Most campaigns come down to one of two promises, stay the course or change it, and both are promises about a future nobody has seen yet. Whether you’re confident, discouraged, or still undecided, you walk into the polls with the same hope for what comes next, for the kind of town, country, and world our children will inherit.

I’ve watched that hope fill another kind of room. Part of my work is ushering dioceses through the process of bringing a list of nominees forward for the election of a bishop. When the delegates cast their ballots, a room full of people waits in near silence for the result to be announced. Nobody in that room knows how it will go. They vote anyway, and plenty of them pray first, asking for guidance toward a future none of them can see. In any election, hope and the future go hand in hand.

Whether you’re at the polls, in a parish hall, at diocesan convention, or even at General Convention, it’s the same hope. You show up, you cast your ballot, and you hope the future will be built by all of us, including the people who voted differently than you did.

By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to the polls. If you can vote today, please do. If you can’t, for whatever reason, you can still hope for the future right alongside the rest of us. The Prayer Book has a prayer for elections, which I’ve put at the end. I’ll say it when I cast my ballot and again when the polls close, because the hope is the same either way, and so is the prayer. I’d love for you to join me.

Whatever the count looks like tomorrow, one thing won’t change: we’ll still be neighbors. On Sunday we’ll be back in our own pews, beside the same people we sat with last week, however they voted. When it’s time to pass the peace, we’ll turn to them and mean it, still hoping for the same future.

A Prayer for Elections

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 822)

This is our second year with the theme “Growing in Faith, Living in Hope, and Serving in Love,” and hope sits in the middle, which feels about right. Delegates took up resolutions on young adults, clergy compensation, clean energy, and reparations, along with several others. None of those are easy. Some touch money, some touch history, and all of them touch us in our pews and extend past our church doors.

What impressed me was how carefully we talked about them. We spent a lot of time on the language itself, asking whether the words in a resolution said what we meant and honored the intention behind them. That work can feel slow and nitpicky in a room where some folks would rather be out in the exhibition lobby with the delicious snacks. But words shape how we see a problem, and that shapes what we’re willing to do about it.

The language wasn’t always perfect, either in the resolutions or at the mic. Some wording needed another pass, and some people said things in the moment that they’d phrase differently on a second try. I’ll admit I’m a Robert’s Rules nerd, so it made me happy to hear people who knew how to call the question or ask for a counted vote. I know those rules work in the secular world, and it was refreshing to see them work just as well in the business of our church. We held on to the spirit of what was being offered and kept working on the details of how to put it into action.

In the Baptismal Covenant, we promise to respect the dignity of every human being. Convention gave us a chance to practice what that promise looks like when it meets a pay scale, creation care, and a painful chapter of our own history. Practice is the right word, since none of us has it perfected.

These topics shape who we are, and I mean that beyond our tradition. They shape who we are as a community living in our neighborhoods and affecting the society around us. Because we’re willing to take on these topics and to stay in the room while we work out the details, I feel confident I can live in hope.

Every year, clergy and lay people from across the diocese gather in one place, and this year that place is a convention center. There’s no steeple and no familiar pew, just a big room full of Episcopalians from every corner of the state, and I’ve always liked what that does to the focus. Nobody’s parish is grander than anyone else’s.

All resident clergy are required to attend, and each parish sends two lay representatives. If you’ve been asked to be one of them, you’re speaking and voting for your congregation, and you’ll have plenty of company in the room. You’ll sit at tables with people you’ve never met and find out that the parish across the state is wrestling with the same questions yours is. Most of them are hoping to make a real connection, share a success story, and they’d like to hear what your parish is up to.

The business is the part people tend to dread, but it’s how we govern ourselves. Delegates hear reports, consider the budget, take up resolutions and cast votes. The bishops and staff are in the room, so you can finally put faces to the names in your inbox.

For many of us, worship will be the heart of the weekend. Hundreds of voices singing the same hymn and confessing sins in a facility built for trade shows makes it plain what the Church is. It’s the people. The fellowship happens between the scheduled pieces of the day, over lunch, in the coffee line, or when someone from another parish leans over to ask where you’re from and what your people are doing.

Convention comes every year, and it puts the whole diocese in one room. People come for the business, and what they remember is the fellowship. Someone from Christ Church in Greenwich will be sitting near someone from Christ Church in Pomfret, and St. John’s in Salisbury will end up at a table with St. John’s in Niantic. Come, sing, vote, and eat lunch with someone from the other end of the state. Then go home and tell your parish what you saw, because the people who couldn’t be there are part of the Church too.

