives food flavor where the flavor from the marinade has rubbed off on the food.
And in many ways, what Jesus is asking us to do is to really pay attention,
to really soak in this abundant gift of grace and wisdom and love that God,
gives us, that Jesus himself not only gave to his disciples,
but that God has infused the very spirit of God into our hearts through the nature of our baptism.
And so that the presence of God can somehow rub off on us or that we can be
flavored by the goodness of God.
We are invited to take this very seriously in our lives, to.
To bring about in such a way that people will see our presence in situations,
and they won't be looking at us directly.
We will be actually serving almost as if, like the purpose of an icon, like at a church, an icon,
is really intended to be a window to opening up to the presence of the divine and the world of God.
A holier realm.
What we are invited to do is we are invited to be those types of portholes,
those windows that we help other people see God working in the world,
not seeing us, but seeing God.
And that is a very important piece of this. Um, I'll give you an example of,
a fictional story of, of how this might play out.
So one of, one of the things is often we pray in our own prayers,
um, that, you know, God, uh, show me what you want me to do.
A lot of people pray that and that's fine. Um,
But there's really more of a way of praying.
For us to pray to not only see God's purposes and God's actions in the world,
so pray to see God's purposes and actions in the world, but then also pray that
God will invite us to be part of them,
that God will invite us to be part of God's purposes and actions in the world. That's very exciting.
And that's really, if we focus our prayers in that way, we get an entirely new
direction, an entirely new perspective on what life with God is actually about, what it can be about.
There was a play that was done off-Broadway in the early 1980s, and it's a small play.
You could probably get a script of it at your local library.
It's called Bus Stop, like Waiting at the Bus. Bus Stop. It's a little play,
and there's two characters in it. I think there's only two characters in it.
It's about two people that meet at a bus stop. And the thing is that one of
the characters' names is Cherie, the woman.
And then the romantic lead, the man, his name is Bo. And if you think about
it, 1980s and a name like Bo there, everybody who was a romantic lead was named
Bo at the time. It's hilarious.
Anyway, in this play, the woman named Cherie is starting to fall in love with this man, Beau.
But she doesn't know if he will accept her as she is because she has kind of
a tumultuous past. There were a lot of things, bad things that happened to her.
There was a lot of deep pain. There were some bad choices, but a lot of things
that were inflicted on her and things that happened in her life.
And she feels shame about this and feels, um.
It feels like she can't really be her full self around Bo because he won't love her in the same way.
And there's this one scene where she starts kind of breaking down and explaining this to him.
And he says, you know, I love you, Cherie, exactly as you are.
And I'll do anything for you because I love you exactly as you are.
And she turns to him and says something like, oh, Bo, I'll go anywhere in the world with you.
And in many ways, this is an interesting kind of reflection on how we are at times with
our own walk with God and how we either abide, we're called to abide with God,
but how sometimes we don't want to because we feel like there's something about us that is too
distant or too painful or too exposed
to be revealing to the presence of God.
But what God continuously tells us is that we are loved exactly as we are in
the fullest and most complete way possible.
And so we're invited to truly allow God or to proclaim to God and to say to
God that we ourselves will go.
Anywhere with God because of this love.
And we will commit ourselves to following this love.
So through the abiding process, through remaining towards being there and being
our full selves and being known as our full selves in God, in turn,
God makes us even better.
More complete and more whole and brings us to an even more fullness.
And I'll close with that to just say that that is ultimately,
what the restorative work of evangelism is in the world, is to bring that not
only sense of safety, but to bring that sense of,
overwhelming, abundant love and mercy and grace into the world in such a way in which.
We work and we take practices on to where we immerse ourselves in this,
and then we go out with others to where there's something about the presence of God that not only,
rubs off on other people, but it also gives them a gift of something that they
then can share with other people,
that allows the presence of love in the world to expand beyond us,
beyond our wildest dreams.
And we are invited to follow Jesus and to go wherever he leads us,
because wherever he leads us, he's not going to fail us ever.
Amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you. Friends, wherever you are in your journey
with God, whether it be a student at seminary,
or a parishioner at a diocesan school or just trying to follow Jesus in your daily life,
may you remember that you are always grafted to the vine.
May you marinate deeply in Christ, noticing where God is at work in your own
story and in the stories around you.
And may the fruit that grows from that living with Christ, your welcome,
your courage, your curiosity, your compassion,
become good news in your community to the kind of evangelism that looks like
belonging to the grace of a new life.
Troy, thank you for being with us. And to all you listening,
go in peace and keep watching for the Spirit's quiet work of renewal.
Bye, everyone.