May 2019 Connections

Connections read • share • inspire May 2019

Issue 3 Vol. 6

Is our church failing?

Have we failed? Is the church as we know it done? It’s all over the headlines. Membership is down. Fewer and fewer people identify with a church. The rise of the “nones.”

Let me begin with a disclaimer. The intent of this article is not to upset or offend anyone because I know the health of a congregation can rarely be determined by numbers alone. I see and hear of congregations all over Southern Ohio who are struggling to keep their doors open, but are also working very hard and are successfully being the presence of Christ in their community.

I realize that very little about the Parochial Report actually reflects the Kingdom of God. With that being said, we do track data the same way Best Buy, Target, and Starbucks do. The difference is that our data is self-reported rather than being derived from sales transactions. Therefore, it may be less accurate than the above-named stores and may be more likely to be “skewed”. However, it’s what we have and is probably accurate enough for some broad generalizations.

So, I downloaded all of the Parochial Reports for all of our congregations for five years, from 2012-2017 (2018 was still incomplete at the time of this writing). That’s over 20,600 pieces of data.

I wondered what this data would really tell me and which pieces of data I should focus on. I chose to look at average Sunday attendance (ASA) versus membership numbers, because my gut tells me that that number could be radically inaccurate. Who knows how many dead people, people who moved to Florida or people who have left the church for other reasons are still on the membership records? So, instead of membership, I settled on looking at the columns marked “increases this year” and “decreases this year.”

I think all congregations probably know how many new people walked in the door in any given year and most congregations have a good idea of how many people died or moved away in any given year.

2

We have traditionally been very focused on how many congregations we have. This is all fine and good, but if we were Best Buy (again, I get that we’re not) then we would be more interested in customers (Episcopalians) than stores (congregations). In fact, in Best Buy’s opinion, stores are a

huge expense and they’d prefer to have fewer stores and more customers.

What if we look at the number of Episcopalians instead of the number of congregations? If we do, then we see that 70% of our ASA attends one of 28 congregations. In other words, about 37% of our congregations have 70% of all active Episcopalians in Southern Ohio.

So, what does this mean? It means that there can be value to looking at our diocese as a 70/30 split. What do our numbers tell us about where 70% of our parishioners go and what do our numbers tell us about where the other 30% go?

If you look at 100% of our parishioners, then our ASA went from 7,195 in 2012 to 6,440 in 2017. That’s a loss of 10.5%.

However, if you look only at the 28 churches where 70% of Episcopalians go, their ASA went from 4,757 to 4,501. With a loss of 5.4%, their ASA decreased at only half the rate of the whole. (For simplicity, I’m going to say top 70% and bottom 30%. I know this sounds judgmental, but please know that’s not my intent at all.) The bottom 30% of congregations went from 2,438 to 1,939 over five years, which is a 20.5% loss, or twice the total average and about four times the loss of the top 70%.

Loss tracked in actual numbers rather than percentages is: • In 100% of the congregations, we saw a loss of 755 people, or an average of 151 people per year.

• In the top 70% of congregations, we saw a loss of 256 people, or an average of 51 people per year.

• In the bottom 30% of congregations, we saw a loss of 499 people, or an average of 100 people a year.

Any percentage of loss isn’t sustainable over time but I’m not sure that any of these numbers are as bleak as the headlines would imply. I have no solid data to back this up, just my own observation, but it seems for many of our churches that there is a change in how we go to church. Traditionally, a “good” Episcopalian went to church every Sunday, but now it seems that more and more Episcopalians are going to church only two or three times a month. If this is, in fact, the current behavioral trend, then we still have Episcopalians. However, their new behavior will drive down ASA while not necessarily driving down the health of the church.

In fact, with this theory, it’s just possible that a lowering of ASA could be a sign of a healthy church. What if members are choosing to do more for the church outside of Sunday mornings? What if a congregation has a Tuesday night tutoring program for children at risk and 15 members of that congregation participate in that program every week? Life is busy. There’s work, soccer practice, school plays, etc. Now you’ve just given up your Tuesday nights to tutor children at risk so you might need a Sunday or two "off" each month. Your church’s ASA goes down but the health of the congregation in terms of living the gospel has gone up. Or what happens if once a month instead of going into the nave on Sunday morning, the teens go to a soup kitchen and cook a meal to feed the poor. They are not "in church", but they are in the kitchen and are serving people in the shelter. ASA goes down but here again the work of the kingdom increases.

As my partner in crime in the Communications Department, Julie Murray, has said to me about her church, St. James, Westwood, “If everybody would show up on the same Sunday, then we’d have quite a crowd.”

If there really is a change in the way people “go to church” then looking at the increase and decrease each year might give us some insight. If you look at all of the congregations over that five-year period, we gained 6,056 new Episcopalians and we lost 7,196 Episcopalians for a net loss of 1,140, or almost 16%.

300

+196

200 100 0

+108

+254

+154

-200

-45

-361

-78

-153 -232

-194

-400

But my premise for this article is that things aren’t always perhaps what they seem. I think that the numbers suggest, as we all know, that the Episcopal church is still relevant. We have new Episcopalians across the board. The only concern is whether or not the new members are coming faster than our losses. With the changing face of how people look at church and perhaps new worship habits, I think there is a lot of hope in these numbers. My analysis of the numbers isn’t to make the top 70% feel good and the bottom 30% feel bad. I did that so instead of thinking the church as a whole is decreasing, we could better see what the whole story is. With that information, we can hopefully start to customize our practices to reflect where we are and where we want to be.

Even though I’ve just spent an entire article talking about numbers from the parochial report, I think it is clear that the parochial report doesn’t capture the essence of who we are. If healthy ministries are changing how people “do church” then we need additional ways to quantify our data and 70% of parishioners congregations productive ways to react to that data.

100% of parishioners congregations

-152

-61

30% of parishioners congregations

So is the church failing? I don't think so.

I think it's changing. I think it's changing in ways that are hard to quantify.

-319

-380

-500

-471

-600 -700 -800

I know we aren’t comparing apples to apples. I understand that congregations that are seeing growth are usually in larger communities that are for the most part either growing or at least maintaining. And I also understand that many of the congregations who are struggling the most are in communities that are shrinking and suffering under societal pressures.