I learned this in the fire service. People assume rank comes with answers, and sometimes the honest truth is that you’re working it out as you go. Sometimes, you’re winging it, doing the next right thing. Leadership doesn’t exempt you from being tense or tired or grieving. It means other people are watching how you work through it.

We rarely say the next part out loud: leaders need to be led, too. Too often they don’t ask for what they need. They go quiet, or stumble, or say “I don’t know,” and that’s usually when the rest of us feel let down. We can be cranky about it, or we can offer grace.

The best leaders I’ve known can say plainly, “I can’t do this one alone,” and they can name their blind spots before somebody else has to. A quick fix isn’t always the right answer to a hard moment. Doing nothing is a decision, too, and a bad one when the people around you are ready to help. Do the next right thing. When you can’t tell what that is, the next right thing is calling on the people who support you and asking them to point the way.

And be patient with your leaders. Even with the most impressive titles, they’re trying to adapt old skills and old answers to situations that don’t match anything they’ve faced before. Most would take a simple “What can I take off your plate?” over another casserole.

It’s okay not to have every answer, and most people already suspect as much. When you’re out of answers, say so, and tell us what you need. We can do something with that.

I’ve been careful with her. I haven’t asked how she came to that belief (or non-belief), partly because I’m afraid I won’t ask the right questions, and more because I’m afraid she’ll ask me for answers. I work for the church. I’d like to think that means I have something solid to offer in these conversations. What I have is a tradition, a practice, and a lot of years of not being sure.

I also don’t want to preach to a woman in a hospital bed. I’ve never seen anyone talked into believing, and I won’t try it on someone who can’t leave the room. Whatever faith I have came to me slowly, over years, and I couldn’t hand it to her if I tried.

On autopilot, I offered to keep her in prayer. She said, “That’d be more for your comfort, not mine. And that’s okay.” It was honest and it was kind, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

So I’ve been asking what brings her peace instead. We can talk about doubt and fear when they come up, and they do. But peace seems like the better question, easier to discuss, and I’d rather hear her answer than guess at it.

Mostly we talk about the past. She has known me since my twenties, when I didn’t have a gray hair on my head. She tells me about her travels to a long list of countries with her husband and about her years as a librarian, a career spent helping people find answers. I bring the New York Times crossword and a few other puzzles. She has dementia, and she’s determined to keep her mind sharp, so we work through them together.

She and her husband call my twins their grandchildren, which the twins find hilarious, since it means an extra set of grandparents for them. They make her braided bracelets and beaded necklaces, each one custom, and the joy it gives her is easy to see. I don’t know what to call that if it isn’t bringing her closer to peace, and I don’t think she needs me to figure it out.

Whatever I believe about God, I want to believe I’m loved and that I deserve peace. I want her to know the same is true of her, and that she doesn’t have to agree with me to have it. Love that requires the right beliefs would be a transaction.

During a clergy transition this can often get worse. Settled clergy usually give people somewhere private to put a worry, a phone call, a word after the ten o’clock, and get it acknowledged by someone in a position to actually act on it. Take that away and the worry doesn’t disappear, it just goes looking for the next available ear, which in a vestry with no rector tends to be whoever’s still standing by their car. I’ve stood in more than a few of those parking lots myself. That’s usually where I hear the version that doesn’t make it into the minutes, the fear about finances nobody raised under new business, the theory about why the couple priests who came through didn’t work out, the person who has, it turns out, the entire search process figured out and has thoughts about the profile.

It’s worth asking why. Not to point fingers, and wardens are the last people who deserve it, but the reason matters. People go quiet in the vestry meeting because the room feels official, and official rooms carry the risk of being on the record. Say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, and now you’re “that guy who doesn’t trust the wardens.” The parking lot has no minutes. You can float an idea there and take it back five minutes later if it lands badly. It’s low risk and it’s honest, which is a combination the scheduled meeting rarely offers.

Wardens run the meeting they’re handed, an agenda built for votes and updates, not confession. I’ve never met one who wanted people saving their real concerns for the parking lot. Most would trade a year off the search committee for five honest minutes in the room instead of after it.

