Bishop's Blog
God has an extraordinary ability to defy our expectations. Especially if he really wants to get our attention. Beyond Expectations When I was a college student, I went to try a large Episcopal church not too far from where my family attended. It was an 8:00 a.m. service held in a small chapel, and the…
Have you decided to follow Jesus? Do you understand the courage of your decision? Do you understand its magnitude? Today, I want to try to help paint a picture for you using some insights from the first six verses of Revelation 21. For so many Christians, past and present, this reading has been both a…
Today, we take a look at the life of Dunstan, one of the most famous of all of England’s Christian spiritual leaders, born in 909 A.D. in Glastonbury in the southwest part of England. Dunstan was famous for his extraordinary and multitudinous talent. But he was so much more than a man who knew how…
A priest friend extended a challenge to his congregation the other day. “Let’s take a couple of minutes to pray and think about what the Lord might want to say to you.” My response? “Ohhhhhh.” My friend’s words intrigued me. When I preach, I tend to focus on what God wants me to say, not…
God’s call is always a call to love. To love him. To love other people. But the ones he sends us to love are often those we would never choose on our own. A Love That Sacrifices Peter, in the tenth chapter of Acts, had no idea God would call him to go be with…
I want you to imagine with me a little of what life might have been like for those early believers who saw Jesus ascend into heaven and waited for him in the Upper Room. You can read the real story in the first and second chapters of Acts. But for just a few minutes, let’s…
As I reeled from the recent shootings in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas, I knew I had to say something. Unexpressed grief easily becomes indifference, something no one needs. So what do we need? I believe times like these call not for desperate measures but a deliberate reach. So what does that look like…
PHOTO CREDIT: © Solitafoto | Dreamstime.com A bishop carries something we call a crozier, which is really a symbol for the staff a shepherd carries. I carry one as the bishop of the church, the chief shepherd over the Diocese of Central Florida, and also as someone who is subject to Jesus’ ministry to me. If…
When I heard the news, I was sitting in the airport in Louisville, Kentucky, my CNN and Twitter feeds exploding. My natural reaction was to keep the horror of this event at a distance, keeping my heart safe from grief and outrage. But slowly, as an answer to prayer, the sadness, the weariness, the empty…
Each spring, our churches have a Collect that honors Edward Thomas Demby and Henry Beard Delany, the first and second African-American bishops consecrated in The Episcopal Church. As the prayer says, they, “though limited by segregation, served faithfully to [God’s] honor and glory” (Lessons Appointed for Use on the Feast of Edward Thomas Demby and…