+193 +2

-100 -300

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you look at the 28 churches where 70% of the Episcopalians in Southern Ohio go, they increased by 4,480 people and decreased by 4,281 people for a net increase of 199 people or 4.6% growth. That’s right! Growth. Not huge growth, but an increase over five years. Unfortunately, the bottom 30% had almost a 40% loss of 1,339 over that same five years.

-741

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

David Dreisbach serves as Director of Communications for the Diocese of Southern Ohio. Contact him at ddreisbach@diosohio.org.

Annual Increase and decrease for congregation broken out by categories

3

FAILING

FAITHFULLY

For the past 20 months, I have worked for a failing company. I came to Columbus right out of college, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was full of energy and excitement at the prospect of a new adventure: I would be living in a new part of the country after growing up in New England and working at a cutting-edge technology startup with a grand vision for the future. And for the first year, my expectations were more than fulfilled. Less than a year out of college, I was given full responsibility over the design, development and sales of a product that combined two of my childhood passions, engineering and soccer.

The end of this story is not quite so auspicious.

4

As a company, we failed to bring our vision to fruition. We failed to create a company culture that was empowering and enjoyable. I failed to find a way to scale my project in a sustainable manner. The co-founders failed to raise money and continually missed payroll.

I left the company, brimming with negative emotions. I felt ashamed at my inability to bring my projects to maturity. I felt angry about the money, the dreams, the hopes that had been lost.

I felt disappointed by my failure to be proactive; I had stayed at the company far too long, trapped by inertia, by the fear of an uncertain job search, by a sense of misplaced obligation. Most of all, I felt bitter and betrayed by the failings of company leadership – at the poor decisions which stunted our growth, at the litany of promises made and broken by the co-founders, and at their refusal to be honest and transparent with their employees.

I also felt disappointed in myself for straying off the path of success that I had been taught to follow. Many of my friends were working at prestigious jobs, studying for advanced degrees at elite institutions, pursuing impactful work at well-regarded non-profits. I, on the other hand, felt like I had wasted a year and a half of my life, trying to build something at a company that was on the brink of failure, that I had stopped believing in and that no longer paid me anything except promises.

I questioned what I truly wanted to do with my career and who I wanted to be and how I defined success for myself. I questioned too the scope of my capabilities and the wisdom of my judgment; of who I chose to trust and keep faith in.

I spent a lot of time praying, asking for guidance from God, seeking respite from my self-doubts and answers to my search for purpose. The late Rev. Tony Jarvis once said, “prayer comes from the deep-

est recesses of our being. Real prayer is often desperate; when we pray, we cry out our deepest needs and desires.”

We are at our most honest in our lowest depths, when we have failed and are lost and left with nothing but hope – and it is in these moments that the love of God shines brightest. It was in prayer, in the act of reaching out to God, that I was reminded that I am not alone even in the depths of my failures, and that my failures and failings do not define me.

Faith teaches us that it is okay to fail and gives us the courage to trust in the path that we walk, to trust that God walks alongside us always. But faith gives us more than just the strength to fail; faith encourages us to fail.

In my introspection, I also thought about other ways in which I have failed.

Episcopalians confess each week that “we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” I feel this deeply. It is

often easy to dislike another, to exclude another; many days, I have not walked with an open heart to all. I have failed to serve the poor and the needy to the best of my ability. And even in my attempts to serve, I have left people hungry, I have left people without shelter in the dead of winter. I fail each week to walk in the way of the Lord, despite my desires and my attempts.

And each week, God forgives us of our sins. But forgiveness here is not simply absolution; rather, I view it as tied inextricably with a sense of expectation – last week I failed to love my neighbors with my whole heart, but this week I must try a bit harder. And when I fail again, God will still be there, forgiving my failure, encouraging me to redouble my efforts. Whenever we fall short, God lifts our heads and tells us that it is okay, and that it is time to try again.

Moreover, God stands beside me as a partner in reflection and prayer. Faith further encourages me to fail by reassuring me that God will sit next to me whenever I fail, will talk through my failures with me, will continue pointing me in the right direction again and again. Asking for forgiveness and support can be incredibly difficult, because it requires me to intimately acknowledge my failures in front of Him, to be honest and vulnerable about my emotions.

Faith gives me the trust that God will be there to pause and reflect with me in these moments of reckoning, that God will be there to listen, so that I might walk differently in the future.

I want to fail, repeatedly. It shows that I am willing to try, willing to reflect, and willing to strive for better.

So, let us embrace failure. Give us the courage to dive headfirst into a life

centered on helping those in need, on serving the destitute, on loving our neighbors, even when we know that we are human and we are flawed and failure is inevitable; give us the strength to stand up and try again, even though we know that failure hurts, that it stings, that it sticks and gnaws; and give us the faith that God will always be there alongside us when we fail and when we hurt, lending us strength and courage and solace and comfort in equal measure.

Franklin Li is a member of Trinity Church on Capitol Square in Columbus. He will be heading to law school this fall.

5

ON FAILURE AND BECOMING BELOVED COMMUNITY:

As the two of us have partnered to invite others into Becoming Beloved Community, one practice that has been important to us is to intentionally reflect on how we are working together so that we can notice unhealthy and oppressive patterns and create new ones. We are offering this “conversation” on the role of failure in Becoming Beloved Community as an example of this practice in hopes that it might provide insight into what it means to live into Becoming Beloved Community. We believe Becoming Beloved Community is a way of being and therefore, an ongoing process of transformation. It calls us to show up differently to one another and to be present to those with whom we are in relationship. It begins with us – right here, right now. Here’s a glimpse at how we both stumble through this, together.

Amy Howton: Fear of failure can be paralyzing.

Unfortunately, it is so real in our culture and especially prevalent when it comes to racial justice and Becoming Beloved Community. We get stuck because we’re scared that we are going to mess up. I’m thankful that as we’ve partnered in this work, you and I have framed failure as opportunity for growth and transformation.

Cherie Bridges Patrick: Yes, failure is an opportunity to learn. Can Amy Howtonn you give an example of where you’ve experienced this in our work together?

Amy: This is a good question. Honestly, I feel like it’s how we have formed our relationship. Even just a few hours ago, you let me know that I was being naive in my thinking. I know this is a small example, but these moments of acknowledging where we miss the mark say to me that we are in this to learn and grow, together.

It allows me to not be so paralyzed in my thinking and doing, but that we are going to see every opportunity to learn. When you pointed out how I was being naive, if I was fearful of failure that could have shut me down. But instead, I feel like it strengthened our relationship and allowed us to learn and grow.