So here’s what I’ve watched work. Open with a genuine, low-stakes check-in question, something better than “any updates,” which is where honesty goes to die. Name the transition directly rather than tiptoeing around it, since everyone already knows it’s the elephant sitting in the extra chair. Build in five minutes near the start, not the end, for “what are you hearing” instead of “any questions,” which invites a different kind of answer. And when someone says something a little raw in the room, don’t rush to fix it. Take a moment to really hear what was just said, then another to sit with it before you respond. That’s often all it takes for people to trust the room with what they’d normally save for the parking lot.

You won’t empty the parking lot completely, and you shouldn’t try. Some things are only ever going to get said between two people leaning against a Honda. But a warden who makes the scheduled meeting even a little safer for the truth is doing more for that parish’s health than any policy on the books. And nobody’s going to put that in the warden’s job description either.

What's a title you've held that didn't capture what you actually did?

Much like my friend, when I’m stressed, I go dark. I don’t answer my phone, and texts sit unanswered for days, sometimes longer. It isn’t that I’ve forgotten the people trying to reach me. I’m just so wrapped up in working through whatever I’ve got going on that I don’t have it in me to explain myself until I can come up for air.

Some friends give me exactly the grace that moment needs, because they already know I’m working through something. They don’t ask for an explanation up front, and they don’t take the silence personally. Other acquaintances read that same silence as a slight. I’ve gotten the passive-aggressive text: “Did you forget about me?” That’s rarely a real question. It’s someone’s hurt feelings, dressed up as a check-in.

I’m lucky in that I already have a couple of relationships in my parish that know how to time this right. They don’t dig too deep before I’m ready, but they don’t disappear either. There’s a difference between friends who give you space and friends who give up on you, even when both can look like silence from the outside. The ones who stay close without pushing are the ones who leave the door open long enough for me to walk back through it.

That’s what Job’s friends got right, before they went on to get almost everything else wrong.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

— Job 2:11-13, NRSV

That same friend I mentioned before went through a devastating loss last year. I can’t pretend to imagine her grief, but I could imagine being so overwhelmed and so exhausted that returning a call or a text was the last thing she had energy for. I didn’t want to give up on her. I wouldn’t want her, or any other friend, to give up on me either. I left voicemails (which I hate doing for anyone) and even let missed calls just sit there so she’d know I’d reached out, without the demand of a return call. Being supportive from a distance still counts as being supportive. I’m not one of Job’s friends. I didn’t sit with her on the ground for seven days. But I understood the kind of friendship they offered Job, and I recognized it, because I’d been on the receiving end of it myself.

That’s why I keep calling, even when I don’t hear back right away. Not to ask if I’ve been forgotten, and not to disappear either. I keep calling just to stay close enough, and patient enough, for the story to come out whenever she’s ready to tell it.

Somebody in your own life, maybe even in your parish, is sitting right now with the sheets pulled up to their chin, not ready to talk yet. Take a look and notice which kind of friend you’ve been when that happens: the one who waits, or the one who takes it personally.

I thought about it all the way home and realized that I’m not sure we need to bake all those cookies anyway. Sure, it’s our signature, and people expect them, and there’s something to be said for that kind of consistency. But hospitality is so much more than cookies, and an oven going out is as good a reason as any to notice how much stock we’ve put in the food itself.

My twins have their own measure of a good coffee hour. They might notice what and how much got eaten, sure. But really, they notice whether people stayed, whether anyone lingered at the table long after the plates were cleared, still talking, in no hurry to leave. That’s a better definition than most of what churches actually use.

We tend to build hospitality around logistics. Greeters at the door, a sign-up sheet, enough carafes of coffee to go around. Those things really do matter. But I also think about the people who run coffee hour very regularly, year after year. They seek out the new faces and offer a bite to eat. Then they ask a second question, and a third, until a visitor who came for one cookie ends up staying for the conversation.

That’s the part that can’t be put on a sign-up sheet. Logistics get people in the door and give them somewhere to stand. Whether someone feels noticed or just counted and factored into the attendance numbers comes down to one choice. Someone has to decide to keep talking after that first cookie. A table and a cup of coffee can feel like home, if someone at that table continues to share their genuine interest in you after just one bite.

A visitor on their first Sunday and a member whose family has sat in the same pew for three generations are both looking for the same thing. They want to know that there’s room for them to belong in that space, that parish hall, that sanctuary. Sometimes, the attention we give when we offer hospitality can help create that feeling.

A huge spread isn’t the same thing as a close-knit table. You can have twelve dishes and no real conversation. You can have store-bought cookies, or an oven that doesn’t work at all, and a room that nobody wants to leave. The food was always just the excuse to stay.

