Tag: Address to the Annual Meeting

The Rev. Jedediah Fox delivered this address to the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer on January 26, 2025. The text following is primarily AI speech-to-text with light editing. There are probably some transcription errors.

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Fr. Jed Fox: And I would think, I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for it with bated breath, which is the Rector’s Address. Which I will try not to make a second sermon. Though that’s always the trick.

I want to start this address by with a word of thanks. Earlier this year you gave me a wonderful series of gifts to acknowledge for my ten years of work here in the church. I’m very grateful to every one of you, not just for giving me a gift, because I was here today I’m old, but for calling me ten years ago to be to journey alongside you in this journey toward the Kingdom of Heaven that we’ve built. It’s been a wild ten years in a lot of ways but a wonderful ten years that I’ve had the opportunity to think about it.

Ten years ago, when I gave my first Rector’s Address, I had on my mind the Christmas readings, particularly a phrase that was used in the letter to Titus, where Titus describes the followers of Jesus, the people of God, as a peculiar people, zealous for good works. And sometimes we hear that phrase peculiar, and we tend to think of quirky.

But I think that what Titus meant is not just quirky, but people who know themselves and God in Jesus Christ. And that is certainly, I think, who Redeemer is. In the voice of peculiar people who know themselves and who they are in God and Jesus Christ. And what is as true today as it was ten years ago when I gave that first rector’s address is that Church of the Redeemer is a people of worship, of sacrament, of community, and of outreach.

And we were able to live into those values in 2024 in wonderful ways. And one of the things we did is expand our community by welcoming in a new priest of the church. We got to journey alongside Teresa as she completed her transitional diaconate and see her get ordained and begin a new life of ministry as a priest in God’s holy church.

We continued our work with Hopelink and continued learning new ways in which we can be a blessing to them and others in our community. And we’ve begun work with the Kenmore Senior Women’s Shelter. All things that are, we said and we feel, are essential to our mission. You also got a new bishop, and the eagle-eyed ones, you might notice that his portrait finally came out.

So, it’s hanging out there in the narthex. If you want to go and look at it on your way downstairs to chili and pie, you can see Phil, our new bishop watching over us here at the Church of the Redeemer. It was a big process to get our new bishop. There were meetings and interviews and then an ordina…an election, and then an ordination, all of which were joyful and life giving.

And some of you joined with the rest of the diocese, the main family unit of the Episcopal Church, in doing that work of calling Phil to be on the mission. And there was a General Convention and you all, in your grace, lent me to the diocese to be a part of that General Convention, gathering on a larger Episcopal Church, not just a national church, but an international church, with people from Europe and Colombia and Guam and Ecuador and other places, and Taiwan and other places that are a part of this larger Episcopal Church, so that we can discern our way forward, how do we better be a church in a changing the world. How can we better be the body of Christ in a world that keeps changing more rapidly than anything we’d like?

For those of you who like numbers, here are a few numbers that tell us some things about the Church of the Redeemer in 2024. Our average Sunday attendance remained the same at 49 people on a Sunday.

That means that 49 people on any given Sunday will walk through the doors of the Church of try to find God in Jesus Christ, here among us. We had over 200 worship services in the church. of all sorts and kinds, most for Eucharist, but morning prayer as well.

And we continue to learn new ways of worshiping God. We’ve incorporated more of the new expanded language you’ve heard since the way we worship on Sunday morning at 10:30.

And we continue to grow in our ability to sing God’s praises in ways through the efforts of our volunteer organists and all of your efforts to be brave and sing boldly.

Sing boldly.

That breaks the AI to poorly paraphrase Martin Luther.

And I think the question that maybe had been with us subconsciously for the last several years particularly the last two years that we’ve been back in this building. I know it seems hard to imagine we’ve only been back in our building, in this space, for two years. Two years ago, almost to the day, the question that’s maybe been with us the last couple years is there life or would we learn how to cope? Is there a future for the church or would we have to deal with those headwinds?