6

Cherie: When I think of failure and how paralyzing

that is for all of us at different times of our lives, where have I been paralyzed in this work? Early on, I was fearful about showing up. Fearful about Cherie showing up.

In the context of our (Becoming Beloved Community) leadership group, we’ve got three white women and one African American woman. That dynamic, I can’t let that play here. There’s a history of white and black women having conflictual relationships. There’s been times when we’ve had conversations, there was a fear for me around showing up as my whole self. When do I express my anger? I can catch a lot and put the brakes on things and create space where folks are uncomfortable. So, moving through that fear and pursuing the longer-term goal which is healing. When I keep my eye on that and keep my eye on God then fear of failure becomes less of an issue; it allows me to come to the table as me.

Amy: I love that. You always bring it back to the right relationship to God. It reminds that in the Bible, “do not be afraid” is the most commonly used phrase.

Cherie: Yes! Amy: So that fear of failure – the way I’m starting to understand it – is when I’m getting out of my right relationship with God and I’ve moved into this place of ego. It’s about me looking good, people respecting me, me having the answers. Those are my red flags that I’m moving out of my right relationship with God. Cherie: And when I step out of that vertical relationship with God to a horizontal focus on me and you and other people, that’s when the anger and frustration and

A conversation with Cherie Bridges Patrick and Amy Howton pissossitty (yes, that’s a word!) comes in.

Amy: Yes. And so, when we experience this fear of failure, how do we create it as an opportunity for transformation?

Cherie: We bring it to light. And we learn from it. I know the history of how white women and black women have worked together. There’s a lot of deceit going on and that probably plays in my mind more than I’m aware of. When I talk about trust and distrust, that’s prominent. I know this history and I need to be careful.

Amy: I’d say more than deceit. We have oppressed.

I’m wondering...given how hard it is, and how painful it is, what are we learning about being ok with essentially being flawed humans? And failing? One thing I’m learning – you are teaching me this – is that it’s hard to see our failure without others. I need you to help me see myself. I need relationships. My question remains though, how do we take our failure – the very failure that can harm you – and use that failure to then transform ourselves? Is it enough for me to confess?

Cherie: I think what we do is to learn, and repent. If you’re going down a path and you’re going in the wrong direction, you change and go down another path. These moments let us ask ourselves, what direction do we need to turn in? There has to be something that follows it. It’s not just saying it. Confessing isn’t enough.

Amy: It’s the repairing the breach.

Cherie: Yes. There has to be a step in doing something. What do I do when it happens again? How does this build and strengthen our relationship? It’s still between me and God. I’m sitting here with Amy, and God is in my values. I have to go back there. If I step out of that relationship then I need to repair the breach. This is part of healing. Putting it out there and feeling the sting. And still sitting at the table with each other. Are we going to keep doing this work when we are hurting and failing? Are we going to let that stop us?

Amy: Something that you said reminds me that this is what we are being called to do in Becoming Beloved

Community. This is a process of spiritual transformation, it is learning. It’s a very different thing from a program or initiative with a set of actions or clear directives that we can check off. This uncertainty makes people very uncomfortable. We don’t know how to get there, and yet that is exactly what we are called to do.

Cherie. Yes. We are called into something that we have proven we are incapable and unwilling to do. So now, we are offering this opportunity to be uncertain, and unclear as to what needs to happen.

Amy: We’re saying Becoming Beloved Community is about God. We’re saying that uncertainty allows us to build that right relationship with God, moment by moment, as a way of life. To discover who we are, and to discover and Cherie Bridges Patrick strengthen that relationship. We can only do that in times of uncertainty, and this calls on a willingness to fail.

Cherie: Failure is a blessing, if you can see something in it. It’s failure that forces us to grow. If we are willing to stay with failure long enough, that’s when you grow.

You’re not ever going to grow in a safe space. You’re not ever going to grow if we don’t fail. In these moments of failure are the seeds of self-transformation. They allow us to start sowing something different. There needs to be self-compassion and a willingness to fail enough to really let those lessons teach us something.

Cherie Bridges Patrick serves as co-convener of the Becoming Beloved Community task force. Amy Howton serves as the diocese’s Becoming Beloved Community Coordinator.

7

Volunteers work at the community garden at Salem United Methodist Church

8

RURAL CHURCHES CAN THRIVE BEYOND NUMBERS

The young pastor said he felt like a failure.

He wasn’t the first rural pastor I’ve heard say this. The center that I direct, located at a small United Methodist college, is focused on working with rural congregations to support community and economic development. Before this, I pastored a small rural congregation. I’ve been in his shoes, and I know other pastors who have been in his shoes, too.

“I always believed that if I did all the right things, if I got all the parts of ministry right, then my church would grow,” he said. “But it’s not happening. I feel like a failure.”

He described his community: a rural county with a high level of opiate use, significant poverty and inadequate health care. He spoke with pride about the ministries of his church – in particular, their community meals, where judges eat with the criminals they have sentenced. He knew the ins and outs of his community, both the stories and the data. And yet, he told us, his church continued to shrink.

This story is not uncommon. Pastors are often led to believe that success in their congregations is contingent upon increas-

ing worship attendance. Missions and evangelism become tools by which to reach this growth rather than efforts by which to recognize and participate in the restless change that God is creating.

In many small-church contexts, numerical growth is next to impossible. But that doesn’t mean that the pastors or the congregations are failures. I’ve heard many stories of small ministries that are succeeding – measured not by the numbers but by the impact of their work.

The Rev. Meghan Killingsworth and the Rev. Glenn Stallsmith, for example, reject the notion that thriving churches are exclusively those that are rapidly attracting members – and that small churches are simply places to serve as chaplains for idle, unproductive congregations.

Instead, these pastors remind us of the hard work required of leaders in our small-membership congregations. Small congregations are not doomed to irrelevancy, but neither are they likely to greatly increase their average worship attendance.

Meghan is co-pastor of First United Methodist Church in Sanford, Florida, a small city outside Orlando. Over the last few years, the city has grown rapidly, boosted by its increasingly busy airport and its proximity to Disney World. The church sits on a brick-paved street across from a park, a few blocks from a popular lake. One of several churches on the street, First United Methodist has worshiped in its current structure since 1915, in a sanctuary that features nearly 40 stained-glass windows.