My twins asked me something similar not long ago, about a different prayer. We were going through the Compline service from the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer said at the very end of the day, and they got hung up on this line: shield the joyous. The whole prayer can be found on page 134 of the 1979 BCP. Here it is in full:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Every line before that one makes sense right away. Watch over the workers. Tend the sick. Give rest to the weary. Then you hit “shield the joyous.” My kids didn’t stop me to ask about it, they waited until we finished. Why would happy people need shielding? Isn’t joy the thing we’re all praying for?

Here’s the simple explanation I had for them. They heard the same message before in different words: Don’t yuck someone’s yum. Don’t make fun of somebody’s favorite snack. Don’t tell them their favorite book is boring just because it’s not yours. Let people enjoy what makes them happy, and don’t be the one who ruins it.

Turns out we do this to ourselves, too. We take that first indulgent bite of something delicious and immediately start calculating what it’ll cost us later. We come back from a trip we needed badly already dreading the “catch-up” waiting for us at home. We finally take the nap our bodies have been begging for, and still feel a little guilty once we wake up. There’s a whole movement called The Nap Ministry (led by Tricia Hersey) built around exactly this need.

Shield the joyous isn’t asking God to protect happy people from bad luck. It’s asking for protection from us, from our own habit of cancelling out joy the second we feel it. What if, just once, we let joy stand on its own? No “but” attached. Just joy, shielded, for what it is.

What if I listened like that even more often in my role with the church? People come into discernment carrying all kinds of things: grace, fear, a bit of a sense that God is asking something of them they can’t yet name, and a pile of questions about whether they’re even allowed to want it. Part of my role is helping them find language for what’s already there. That only works if I’m listening.

Not everyone comes equipped with their own language for it. Sometimes what happens is that someone walks in the door and tells me, “I want to be a licensed lay minister because we only have part-time clergy. Someone told me I should ask you how to do this. What are the next steps?” I could just answer that, hand over the process and the paperwork, and send them on their way. But the real work starts before any of that, with a simple question: is this your call, or is it something somebody else handed you and told you to run with? A lot of people can’t answer that right away, but at least we can start there.

What if we listened more as fellow parishioners, not just in formal discernment circles but in coffee hour, in vestry meetings, in the narthex (lobby) after the 10 a.m. service. Someone mentions, almost in passing, that they’ve been thinking about joining the prayer team, or that they’d like to teach a few curious kids how to become acolytes. It’s easy to nod and move on to the next thing. Stopping to really hear it, instead of shrugging it off, can be the moment someone gets lifted into what they’re being called toward.

What if we also trusted the people listening to us? It’s a weird kind of vulnerability: saying out loud what you think God might want from you before you can claim it with blessed assurance. When someone actually hears you, not just waits politely for their turn to talk, it feels like care. It’s the kind of care that comes from someone willing to sit with you while you figure out who you’re supposed to become. Imagine that.

Let’s try it this week. Let’s listen a bit longer than feels natural. How about we also let someone in and be honest about what you don’t have figured out yet. Allow them to listen to you too, and you might find more people are ready to listen with care than you expected, waiting for the chance to be asked.

That’s new for me. I grew up in a church where an absence like that would’ve gotten my parents a phone call, or worse, a certain kind of silence the next time we showed up. My grandmother had her own version of this, and I loved her fiercely, but she knew exactly how to make three weeks feel like three years. “Oh, thanks for finally calling, I thought you moved to China.” “Glad you called, I thought you had a case of amnesia and forgot about me.” I always called back. I just also always braced for it.

I don’t brace for anything when I walk back into Trinity. Nobody’s going to ask where I’ve been in a tone that means something other than curiosity. Somebody will ask about the twins, how camp went, whether they came home with fewer bug bites than last year. That’s the whole interrogation. It isn’t a test I have to pass to be let back in.

“The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” is written on street signs across the United States and worldwide, and it would be easy to read it as a nice slogan and nothing more. I’ve had three Sundays this month to find out if that sign means what it says. Gone a few weeks for camp season? Welcome. Gone a few years because life happened, or grief happened, or you just needed distance from church for a while? Still welcome. No conditions attached. You just walk back in.

Part of what I get to do in this work is reassure laypeople that missing church doesn’t put their faith in question. They’re free to explore their call without worrying that God’s keeping score. I believe that for them. My old church still lingers in my fiber, so I’m still working on believing it for myself. A church that only wants you when you show up on schedule isn’t forming disciples. Thankfully, mine isn’t like that. I can miss a Sunday, or three, and know exactly what’s waiting when I come back: a warm welcome and someone wanting to hear about camp.

