[Magdalen] Small prayer requested

[Grace Cangialosi]

Thanks, Chad! I don't feel it's my job to get them to see another point of view. It's just like preaching: my responsibility is to preach the Gospel as clearly as I can and then to leave the rest to God. I can't control the response.
I participated in a March here, but not in collar, and I didn't mention it on either Sunday.

As for what these folks want in a priest--the Senior Warden told me a couple of weeks age that they want someone to come and do Sunday services and visit shut-ins and folks in the hospital. Oh, and do funerals. Clearly, what they want is a part-time chaplain!  They're having a hard time finding someone.

> On Feb 7, 2017, at 11:32 PM, "Charles Wohlers" <charles.wohlers at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> Prayers for you, certainly.
> 
> I've heard that some parishioners ("8 o'clockers") at a parish we attend were upset that the rector attended the local Women's March in collar. That, to them, is being political. My sense was that no collar would have been OK. (BTW, the bishop was there also, but that apparently was not a concern).
> 
> There are a good number of Episcopalians who think that the reason for their Christian faith is primarily to get them into heaven - that it's just between God and them, and the Church and their faith should be totally divorced from the "secular world". I suspect your unhappy parishioners may fall into that category. I suspect it won't be easy to get them to understand a different point of view.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> Chad Wohlers
> Woodbury, VT USA
> chadwohl at satucket.com
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Grace Cangialosi
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2017 10:32 PM
> To: Magdalen ; Cantor03 at aol.com
> Subject: [Magdalen] Small prayer requested
> 
> Tomorrow morning I've been asked to meet with the Senior Warden and one or two parishioners of the church where another priest are doing long-term supply--we're alternating months.
> It seems that a couple of parishioners didn't like my last two sermons on the last two Sundays in January. One woman, on her way out the door on one Sunday, said the pulpit wasn't the place to express my political views. I replied that I hadn't, but she disagreed. Then a man came out and berated me for not speaking up for the unborn! I had no idea where that came from.
> OTOH, several people thanked me for the sermon, and one woman came into the office to tell me she really appreciated it.
> So there were mixed opinions, which was not a bad thing, IMO. (Of course, my favorite response is for someone to say, "You really gave me something to think about.")
> I'm always careful not to talk politics, or parties, nor to tell people how they should think or vote. But I believe it is part of our call as Christians to speak out when we see injustice or bullying, or blatant discrimination, etc. regardless of its source. That was the essence of both sermons--one the weekend of the inauguration and the Women's Marches ( which I never mentioned--and one the weekend of the travel ban.
> I've been preaching for 27 years--with lots of emphasis on social justice and always connecting to the lectionary readings--and this is the first time I've been called into a meeting because of a sermon. So I guess I should be grateful for that! I did get a death threat once because of my involvement in racial reconciliation in the community, but that came from outside the congregation, and I didn't really take it very seriously.
> The thing is, even though I supply at this church a lot and was with them for five months about 11 years ago when they were between rectors, I am still just a supply priest with no standing. I told the Senior Warden when he called me on Monday that if people were unhappy with my preaching, they certainly didn't have to have me back. He got flustered and said he certainly didn't want it to come to that. I said I knew that--I just wanted to remind him that they did have that option. I'm not actually there this month--I go back in March.
> 
> Much more detail than I meant to give, but I guess I'm trying to lay everything out in preparation for tomorrow. I plan to begin the meeting with prayer and then ask what they were upset about and what they mean by "political."  At some point I will acknowledge whatever they've told me, and then I'll say I have a dilemma, because I've also gotten just the opposite feedback. So Which do I listen to? My task is to preach the Gospel in whatever way I'm being called to do it, knowing that some will probably respond positively and some negatively, and the majority will not share their opinion at all.