It’s a question that’s not unique to us. It’s a question that I think every congregation of the Church of Christ, writ large, is honestly asking itself. Is there life after the pandemic? I think that in 2024 we have answered the question definitively, yes, there is. And as we move into a new year of life, worship, and community, and outreach together as the Church of the Redeemer, a peculiar people, zealous for good works.

You’ re faced with a new question. If there is life after COVID, what is it? What does it look like? What does it look like for us to be the Church of the Redeemer, to live into the values that we have in worship and sacrament, and be given an outreach in this new normal that has so firmly planted its better, for the better, in a few ways, but maybe not for the better in a lot of ways.

How do we preach the gospel?

How do we preach Christ crucified and risen?

That’s the work that we have to carry out. To figure that out, then to begin to go do this. It’s a work that I’m looking forward to, in this year, to carrying out with all of you, in many and various ways, to continue ministry with Hopelink, to continue to administration of the sacraments on Sunday, to feed us in our life, so that we may go out and proclaim the Gospel, to have community gathering together.

Hopefully in small groups on weeknights, hopefully in large gatherings around food, which I know is one of the favorite things of Redeemer. And it’s coming soon, I promise. I look forward to doing more of that with you.

And now, with the budget we have approved today, it feels like we’re taking a step back, having a priest who’s only three quarters time, for the first time in decades. I looked it up actually this week, just because I was curious. And the Redeemer has had a, when we had a full time non included priest, a full time priest since the 1950s.

And it might feel like being a three-quarter time priest, having a three-quarter time rector is taking a step backwards, but it’s not. It’s different. It’s a different type of ministry for a different moment of ministry, a moment that I guarantee will change in the next twelve months is the right way for us.

Be discerned, do in this moment to preach the gospel in this moment, in this dear these next 12 months as we discern how God is calling us beyond a COVID soldier into the new life. And I am excited and interested and curious to see what God will do with this new Church of the Redeemer, and I hope that you are as well.

And seeing as one of the principles of this congregation is eating together with Gusto…

Let us pray.

Almighty and ever living God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers for this parish family. Strengthen the faith, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent. Grant us all things necessary for our common life. And bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy church. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Before I declare this Annual Meeting of the Church of the Redeemer in the year 2025 completed. I would ask that those who have been newly elected to the vestry and those who are continuing on the Vestry, if you would please come up here for a very brief meeting before I release you to go enjoy the chili and the pie.

With that, I declare this 2025 Annual Meeting of the Church of the Redeemer ended.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

Grace Pomroy from Relèven spoke to the 2025 Annual Meeting at Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. She explained some about the process Redeemer has embarked upon.

@redeemerkenmore

Relèven Grace Pomroy from Relèven speaking at the Annual Meeting of Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, Kenmore, Washington, on January 26, 2025. She is explaining the process started with the people at Redeemer the previous day when the consultants met with the congregation.

♬ original sound – Episcopal Ch. of the Redeemer – Episcopal Ch. of the Redeemer

Relèven

Founded in 2018, Relèven is a charitable organization that was created with the vision of lovingly preserving, restoring, and repurposing underutilized churches into community hubs and affordable housing. Since their founding, they’ve become a leader in church transformation across North-America. Their impact is measured in discounted rent affordability for families and charities.

These are some Relèven projects.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 11

One of the meanings behind the name Relèven is that they support UN Sustainable Development Goal 11.

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Find out more about this goal on Goal 11.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

The Rev. Jedediah Fox delivered this address to the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer on January 21, 2024. The text following the video is very slightly edited to improve reading.

The Rev. Jedediah Fox, Rector: Now it’s time for the Rector’s Address. I always try in the Rector’s Address to look back and forward at the same time, or at least one after the other. I haven’t quite managed to be in two places at once, much as my child tries to train me in it.

2023 has been the year that I’ve come to think of as the year of the beginning of the new normal.