I’ve always loved the scene in The Sound of Music where the bells tell Maria, and everyone watching, whether she made it on time. My twins know this about me and even put their shoes on a little faster when I remind them of my little quirk. They know I love hearing those bells for two reasons: the sound itself, and that it confirms: Phew! I made it on time.

I meant to give you a same-day reflection on how good it felt to break from our usual Sunday routine, something written while the jazz was still ringing in my ears. Instead, you’re getting a little window into the chaos that got me there late in the first place, and maybe that’s the more honest reflection anyway.

Believe it or not, the rush of the week, even the rush to be on time for church, drops the second I cross the threshold of those big wooden doors. Then I’m just there, in the music, the readings, the prayers, the sermon, and in communion. That’s part of why I have such a deep appreciation for actually going to church, not just tuning in from home.

Late or not, once I set foot in the sanctuary, I exhaled in relief and left my hurry at the door. I missed the bells. I missed my self-imposed 6 pm deadline. Late or not, going to church matters to me. Late or not, so does writing this article.

What they probably didn’t expect is what they’d walk away with.

A vestry is the elected lay leadership body of an Episcopal congregation, led alongside the rector. The comparison to a corporate board of directors gets made often, and you can see why. But a vestry is Spirit-led, accountable to a community and a calling, not just a budget and bylaws.

Vestry service can still prepare you for that kind of role. It can prepare you for a lot of things, actually. The church has always been this: a place where people discover gifts they didn’t know they had, in the company of people who want them to succeed.

Think about the singers. Elvis Presley. Whitney Houston. Beyoncé. Katy Perry. They didn’t start on a concert stage. They started in a church choir, with an audience that was rooting for them, a community that showed up week after week to hear them grow. Leadership formation works the same way. When you step up in a parish context, the people around you are invested in your development. They want to see you excel. That’s a rare environment.

The vestry is one of the best places in a person’s life to learn how to lead. Not because it’s easy, but because it matters and the community wants you to succeed. The skills that come out of vestry service are real and specific, not just a vague sense that you’ve “done leadership.” Serve as treasurer for your parish’s annual fundraiser and you’ve got the beginnings of a resume for the school PTO or a local nonprofit board. Stand up to present that report to a room full of people who care deeply about their church, and you’ve just done public speaking under pressure. Run a committee through a contentious decision and you’ve practiced something most corporate managers never get formal training in. And if your parish goes through a rector search while you’re serving, you’ve essentially led an executive search process, navigating discernment, community input, and high-stakes decision-making all at once.

When you carry those skills into the wider community, you go with both experience and a base of support. The parish that helped form you doesn’t disappear. It becomes part of what you bring.

Nobody frames it this way when they ask you to serve; we just say the parish needs you. What we don’t always say is that we’re also forming you for something beyond these walls, and we were never meant to keep that to ourselves. We say it every Sunday, right at the end of the Eucharist: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” The church has always lifted people up for the world, not just for the pew. Someday you’ll look across the pew and recognize gifts in someone that they haven’t claimed yet. That’s the moment the cycle becomes spiritual: you were lifted up so you could lift someone else.

She arranges the flowers.

Not “arranges the flowers” as in she picks up a mixed bunch from the grocery store and drops them in a vase. I mean she selects, sources, and places them with the kind of quiet intention that most people walk right past.

In summer, when the pews are sometimes sparse and the congregation thins, the chancel, that front section of the church that holds the altar, can still take your breath away. Full arrangements, thoughtfully chosen, seasonally considered. You don’t always notice who did it. That’s part of the point.

A lot of those arrangements carry a name. You’ll find it in the bulletin, if you look: *Flowers given in loving memory of...* A husband. A mother. Someone’s child. Mabel receives those requests and holds them. She doesn’t just fill an order. She chooses what fits the season, what honors the person, what says something without words. That’s a pastoral act, even if nobody calls it that.

We talk a lot in the church about vocation, about how every baptized person is a minister. But we tend to imagine that ministry wearing a collar, standing in front of a microphone, or at the pulpit. The flower guild doesn’t operate that way. They show up, often early, often alone, and make the space say something before a single word is spoken.

Think about it this way. When we set the table for a holiday meal, we’re not just feeding people. We’re making a statement about the occasion, the people gathered, what the day means. The flowers on the altar work the same way. They’re telling you this space was prepared. Someone cared that you were coming.