The congregation is small, averaging about 80 on a typical Sunday, and it seems destined to remain so. For the members to match the type of worship that popular mega-churches in the area offer, they would have to change their DNA as a congregation.

Expanding or building a new campus is not a possibility without abandoning the church’s physical place in the community.

Instead, Meghan has begun a conversation, both within her church and with fellow pastors in the area, about what she calls “missional metrics.” Her questions are about assets that her church can offer to the changing community: What are the needs we can meet? How might we be incarnational within our community? What does it mean to be a leader in this particular community? Where do we fit in the current ecosystem?

For Sanford First United Methodist Church, that means better utilization of their building. Using the fellowship halls and classrooms that otherwise sit empty, the congregation is launching a co-working and incubator space for nonprofits in the community.

When the co-working space is fully operational, it will bring together complementary nonprofits. Already, food-based programs, support groups and entrepreneurial initiatives focused on justice have signed on. Groups that share this space will share a commitment to partnering with each other through quarterly learning opportunities and an annual volunteer fair

for the wider community.

“All of these groups were trying to find ways to work together,” Meghan said. “We want to find ways for our church to help in that.”

Glenn, too, had to come up with a creative way to help his congregation reach its community. Glenn is a part-time pastor at Salem United Methodist Church in rural Oxford, North Carolina, which averages about 20 in weekly worship. Located outside of the small town, the church is mostly surrounded by fields and trees.

Over the last few years, the rural congregation has worked to create a small community garden. While the people in the pews are not farmers, many of them came from farming families, and small farms still dominate the landscape. A community garden was, as Glenn told me, “in the DNA of the congregation.” And it was a way to connect with the students at the school a few miles away, who were looking for opportunities to fulfill their community service hours.

For Glenn, the garden is a way for the church to enter into a new aspect of ministry. “I can preach every Sunday about how we need to be more evangelistic or outward-facing or missional, and it can be overwhelming. This is something we can do in that direction.”

The garden will likely never yield much in the way of new members, because the population around the church is not growing. Instead, Glenn sees the garden as a way to change the perception of the role of the church in the community, both for its members and for those outside the church.

“I hope that this helps to change the texture of the community,” he said.

Both Meghan and Glenn acknowledge that their churches will never see profound membership growth from these ministries. Instead, they offer a template for a revitalized life and vision for small-membership congregations, and a new way of evaluating failure and success.

These are congregations leading substantial change by building on their assets, including their small size. Even if they don’t grow, they aren’t failures; they can still lead purposeful ministry.

The Rev. Allen T. Stanton is the executive director of the Turner Center at Martin Methodist College, which leads rural congregations in cultivating community and economic development in southern Middle Tennessee.

This article was first published in January 2019 in Faith & Leadership, www.faithandleadership.com.

Reprinted with permission.

Excerpt from How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World by Alice Connor A few years ago, a friend of mine brought a conference to town called the Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference. They didn’t invite inspirational speakers whose churches had grown from twenty to twenty-thousand or whose personal stories of facing overwhelming odds led to triumph with the help of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and you can, too! They invited participants to speak together about their failures. They were invited to bring their fear, their botched expectations, their low numbers. They brought their cardboard cut-out, smiley success stories and acknowledged them for what they were: bullshit.

10

They weren’t meant to wallow in misery, exactly, but to sit with one another, to affirm the difficulty of ministry and, you know, life. Every one of us struggles to make connections, to be understood, to make headway in the things we love or need. It almost doesn’t matter whether the expectations of success were so ridiculously high that failure was inevitable and something to protect ourselves from, or whether the thing was the simplest possible task and we still failed. It hurts. Failure is a constant, solidified by our inevitable deaths.

So these folks talked about failure as a spiritual discipline. The conference sounded amazing. And I failed to go. Because of course.

These kinds of things—small things like missing a conference just as much as big things like failing to dismantle racism in America—make us feel bad, shameful, less than everyone else. I don’t know what your stuff is that you bring to the table, but I’d bet a lot of money that you feel like you fail just as much as I do. You’ve got your own flavor of failing at things: loneliness, pain, silence, emotional constipation. Personally, I’m never good enough, haven’t worked hard enough, haven’t fixed enough. I mean, look how broken the world is: clearly I’ve failed. Me, personally.

The good news is: of course you don’t know what you’re doing.

Does that not sound like good news? It is, though.

None of us know what we’re doing, not really. It’s all an experiment. And we’re not very good at it a lot of the time. But that failure is not the end. Or, rather, failure is the end of something, but it’s not the end of everything.

It’s part of the process.

Kids are bad at everything at first: tying their shoes, feeding themselves, even holding up their own heads when they’re born. Because of course they are, they’ve never done it before. It’s hard as hell and they fuss and cry and when we encourage them to keep experimenting with their muscles and brains, they get it.

We adults are bad at everything at first as well, but we’ve got these big brains putting a value judgment on it, calling ourselves stupid or failures, calling other people the same things. Honestly, adults are just toddlers

with larger vocabularies to hide behind. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A few years ago, one of my students at the Edge House left. I call it his walkabout. He’d had a transformative summer as a camp counselor, playing games and teaching skills and being present for the campers’ struggles.

It was one of those right-place-right-time moments. But leaving something so good and coming back to the regular world is hard. The everyday of life back home can feel like death. Plus, he’d changed his major at the beginning of the summer. He felt good about the decision but also felt the burden of more time in school and the expectations of his parents. And his siblings had started at our university. He loves them, but he’d made a particular kind of life here. How would they fit into it? What would they bring with them from their childhood relationships that he’d rather leave behind? Then he and one of his good friends ended up in an unrelated conflict, which we worked on mediating, but when he realized the pain he had caused her, it all felt like too much. He needed to take a break. Not from school, from us. So he left.

This clean break was a new thing, and it was like an

The Rev. Alice Connor

open wound. It was open-ended as well; we didn’t know when he’d come back or even if he would. We agreed to give him space to work out his shit and to reconnect with him at the end of the semester. So far, so good, right?

Wrong. My immediate, visceral, so-powerful-it-mustbe- the-truth feeling was that his leaving was a sign that everything I’d done since I’d started six years before was wrong. Everything. Obviously, right? This one beloved student needing to work on his shit away from us means we have failed from the get-go. Lies. A friend of mine says this is the devil at work, not an external force of evil but that lit-

concepts don’t exist, but that the binary itself doesn’t. It’s that old saw about trying not to see in black and white.

