A Letter from Bishop Chris (February 2025)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Years ago, I worked for a mid-sized software company in the banking industry in Charlotte, NC. The company was being bought out, chopped up, re-organized, and downsized. For some employees this meant job loss and for others it meant moving to the west coast. No one was sure their job was secure. The atmosphere was tense. I remember there was a lot of whispering, anxiety, gossip, anger, fear, bitterness and grief. Very little work was accomplished.
One day while eating lunch at my desk (having just finished reading the Scriptures and saying my prayers) my supervisor burst into my office. She was a surly, worldly, faithless woman who’s lifestyle and mine couldn’t have contrasted more. God gave me grace to see beyond her exterior and I prayed often for her salvation. She spit out at me, “What the $%@! is wrong with you? You’re the only one around here who isn’t panicking! Are you totally checked out?”
I took a breath and took a chance. I said, “No, B. I’m not checked out. I have a wife and a newborn and we live on my salary. I’m concerned too. The difference is that I’m not walking through this crisis in my own strength. My life is yielded to Jesus Christ and He is ultimately in control. I trust Him with my future. He’s alive. He’s never left me, and He never will, no matter what happens to my job. He gives me strength and peace.” She looked at me incredulous and back out of my office.
I wish I could say B. came to faith in that moment. So far as I know, she didn’t. However, I was given the opportunity to testify to the Living God, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way, and I pray, by God’s grace, a gospel seed was sown for her future. I was able to do so because I was walking with the Lord and watching for the opportunities He put before me.
Was it a hard time in my life? Yes, for many months. Did I walk it out with perfect faith. Hardly. However, in the midst of that crisis, my life in Christ, my assurance in the faithfulness of His Word, my nourishment in the Sacraments, and my experience of the Holy Spirit’s nearness grew exponentially. I listened deeply for His Voice. I began to learn how to turn to my church friends for prayer and strength. I asked the man who was discipling me a lot of questions. And I discovered, in a way I couldn’t have otherwise, how to trust God in the storm.
Many of you who live in and around the Washington DC area are in the midst of a real storm right now. I have spoken with several area clergy and also several lay people employed in the government sector. It’s a time of challenge, fear, and incredible disequilibrium. I remind you that God’s call to His people in such times is to hold up and not fold up. We are not called to be passive nor are we to be cowed by fear. Instead, we are called to a living hope.
To a church in the midst of trials, the Apostle Peter wrote, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade… In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:3, 6-7).
Dear ones in the storm, remember that you are beloved of the Lord and He lives in you; therefore, draw near to Jesus and to His church. You are called to a living hope. As Eugene Peterson reminds us in the book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, “Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide meaning and the conclusions. Hope is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality.”
And for those brothers and sisters of DOMA who live outside of DC and are not so immediately affected by what’s currently happening, I remind you of the New Testament admonitions to love one another, to bear one another’s burdens, and most especially, to pray for each other.
With love for you in Christ,
+Chris