Here’s how you know the flowers matter: on Good Friday, they’re gone. The altar is stripped bare, and that absence does as much work as any sermon. The church removes them intentionally, because they mean something. Hard to imagine in July, when everything outside is in full bloom, but that stripped altar carries weight precisely because the fullness was real. Mabel knows that. The guild knows that.

I wonder how many Mabels are in your parish. People whose ministry is consistent and whose faithfulness shapes the experience of worship in ways that are hard to name and easy to overlook. The prayer book tells us we’re all ministers. I believe that. But believing it means actually seeing it in others, person by person, guild by guild.

The flowers are beautiful. And the people who tend them are practicing something holy. Let them know you see it.

It’s not a lesser version of real church. It’s a different kind of Sunday with different rules. When there are forty people in a space built for two hundred, the air changes. People aren’t performing quite as hard. The kids can wander a little. The peace tends to go a little longer, because people stop and talk a wee bit longer.

I’ve heard rectors describe August as the month they get to be pastors. Less programming and fewer moving parts. They can sit with someone after the service without one eye on the clock.

Summer also shows you who your core might be. The people who show up when they could be at the beach, when the choir is down to six voices, when the coffee hour is a box of store-bought cookies, those people are your church. They’re just there. That’s worth noticing.

I also know what summer can feel like in a congregation that’s already small or struggling. When your regular Sunday is fifty people, losing a third of them for two months isn’t charming. It can feel like another proof that you’re shrinking, and the summer rhythm that reads as cozy in one parish reads as alarming in another.

What summer reveals, in any congregation, is what you’re there for when there’s no performance incentive. The Prayer Book doesn’t change in July. The summer congregation praying in a sanctuary that’s a little too warm is doing the same thing as the Easter crowd in their Easter clothes, and maybe more deliberately.

There’s something I’ve noticed about people who show up in summer that you don’t always see the rest of the year: they talk to each other differently. The smallness creates a closeness that’s welcomed. You end up next to someone you’ve nodded at for a long time and now hear what they’re carrying right now. The full Sunday crowd doesn’t always make room for that.

If you’ve been showing up this summer, it counts. And if you’ve been away, the door’s open. September will be here before you know it, so enjoy this time and space with however few.

That silence is its own kind of wound.

I’ve sat with people who poured years into discernment, took the classes, had the spiritual direction, showed up to every meeting, and heard “no.” Or something that sounded like no. What they describe isn’t just disappointment. It’s disorientation. When they’ve organized their sense of calling around a particular direction, and that direction closes, they don’t just lose the opportunity. They lose the story about who they are. The one they’d been telling themselves, and sharing with the people they love.

That deserves more than a referral to your rector and a pat on the shoulder.

The Commission on Ministry exists for good reasons. Discernment is done in community in the Episcopal tradition, it’s not just a private experience. The CoM isn’t just evaluating individuals. It’s asking whether this person, this call, and this moment fit together, and that question belongs to the community, not just the candidate. A CoM that says “we don’t think this is the right path right now” is doing its job, even when it’s hard to hear. The same is true of a search committee, a vestry, or a bishop who decides someone isn’t the right fit. This isn’t arbitrary gatekeeping. It’s an attempt to serve both the community and the person.

But the attempt can still leave wreckage.

The lay preacher who rarely gets asked to preach. The eucharistic visitor quietly phased out when a new rector arrives with different preferences. The warden who gave three years to a capital campaign, exhausted herself completely, and walked away feeling used up. Even the candidate to the episcopate (the role of bishop) who made it through interviews, retreats, meet-and-greets, and convention, and watched someone else get elected. These are real losses. They deserve to be named as losses, not immediately reframed as redirection.

“Not this direction” might be true. “Not right now” might also be true. I believe that. But those phrases can’t be the first thing out of our mouths. They only land well when the person has had enough space to breathe, to grieve, to be angry if they need to be angry. Offer the pivot too soon and it comes across as dismissive.

What people deserve is presence and care, before the process begins, through it, and especially after a call that wasn’t confirmed. Someone willing to stay with that candidate, whatever the ministry, and help them through the emotions of that result. A process that includes genuine follow-up, not just a letter.

Burnout is its own category. Ministry that was right and good can still hollow a person out if they carry it alone. If you want something done, ask a busy person, and parishes do, repeatedly, until the weight lands on a few shoulders instead of many. Many hands make light work is a truth the church often forgets. Some people don’t hear “no” from the church. They just wear down.

