A Spirit of Loveliness and Sense of Unity

Charlotte Collins Reed
Bellwether Farm
December 10, 2021

Commissioning the Bishop Search Committee

Years ago, when I was interviewing with Christ Church Hudson where I now serve, I reached out to my friend John Ohmer for some advice. John had left a large, vibrant Episcopal Church in a suburb of Washington, D.C. to go to Falls Church Episcopal.  Falls Church had been ravaged by the conflict in the Episcopal Church in the early 2000’s and was a shadow of its former self, shrinking from a congregation of 2800 to about 27 people.   As I prepared to interview at Christ Church, also a church with a difficult past, I wanted to know what land mines I should be looking for.  What words should I use to ferret out unresolved issues, and what should I expect the search committee to say that would assure me that Christ Church Hudson had become I place I wanted to serve?  What metrics should I expect and what goals would be reasonable? 

I will never forget what John said to me.  His response was “You are looking for a spirit of loveliness and a sense of unity-not a desire for unity, but real unity.”  That’s it.  Nothing about land mines to watch for or metrics to expect. 

A spirit of loveliness and a sense of unity.  I thought about my friend’s words when I read the scripture passages we just heard, which you may have recognized come from the service for the consecration of a bishop.  We are-you are-looking for more than a skill set or metrics or goals in our next bishop, even though you are looking for those.  You are also looking for that spirit of loveliness, the spirit of God in that person, leading the person to proclaim good news, encouragement, to raise up those who are marginalized, a person who brings strangers and foreigners together at the table-although not to till our land and care for our flocks- and to be a person of joy and reconciliation. 

How do we recognize such a person?  The gifts of spiritual loveliness and unity do not fit easily on the Office of Transitional Ministries many forms and questions.  On a scale of 1-10, how much would you say the Spirit of God is resting on this individual?  That doesn’t really work.  But as my children used to say when they were taunting one another with various names, “It takes one to spot one.”  The way we discern such unquantifiable gifts in a person is to cultivate those same gifts in ourselves, both as individuals and as a community.  Then we can better see those gifts in others.

As you go about your work in the coming months to discern nominees for the 12^th Bishop of our Diocese, I encourage you, and I believe God calls you, not just to look for that spirit of loveliness and sense of unity in those you meet and to do the work described in your charge, but to be that spirit of loveliness and sense of unity for those you encounter along this journey.  Your work will bear amazing and perhaps surprising fruit.

                                                                                         Amen.