We think if we’ve succeeded at all, we can’t be failures, and if we fail, whatever that means, we can’t possibly be successful. But that’s so static, so unhelpful, and not even a good description of what’s really happening.

Think about it this way: in the scientific community, not knowing something is what makes you a good scientist. It means you’re able to ask questions about what you don’t know. We read an article at the Edge House called “The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research.” It’s not an anti-science screed but the experience of a scientist who, stumped about something he was working on, went for help to his experts-in-their-fields mentors, and they didn’t have the answers. He realized that of course no one had the answers to his questions, that was the whole point of doing the research and experiments in the first place. He writes, “The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn’t know wasn’t merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.”

What I love about failure as part of a process instead of an end point is how freeing it is. In a competition model, there are too many restrictions on the possibilities. A conversation becomes something you can win. A relationship becomes something you can win. Love and freedom and sobriety become things you can win. In a process model, we’re always growing and changing rather than racing for one completed, perfect moment. When we experiment, we are ready to see something new and, because of that, we are much freer.

A couple of years ago, we had a lovely new student who dove right into the community, washing dishes after dinner-church, being vulnerable in his discipleship group, playing board games at the drop of a hat.

FAILURE IS THE END OF SOMETHING, BUT IT’S NOT THE END OF EVERYTHING. tle, insidious voice that tells us everything we do is garbage.

His leaving was precisely what we needed as a community, not because he was dreadful, but because we needed to learn how to let someone leave and how to trust them to do their own work. We needed to identify and separate our own emotional stuff from his. As painful as it was, it was good practice. He came back to us the next semester more grounded, more aware of himself, and now we can’t get rid of him. He doesn’t shy away from conflict and has helped other students feel their feelings and ask for what they need. He has been a huge positive influence on so many people’s lives.

The life of this community is a process, not a product.

What we felt in that moment as failing at friendship and conversation was part of a larger story we couldn’t yet see. Because of it, now we’re kinda good at friendship and conversation.

Something stands in our way of opening ourselves up to failure as part of a process. I think it’s that we humans spend a lot of energy on a binary between success and failure that doesn’t exist. It’s not that those

12

He was thoughtful and compassionate. He just slotted right in to our communal life.

Partway through the semester, he shared something with me that caused him deep shame. The specifics are not something I will share here, but I was uncertain whether I was required to report them to a higher authority and deeply conflicted about whether I thought I should. I said all this out loud. In the midst of a tender, honest conversation, I tried to navigate between support and clarity about my responsibility.

He was devastated, obviously. As it turns out, I was not required to report, but the damage had been done. He wanted nothing to do with me or the community because of what he experienced as a betrayal. It crushed me. As I imagine it crushed him as well. I was doing the best I could with the information I had, and I could not have failed in a worse fashion. I hear he is doing well, out there in the world, and I have learned to be more circumspect and to consult before speaking. It’s not much, but it’s good news, even though it doesn’t always feel that way.

We are all moving from one place to another—emotionally, spiritually, physically. It takes a hell of a lot of time and a courage to see failure not as the end but as a possibility.

You don’t win life; you live it.

Except from How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World by Alice Connor ©2019 Fortress Press. Reproduced by permission.

The Rev. Alice Connor serves as a campus minister at the Edge House, a gathering place on the edge of the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Fierce: Women of the Bible and their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex, and Salvation.

About How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World How to Human is a tender and irreverent take on one of life’s most fundamental questions: how to be a better human. If you’ve ever wondered how to live well in a world dead set on making life hard on you, this is the book for you.

With nearly a decade of experience as a college chaplain, Alice Connor offers sage wisdom and no-nonsense realism that strikes right at the rashes and rubs of human life.

She’ll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you to embrace doubt, failure, ambiguity, and vulnerability. How to Human will help you see life as an experiment – not a quest for the right answers. It’ll also help you take the right things seriously and not sweat the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Being a better human means practicing kindness, honesty, and self-awareness. How to Human invites you to consider that there are other possibilities than the most obvious; there are other ways of being human than what we’ve always done.

All of this is difficult but becoming a more caring human is also one of the most joyful, satisfying, and necessary things we can do. So, let’s get to it.

Reviewer Aaron Billard of Unvirtuous Abbey said, "Alice Connor offers up a recipe book for life based on the collected wisdom of her community of college students. These deeply personal stories create a space where it is ok to ask questions, to be your weird self, and to figure out how we respond to the world (and other people) together. Connor invites the reader into the spiritual practice of not knowing. This is one of those books you buy for someone else but read it yourself first.

Her provocative writing is relevant to not just college students but to anyone trying to figure out how to be a human being who makes mistakes but is still abundantly loved and transformed by our experiences together. I loved it."

How to Human will be released by Fortress Press on July 2, 2019.

13

TRY, FAIL, ADAPT In his book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim Harford brings the disciplines of psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics and economics to make a profoundly simple argument: life cannot be lived well if all we seek are easy solutions or even expert opinions. Our world is too chaotic and complex for such facile approaches or an over-reliance on ivory tower pronouncements. Harford rather contends that it is all about how we adapt and respond to our failures through trial and error.

Harford’s basic lesson is this: We have to design our efforts to make effective use of our failures. We have to design into our life’s efforts ways to experiment with trial and error.

Most efforts, he argues, succeed by stumbling and adapting, not by meticulous planning or grand schemes. He lays out a three-point process: (1) Discover new ideas and new ways of doing things; (2) Try them on a small scale so if you fail you can survive the consequences; and, (3) Establish a feedback loop so you can find out what is failing and what is working. He argues this process works in almost all contexts from business to war to writing.

The author is an economist, so he doesn’t write about the spiritual practices and disciplines we need to live with trial, error and adaption in the church. But if we translate some of his terms into our language of faith, then he describes a useful road map for people trying to live as faithful disciples in the world as it really is. In our congregations, as we seek to develop faithful efforts at evangelism and thus fulfill the Great Commission “to make disciples,” Harford’s approach is right on target. We have to be willing to try new approaches to reach people with the gospel that we have not reached before. And we will have to be open to failure in these efforts because some of them will fail.

But failure is not the problem.

The problem is not learning from failure through a feedback loop.