Recovery from any of these (failed discernment, wrong fit, exhaustion) is slow and non-linear. It usually involves grief before it involves clarity. Sometimes what comes out on the other side is a different call, one that fits better. Sometimes people need a long rest before they can even ask the question again. Sometimes the wound takes years to heal.

The church that takes lay ministry seriously enough to invite people into it must also take seriously what it costs when it breaks.

That’s not a comfortable thing to sit with.

When I’m invited to open a vestry meeting, I do something different. I ask everyone to open their prayer books to page 304 and read the Baptismal Covenant together.

The room changes. Not dramatically, not always immediately, but something shifts. You’ve said these words dozens of times, but something about this context makes them land differently. You’re not reading from a bulletin on a Sunday morning. You’re sitting at a table with a budget spreadsheet in front of you, and you’re being asked whether you intend to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and whether you’ll strive for justice and peace, and whether you’ll respect the dignity of every human being.

That last one tends to land hardest.

Most people pick up the 1979 Book of Common Prayer on Sunday morning and put it down when the service ends. That’s understandable. But the theology sitting inside it, particularly around the laity, is specific and serious enough to deserve more than that.

The Catechism lists lay ministry alongside ordained ministry, not as an afterthought, not as the accessible alternative for people who didn’t go to seminary. It’s there because the Prayer Book means it. The ministry of lay persons is described as “to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.” That’s on page 855, in the same section as the ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons.

But the Baptismal Covenant, found on pages 304–305, is where the BCP gets most concrete about what that vocation actually requires. After the Apostles’ Creed, there are five questions. The congregation answers each one the same way: “I will, with God’s help.”

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship? Will you persevere in resisting evil? Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Five questions. One answer, five times. That repetition is doing something. It’s not liturgical filler. It’s a structure designed to let the weight of each commitment settle before you move to the next one.

“I will, with God’s help” is worth sitting with longer than most of us do.

You’re making a promise and acknowledging your limits in the same breath. Whatever doubt you carry about your own capacity, whatever distance you see between who you are and what these questions are asking, the answer already accounts for it. The Prayer Book doesn’t ask you to be certain. It asks you to be willing. “With God’s help” is what makes that possible.

In my own life, the dignity question is the one that costs the most. I think about it when I’m in a meeting and someone says something I disagree with, and I have to decide how to respond. I think about it when my politics and someone else’s are nowhere near each other and we’re both sitting in the same pew. I think about it when I’m raising my children, trying to teach them values that aren’t just family values or civic values but something that actually comes from this covenant, one they received at baptism and will one day affirm for themselves at confirmation.

That commitment to dignity is concrete. It asks something specific of how you vote, how you treat people in service roles, how you talk about people who are absent from the room. It shows up in the language your diocese uses, in how your vestry makes decisions, in whether the people who clean your church building are treated as part of the community or invisible to it.

Most Episcopalians encounter the Baptismal Covenant a handful of times a year, during baptisms, at the Easter Vigil, on a few other occasions when the liturgy calls for its renewal. Between those Sundays, it tends to stay in the prayer book.

That’s worth naming.

The covenant lives outside the liturgy too. It belongs in vestry meetings and diocesan gatherings and discernment conversations and, honestly, in the ordinary week, not just the Sunday it gets read aloud. If the ministry of the laity is as substantial as the Catechism says it is, then the covenant that describes it deserves more than occasional public recitation.

How about trying this on: the next time you’re at a meeting that actually matters, open with the covenant. Not as a warm-up exercise. As an orientation. Ask the people in the room what it means that they’ve already agreed to seek and serve Christ in all persons before the treasurer’s report begins.

It changes the question from “what are we deciding?” to “who are we being while we decide?”

The Prayer Book put those words in our hands and we’re all expected to use them.

She wasn’t being unkind, just curious (and maybe a little judgy). My mom is more familiar with the evangelical tradition. She found that church as a teenager, after her family moved to this country. The Jamaican community had gathered there, and it wasn’t just worship, it was an extension of family. My dad’s mother was there. My mom’s aunt was there. My parents got married there. I was christened there. The Spirit moved through people who knew each other’s names, each other’s joys and sorrows, and prayer was part of that movement, unscripted and immediate. My dad eventually found his way back to the Episcopal Church, the tradition he’d grown up in before emigrating. My mom stayed where she was. I left church altogether for a while. But that’s another article.