After the great upheavals of 2020 and 2021, and the conclusion of those upheavals to a certain extent in 2022, both in the greater societal milieu and in our church, 2023 was, for the most part, a time when we began to sort of try to get our feet under us to understand what it meant to be the church again: a church that gathers as we used to before 2020 in person in a place with heat. But also, that accommodates people who don’t want to be here in person but want to be a part of this community. The church writ larger than it was before the pandemic, but also for us and for many, many churches writ smaller.

In 2023, our average Sunday attendance, the average throughout the year of how many people would come, be a part of Redeemer in our in- person gatherings, was 49 people per Sunday. Put it in context before the pandemic, for many, many years, we averaged 76 people per Sunday.

2023 was the year of living into the new normal.

In March, we had brothers and sisters join us. As the Ethiopian church began to rent space from us across the way, and that again was asked us to live into a new normal, a normal in which much of the building that had been our church home for the Church of the Redeemer in the night throughout the 1950s was no longer used by us. But it was rented out by others who also began to worship God in spirit and in truth alongside us, sometimes literally. And that was both wonderful, if you’ve ever walked in on Sunday and had the smell of injera and curry and chai hit you bodily in the face, it’s a wonderful feeling, but also challenging.

They’re a lovely congregation and they have interesting ideas about what parking looks like, for example. But we have learned to live into a new normal in which we share what the resources we have with people, with God’s people around us.

We lived into a new normal in 2023 of what it meant to have this building. This beloved barn, if you will, that is in many ways the same as it was in 1964 when we opened the doors, and in other ways continues to…

If I say showing its age, it seems pejorative.

…gather patina, some of which is lovely and some of which needs addressing. We replaced the roof over our narthex in the entryway in places where it had issues with water coming in and rotting out the roof. That was fixed and a new roof was put on to make sure that that doesn’t happen again, so that narthex can last for another 60 years, we hope and pray.

And in 2023, we got to have a whole year of having an intern in Teresa Newell. And more than that, at the very end of the year, we got to have her as a deacon. The first time in my time here that we have had a deacon. And I for one, I’m very grateful to have her among us.

If 2023 was the year of living in to the new normal of discerning where God has put us, where God has planted our feet in this moment. I think that 2024 is maybe the year where we must discern where God is then calling us to begin to walk. Redeemer like many, many, many churches in [the Episcopal Diocese of] Olympia, in the Episcopal Church, in the United States, in the world, in all of the body of Christ, is not the same church that it was before the pandemic, but it’s still called by God to faith and to faithful action.

And what that looks like is what we must discern this year.

In the coming year, there will undoubtedly, as there is every year, be challenges that we will have to face. Some of them may come from our beloved but patinaed barn, as they have in past years. Particularly the last three or so. But we have many gifts to exercise as well, many assets to bring to bear many treasures that God has given us for the use of the church in the building up of the body of Christ.

And it is our job to discern how best to use them to tell people the kingdom of God is at hand. Believe in the good news.

One of the ways in which we will do that, I hope, is that—and you those of you who are eagle eyed in looking at the budget will have noticed way down at the bottom of the expenses—is to begin a conversation with some consultants about how we might move forward. We’re hoping to be in contact with the same people we were in contact with as the pandemic began, the Vandersall Collective. For people to help us discern how to use what God has given us to further the mission of God in this place. How do we be God’s hands in this community? How do we use what we have to do that better? That’s what I hope they will help us discern.

I believe that God has a plan, has a, has a need for us, the Church of the Redeemer, in this place, in this time. And our work this year is to discern what that is. And now that we have our feet planted to begin to take the first step toward accomplishing it.

It might be a big step, a giant first step like my kid does when they walk over a crack because they’re afraid it’s going to jump out and swallow them up.

And it might be the kind of step that I first step that I take after I’ve been playing on the floor with my kid for an hour and a half. And my leg is a little bit creaky, and I can manage about four inches in that first step.

It might be somewhere in between those two.

But this year I pray for God’s presence, as I always do, that God might be with us as we discern where we might be with Jesus in this time, in this place, because the kingdom of God is near, right in front of us, and we can be in it.

That’s the first step.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.