What would our congregations be like if we opened ourselves to more trial, error and adaptation? My hunch is we would be less concerned with phrases like: “we never do things that way here” or “we tried something similar ten years ago and it didn’t work.” We rather would be constantly trying new approaches, learning from how those approaches worked or didn’t work, and then trying new variations on our successful efforts.

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting a new gospel. The one we have now is perfect in every way. So the content of our message is without flaw. It is our approach to sharing the message that needs constant scrutiny and a willingness to adapt as we learn from our mistakes.

This is an exciting and stimulating approach to our common life and ministry. Clearly, making disciples in the 21st century will require our best creative efforts. I believe the success we will have will be directly related to our willingness to listen to people like Harford, for he and others have a lot to teach us about how we will achieve success in making disciples.

The Rt. Rev. Scott Benhase is Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia.

This article was first published in Faith & Leadership, www.faithandleadership. com. Reprinted with permission.

Every stumble is not a fall, and every fall does not mean failure.

Oprah Winfrey

15 15

FARMING, FAILURE AND FAITH Food system failures in 2018 and subsequent recalls in North America included massive quantities of romaine lettuce from the Yuma Arizona growing region; 200 million white eggs distributed by Rose Acres Farms from a farm in North Carolina; and Kellogg’s voluntarily recalled 1.3 million cases of Kellogg’s Honey Smacks. People got sick and some died.

Local organic food movements offer an alternative to the large scale, impersonal, industrial food system and are like seeds of hope. Communities are embracing concepts such as knowing where your food comes from, knowing about food safety and knowing your farmers. Food safety remains a priority and a challenge in the local movement as well. Consumers should be aware of safe food handling practices at all times.

Mary Hutten, volunteer manager of the Lettuce Eat Well Farmers’ Market on Cincinnati’s West Side, fell in love with the local food movement so that she and her family could eat well and have choices such as a diet with “no synthetic chemicals.” Mary’s job brings local consumers and local producers together and values the community building aspect of a farmers’ market. Conversations about flexibility, creativity and alternatives abound.

Concepts such as eating seasonally and eating regionally have become pervasive.

To prepare for scarcity, Mary invites us to preserve the abundant local harvest as it comes in. Canning, jarring, freezing and fermenting offer opportunities to save and store. Enjoy a jar of August harvested Ohio sweet corn in the middle of February. Imagine tasting thawed June harvested local strawberries at Christmas dinner.

Steve Willis, farmer and owner with his wife, Barb, of Just Farmin’ in Butler County, grew up on a farm. He left agriculture for a career in manufacturing engineering

Faith Food

&

Former Procter Farm Manager Bethany McCarty.

16

but returned to his roots in 2010 as he and Barb started Just Farmin’ in their backyard. They were inspired to act by seeing their children suffer from allergies due to eating processed foods purchased at grocery stores.

The Willises now grow vegetable crops at two farms and sell directly to consumers and restaurants. Year-round production is enabled using multiple high-tunnel hoop houses. Steve is integrating 30 years of engineering experience with modern, sustainable and natural agriculture practices. Steve and Barb aggregate select production from other farmers they know and trust to reduce risk and offer their customers greater choice.

According to Steve, “You can get paralyzed thinking about preventing failure. You don’t want to design something with holes in it. You can’t see all possible ways something might fail.

You cannot control Mother Nature, but you can plan systems to reduce risk, such as by crop rotation, cover crop protection and, if possible, by growing indoors in protected hoop houses.”

Steve and other farmers consider the impact of insects, disease, temperature, wind, sun and rain on crops. Sustainable agricultural practices can break disease and insect cycles by using natural methods and avoiding chemicals, poisons and pesticides. Natural remedies include attracting birds and beneficial insects to the farm property. Steve recommends only using Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) listed products, if necessary, for fertilizer or pest control to help protect crops, Mother Earth and our bodies from harmful chemicals.

Bethany McCarty, former farm manager at the Procter Center and currently the business development manager at a certified organic farm in central Ohio, grew up on a four-acre farm and helped her dad grow vegetables including pumpkins, tomatoes, corn and peppers. She also helped him sell at Saturday farmers' markets. To this day, farmers' markets remind Bethany of family, friends, warm relationships and community. An Agriculture Education degree from Ohio State University led to early work in education and then to the Farm Manager position at Procter.

Bethany says farmers “can always learn something from failure. Without failure, you don’t grow as much. You can learn more from one failure than multiple successes. We learned to diversify, so that if a wet season ruins a portion of crops, we can rely on animals such as broiler chickens or eggs to make our income and sustain the farm. You then learn what to do better next year.”

Reflecting on how her faith tradition inspires her in the local food movement, Mary notes, “My heart goes out to our farmers. They struggle with weather, varmints and insects to feed us and make at or below minimum wage for their efforts. We are here to help one another. Have compassion and understanding for farmers in the local organic movement. Support them at local farmers' markets and buy from their CSA pro-

grams.”

Steve adds, “We embrace giving back. We have a zero-waste philosophy and share surplus crops with Bethany United Methodist Church. For example, during our tomato harvest season, volunteers at the church cooked up large batches of spaghetti sauce to feed hungry kids in downtown Hamilton.”

“I feel called by God to do what I am doing,” said Bethany. “I love it when friends ask, ‘how do I start a garden in my backyard?’ I loved giving tours of the farm to families at Procter.

It feeds my passion for education and farming. I feel called to share what I have learned to help feed the world, so that no one goes hungry.”

Mary, Steve and Bethany all agree, “Sometimes you just need to pray.” Local farmers and farmers’ markets may not be able to compete with Walmart or Kroger on price, but you will love the friendships, relationships, passion, knowledge sharing, fruits, vegetables, honey, eggs and meat that they can bring to our table.

Is failure inevitable? Our response to failure is what matters. Can we learn from our own mistakes, the mistakes of others and of the past? For some, fear of failure is a great motivator. For others, lessons in failure help create backup plans to the primary backup plan. So ‘lettuce all’ embrace diversity, flexibility, preparedness, cooperation and compassion. Fall in love with the local food movement. You will be energized during the day and sleep better at night.

Mike Eck is a food justice advocate and is actively involved in the local organic food movement in southwest Ohio. Mike and his wife, Denise, are members of Christ Church, Glendale.