What I can tell you is what my mom encountered when she walked into Trinity. It was quiet. It was ordered. Everything, what was read, who read it, when to stand and when to sit, was already printed in the bulletin. She’d brought her own Bible and realized, with disappointment, she didn’t need it. Everything was right there. The instructions were in the bulletin and spoken aloud by the priest. She knew exactly what to do. But that’s also when the question sharpened: they tell you what to say too? As different as that was, she also saw something familiar. My children knew people. After Godly Play, they were introducing her to the kids they sat next to every week. Parishioners were eager to meet her during the passing of the peace and linger with her at coffee hour. The extension of family she’d found in her own church, she could see it here too. The difference between our Sunday experiences wasn’t the community. It was everything else.

In her tradition, the Spirit moves through spontaneity. The preacher finds the words in the moment, the congregation responds in kind, and the liveliness of the room is how you know the Spirit is present. Nobody scripted it. Her church is a perfect example of what some may call “charismatic.” A written prayer, to her, raised a real question: how connected could we be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost if it was all written out? How could she tell if the Spirit was moving if everything was already scripted?

When I walk into Sunday Eucharist, I’m not carrying myself in alone. I’m carrying a week. Decisions I second-guessed, a conversation that didn’t land, something I should have said and didn’t, fatigue I haven’t fully named yet. If I had to produce fresh words for all of that in the moment, I’d spend the hour inside my own head. I’d be composing instead of praying.

Liturgy, a Greek word that means “the work of the people,” takes that weight off. The words are already there. Thomas Cranmer, the author of much of the Anglican liturgy, wrote most of them in the sixteenth century. Some are older. On a Sunday morning at Trinity, I don’t have to think about what comes next. My attention goes somewhere else entirely. Into the words themselves. Into the silence around them. Into whatever the Spirit is actually doing, which I would absolutely miss if I were too busy managing the service in my head. The liturgy is my Sunday rhythm.

The prayer isn’t done for us. We do it together, out loud, from the same page, in the same breath. The sameness is part of the point. It connects the person in the front pew to the person in the back, and both of them to the same prayer spoken in a church three hundred years ago, and three thousand miles away, this morning.

My dad’s family practiced this tradition for generations before it came back around to me. My mother chose something else. We’re both, I think, after the same thing. We just found different roads to it.

Ordinary Time is the season that belongs most to lay ministry. It runs about half the year, twenty-six Sundays with no feast day, and lay leadership is what carries a congregation through that stretch. Clergy often step forward on the high holy days. The long green season is often guided by lay leaders who teach, visit, serve, and hold the community together, week after week.

I think about the high holy days of Christmas, Holy Week, Easter Vigil, Pentecost. It’s all so intense, and the congregation often shows up gathered and attentive. That’s simply the nature of high holy days.

But from now until Advent, what holds the congregation together is people. It’s people like the Godly Play teacher who shows up in September when exactly four kids are in the room and makes it count anyway. The Eucharistic visitor who drives out to someone’s house because they haven’t been able to get to church in three months. The vestry member who stays after the meeting to help a newcomer feel welcomed. The altar guild member who sets the table week after week, not because it’s dramatic, but because it needs to get done and they’re committed to doing it.

This is lay ministry. This is the actual practice of lay ministry in real time on unremarkable Sundays. Ordination and titles have nothing to do with it, but it does require commitment and follow-through.

There’s something else Ordinary Time offers, and we don’t talk about it enough: time to breathe.

Not every Sunday needs to feel like Easter Sunday. The church year has already done that work. Easter happened. The Spirit came. We’ve been through it, and it mattered. But some Sundays are just Sundays. A familiar liturgy, a sermon that lands somewhere in the middle, coffee hour with the same people you’ve known for years. Communities are sustained by that kind of rhythm.

You can’t sustain a congregation at high speed every week. If anyone tried to make every Sunday feel like Easter, it would be exhausting for clergy, confusing for congregants, and simply not true to how spiritual life actually works. Faith isn’t always revved up with meaning, and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s just practice. We show up, say the words, receive the bread and wine, and go home. That regularity shapes us and deepens our faith.

In my experience supporting lay leaders across the diocese, burnout sometimes comes from rarely feeling like the work counts. They taught Godly Play for six years and nobody told them that was holy work. They served on the altar guild and assumed the clergy were the real ministers. Ordinary Time is a good moment to correct that. To tell the people around you, this is your season. The long green season. And the work you’re doing is ministry, even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when there isn’t a feast day to tie to it.

Especially on an ordinary Sunday.