Bishop Gregory O. Brewer

“It is clear that not only is the world coming to our door, but we are being invited to go out into the world,” said Rt. Rev. Bishop Gregory O. Brewer during his State of the Diocese address on Saturday at the Forty-Eighth Annual Convention of The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida at Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park..

And many Episcopalians from the Central Florida Diocese have accepted that invitation, spreading the gospel here in the U.S. as well as abroad. A few—Julie Brown, The Rev. John Kelly, Deacon Nancy Bryson, The Rev. Loren Fox and The Rev. Chris Royer—shared their mission experiences to highlight the convention’s theme of “Forming Partnerships for the Great Commission.”

“When I go on a mission trip and keep going back and pray for different missionaries or when I engage with different mission projects that our church is involved in around the world, I am reminded there is a purpose to the gospel—to declare to God’s glory to the end of the earth,” said Fox, who went on his first mission trip in the mid-1980s.

The once-dreaded “e” word—evangelism—has now become an important word in the vocabulary of today’s Episcopalians. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who often refers to himself as “Chief Evangelism Officer,” has been the driving force behind the new approach.

International mission testimonies:
Josh Gritter
Trinity Episcopal Church
Vero Beach

“[Mission work] helps me connect with the heart of the people. When I first started going [on trips], I was under the mistaken impression that we were white saviors going across the country to save them or pull them out of poverty. I have since learned that we experience different types of poverty—spiritual; material; in broken relationships with God, the world, each other; systems and institutions. Being able to mutually encourage and support each other, sharing our understandings of the gospel from different communities, has been incredibly impactful for me. … [When someone goes on a mission trip] I would say that, beware of your heart as you go across the seas, knowing you are going to brothers and sisters that might have answers that you don’t. Go there understanding that you have the love of Christ to share with them, and your life will be changed by what you see.”

Charlene Turner
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Melbourne
“We have a very close relationship with the president and the first lady [in Uganda]. She is very supportive of us. We travel with security from the president’s office. I don’t feel the need for it, but it’s a blessing. [In 2005 or 2006] we told the first lady that we wanted to do a site in her honor. She sent us to a Muslim clinic. We pulled up in this bus in the middle of nowhere while they were having class that day. They were told, ‘At the request of your Christian first lady, we [are] here to bring you the light.’ We didn’t even need to say much and they got it. We planted a seed. How symbolic for us, on a mission trip to bring [solar] light to the country, that we took the light of Christ to this Muslim clinic. I think there were seeds planted that day. We’ll never know. You don’t always see the fruit of your labor.”

Dan Smith
Holy Cross Episcopal Church
Sanford
“My best trip? I trained a diocesan staff [in South Sudan] on how to be a diocesan staff. Usually you go to do medical mission, but this was a new bishop with a new staff. I trained him basically how to communicate with their diocese, how to work together as a team, how to build a team, and how to work with the clergy of the diocese. … I was there right after they declared independence [in 2011] as the newest nation in the world. That was an exciting time to be with a group of people who were loving the idea of freedom, and really loving the freedom of religion and being able to worship God. … Missions brings your faith alive, teaches you faith in a new way, and reminds you of what’s important: following Christ and striving to change the world for Christ.”

Tish Kelly
St. George Episcopal Church
The Villages

“I always prayed that I could go on a mission trip. … Our church had a connection with Haiti because my husband had gone with another church on a trip there. We were able to connect with some of the same people that we met before, and some of the kids and musicians. They were all decimated by the earthquake in 2010. … We stood on the site where many buildings were razed and people died. A technical school crumbled, five stories. Many of the people died. All that was left was some of the rocks at our feet. … It felt incredibly moving, like I was part of a movie scene—and the devastation of epic proportions—almost like an Armageddon scene that we don’t experience here in the states very often.”

Loren Fox
Church of Our Savoir
Palm Bay
“[Mission is] something that God has grown in me, not something that came with a snap. The more I engage with the global impact of the gospel—the bigger, the more powerful, the more amazing I see that God is. God is not just my God but God of the whole world. … For me missions has taught me that my faith and the church itself has a purpose bigger than me. In Sunday school growing up and in many of the sermons I’ve heard, the focus of faith is, what do I get out of it. When I go on a mission trip and keep going back and pray for different missionaries, or when I engage with different mission projects that our church is involved in around the world, I am reminded there is a purpose to the gospel—to declare to God’s glory to the ends of the earth.”

Nancy Bryson
St. George Episcopal Church
The Villages
Head of School Holy Trinity
Fruitland Park
“[We take] a multigenerational approach to our mission and our partnership. It has been an experience that has moved me in my faith and my worship. … We celebrated Episcopal Schools Week in October. I asked what [the students] wanted to do with the [offertory] money [collected during service], if they wanted to send it to Haiti. ‘Yes,’ they said. So I explained there are different missions. We could send it to the school. We could buy seeds. We could donate money to buy goats. Goats are a renewable resource. A farmer buys a goat, and when the goat has kids, they pass along the kids to the next farmer. It’s a pay-it-forward program.”

Tom Phillips
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Lake Mary

“The God that exists every day in my world here in Orlando, then in North Carolina, is the God that exists in Poland. The people are different, the language is different, the scenery is different, but God is the same. He is a relational God who wants to know his people. That understanding of the person and character of God completely changed my life.”