The Willis family of Just Farmin' in Butler County

17 17

Failure:

A pathway to hope and fulfillment

18

The word, “failure,” is defined in numerous ways and has many synonyms: “lack of success, non-fulfillment, coming to nothing, falling through;” and yet the word conveys a sense of optimism and challenge as well. A liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer speaks of failure in that way: “We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone” (page 836).

This article focuses on the possible aspect of failure being a “challenge” to a ministry, rather than on the failure of an individual.

Partners in Ministry in Liberia, or PIMIL, was established at St. Matthew’s, Westerville, in 2005 as an outreach educational program to provide financial assistance to Liberian families who could not afford to educate their children as a result of the Civil War. At that time, St. Matthew’s was a large congregation in the diocese that held three services on Sundays, averaging an attendance of 300 persons. The church had robust and myriad activities and organizations. PIMIL was the only overseas organization, starting with 10 sponsors sponsoring 33 students and donations of $4,000 annually. Interest in PIMIL grew around the diocese and members of St. Matthew’s were invited to tell the story of PIMIL at the adult forums of other congregations.

However, a year after PIMIL was officially launched, there were signs of discord brewing in the congregation over the issue of sexuality. This issue was not of St. Matthew’s making, but originated from the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church and its budding efforts to deal with same-sex unions. This effort brought a stunning division in the Episcopal Church and its congregations. The discord was sad. Dioceses and congregations were divided on the theology of human sexuality. At St. Matthew’s, the issue divided the church, resulting in the then-rector and three-quarters of the members leaving to form a new congregation. Ongoing ministry support for activities at St. Matthew’s dwindled, and departing members announced that they would no longer support PIMIL as their ministry.

However, God would demonstrate His faithfulness of love,

care and grace towards the children of Liberia as He did to the children of Israel in their journeys in the wilderness. Moses reminded them: “During neither these forty years your clothes have not worn out nor your feet swollen up” (Deut. 8:4). The Apostle Paul’s exhortation of God’s grace in the church in Ephesus would be realized for the PIMIL program to the children in Liberia in their circumstances: “To him who by means of his power working in us is able to do so much more than we can ever ask for, or even think of: to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time, for ever and ever!

Amen (Eph. 3:20-21).

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

BCP, page 836

Not only has God provided the financial assistance for the children of Liberia to continue in school uninterruptedly but has also increased and expanded the challenges of PIMIL. The ministry now includes assistance to Ebola orphans and children who lost a parent as the result of the deadly virus when Ebola struck Liberia in 2014. In the current academic year, PIMIL is sponsoring 182 students, 101 of whom are Ebola orphans. PIMIL has the highest number of student sponsors (75) since it was established in 2005.

PIMIL is voluntarily supported. Our fundraising goal this year is $15,000, and PIMIL has set a new goal to sponsor even more Ebola students who are not in school. Won’t you please

join us? Sponsors receive a photo of their student, a student’s letter and a letter from the parent/guardian of the student, and much more.

Our annual fundraising event held each July is when PIMIL raises most of its funds for the year. This year we are celebrating our 10th fundraising event, and to mark this milestone in the fundraising efforts, our guest speaker will be the coordinator of the Ebola orphans in Liberia, the Rev. John A. Sackie, Sr. The theme of the event is “Bloom Where You Are Planted,” based on Jesus’ parable of the Five Talents (Mt. 25: 14-30).

The event will be held on Saturday, July 20 at St. Philip’s, Columbus, from 12:30 to 3:30 p. m.

There will be wonderful activities, like the African drum circle, and the food, as always, will be delicious! If you can-

not come but would like to make a donation, (any amount is welcomed!) send your donation to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 30 East College Avenue, Westerville, OH 43081. In the memo write: PIMIL. You will receive a receipt for your donation and a statement at the end of the year of your contribution to PIMIL. PIMIL operates through St. Matthew’s 501c (3).

The Rev. Abby Flemister is a retired priest at St. Matthew’s, Westerville, and serves as PIMIL Director. Connect with Abby at aflemister@ insight.rr.com.

19

Becoming

Beloved

Community

Sheep

& Goats

At the end of history, humanity will co-exist in the reign of God. This statement emerged from a downtrodden people.

These people were mistreated and knew that God had to intervene and set things right. This was apocalyptic writing. Some in the community prayed for this inevitability every day. Some wanted a final separation of sheep from goats. Yet, what did God desire?

In the whole of scripture, does God yearn only for the sheep?

Does God seek unity? God seeks the just and the unjust. All have been counted righteous in the eyes of the Mysterious God. God wants humanity to admit its flaws not for God’s sake but for humanity’s sake. Once humanity admits its flaws, it can heal. Tears can be wiped away. Healing and wiping of tears are sacred work that is on par with the excellence of God. It is part of God’s creating and creation. Our tears meld with

20 20

the mysterious God’s trillions of rivers of tears expressed by God over humanity throughout the ages.

The $64,000 question is, why bother with a Christian lifestyle now if humanity will experience salvation anyway? Delaying the conversion from a self-destructive existence to a life-affirming mindset will lead to suffering. Participating in the struggle to understand God, neighbor, and self will alleviate harm. Yes, humanity could put off turning to God, but that later turn would be a horrible day as humanity wailed for its sins. As individuals turn toward God, their core is rattled by every touch of God, every deep question being answered, and every weight of wrong doing being uncovered.

Ancient writers outlined humanity’s human story and included the resolution in the Book of Revelation. They used the imagery of the sheep and the goats. Humanity acts as both throughout its existence.

Having a narrow view of our identity is shortsighted. The mysterious God enfolds love around us squirming, mischievous humans. We are a delight to the mysterious God. Quinton Jefferson, Adjunct Assistant Instructor of Theology at Thomas More University, is a member of Christ Church Cathedral.

r

n-

e

.

a

Save the date!

Make sure to mark your calendar for Wednesday, August 21, when the Diocese of Southern Ohio will host a day-long diocesan-wide health fair at St. Anne’s, West Chester. The health fair is open to everyone in the diocese.

The health fair will include offerings for medical, spiritual and financial well-being. The Hoxworth Blood Center donation van will be there, along with the UC Health mobile mammography unit. We will also provide health screenings, spiritual direction, chair massages, yoga, pastoral counseling, vendors, food, door prizes and more. Don’t miss it! Look for further information in the next Connections or our weekly e-Connections.

PLUS: Church Pension Group will be at our health fair to present special offerings for lay church employees. Churches of the diocese are encouraged to invest in the health and well-being of their lay employees by giving them the day off to attend the health fair. More details coming soon.

August 21, 2019 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

St. Anne’s, West Chester

CONNECTING Campus Ministry Collaborative holds Spring summit Members of the Campus Ministry Collaborative gathered for a Spring summit at Procter Center in March, to learn about each other’s ministries at universities in Athens, Columbus, Cincinnati and Oxford, encourage one another, discuss the diocesan grant-writing process necessary to fund our work and to plan for our popular fall student retreat. The Collaborative is comprised of congregations and ministries that receive grant money from the diocese for campus ministry. Representatives include the Rev. Deborah Woolsey, rector of Good Shepherd in the heart of Ohio University in Athens; the Rev. Alice Connor, coordinator at the Edge House at the University of Cincinnati; Dr. Ellen O’Shaughnessy, executive director of the Downtowners Interfaith Ministry who ministers to Columbus State, CCAD, Columbus Nursing School, Franklin, and De Vry University; the Rev. Sara Palmer, rector of Holy Trinity Church and reaches out to students, faculty and staff at Miami University in Oxford; Erin Rasche from St Matthew’s, Westerville works at Ohio State; the Rev. Jared Talbot of St. Stephen’s and the University Center, Columbus; and Sara Tobe, a doctoral organ student who is the program coordinator at Christ Church in Cincinnati.

The Campus Ministry Collective: Back row (left to We shared our lives, the challenges we each face and the joys also. right), Ellen O'Shaughnessy, the Rev. Jared Talbot, It was uplifting to listen to the various creative and new projects that each of us have been involved in and to hear the stories of God at work. Sara Tobe; middle row, the Rev. Deborah Woolsey, Sara Palmer shared about a new student who has joined the church and Erin Rasche; bottom row, the Rev. Alice Connor recently came to the weekly Wednesday Student Bible study as we fin- and the Rev. Sara Palmer. ished reading Ruth. Jared talked about a new service at St. Stephen’s with meditation and Taizé music, a tamale fundraiser and the church providing space for Muslim students to make thousands of sandwiches to feed the homeless. Ellen and Jared talked about the blessing of last year’s joint fall retreat in Columbus, Holy Hike, that included a visit to the state capitol. Ellen is excited about a DC Mission trip in May, and interfaith services. Deborah described the thoughtful genesis of Good Shepherd’s new coffee shop ministry with its delicious Deeper Roots Coffee and employing students and locals. Her series on “The Gospel According to Doctor Who,” sounded fascinating – and the Tardis located outside the church attracted significant attention! Alice has written her second book, How to Human. One student said that she had learned at the Edge House “how to fail with grace,” a beautiful and moving comment.

We are all most grateful for generous grants from the diocese, which pay for choral scholars, priest’s salaries, outreach to students and our fall student retreat. We agreed that grant proposals should be submitted by May 2 and on July 14, we will have a Zoom meeting to distribute the grant monies. The fall retreat will be at a cabin in the Hocking Hills; the theme will be Becoming Beloved Community and the dates will be from October 11 to 13. We will have a balance of rest and activities to get to know one another better.

We are thankful for the fellowship and support we find in the Student Ministry Collaborative and for the

23 leadership of our convener, the Rev. Deborah Woolsey.

Submitted by the Rev. Sara Palmer, rector of Holy Trinity, Oxford

CONNECTING Deacon honored with Living Faith Award The Rev. Douglas Argue was presented its 2019 Living Faith Award from the Spirituality Network at their annual breakfast on May 2. The Spiritualty Network is a multi-faith organization that aspires to be a community of acceptance and inclusion. The Living Faith Awards honor individuals who create a more hopeful, peaceful, and faithful world. Recipients of the awards are individuals who exemplify dynamic faith in their lives, those whose faith is both “lived” and “alive” in ways that inspire, challenge, and serve. Douglas was honored for his work as managing director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO) in Columbus.

Ministry touted as “Best of” Cincinnati Transformations CDC, a ministry of the Church of Our Saviour/La Iglesia de Nuestro Salvador in Cincinnati, was among the organizations which received a "staff pick" by City Beat writers in their annual Best of Cincinnati edition.

Transformations CDC was listed in the Best Interfaith Humanitarian Effort category for its work in providing legal help, shelter, advocacy and other aid for immigrants from vulnerable groups who are seeking asylum in the United States from violence, war and poverty in their home countries. In their writeup, the magazine noted, “These organizations give us heart that, regardless of the political winds blowing, there are those among us who recognize our shared human dignity.”

Berry joins House of Bread Jean Berry, longtime member and former staff member at St. Paul's, Dayton, has accepted a new position with House of Bread in Dayton, Ohio. House of Bread offers a hot, nutritious, lunchtime meal to anyone in need 365 days a year. No one is ever turned away from the House of Bread, and everyone is treated as a special guest. Staff and volunteers work together, primarily using donated food, to prepare the meal each day.

Jean will serve as the Director of Development, the first person to hold this newly created position. Learn more about House of Bread by visiting the website: houseofbread.org.

23

CONNECTIONS

The official publication of the Diocese of Southern Ohio www.diosohio.org

The Rt. Rev. Thomas E. Breidenthal, Publisher David Dreisbach, Art director Julie Murray, Editor Amy Svihlik, Designer Dave Caudill, Copy editor

Submissions: Connections encourages the submission of articles and pictures. We reserve the right to edit material offered for publication. All submissions must include name, phone and email address for verification.

Send submissions to communication@diosohio.org.

Next deadline: June 1

Connections (USPS 020933) is published bi-monthly by the Diocese of Southern Ohio, 412 Sycamore St., Cincinnati, OH 45202-4179. Periodical postage paid at Cincinnati, OH. This publication is sent to all members of Episcopal congregations in the Diocese of Southern Ohio and is funded by mission share payments to the diocesan operating budget. Other subscriptions are $10 annually.

40 28 42 32 44

POSTMASTER: Send changes of address to Connections, 412 Sycamore St., Cincinnati, OH 45202-4179.

We are a people of connection. We kneel around the same table regardless of color, creed, gender, race or sexual orientation.

Connections is a publication of the Diocese of

Southern Ohio, designed to enhance these connections and help foster new ones – because we are continually looking for ways to widen our circle.

dsoConnections.org