On June 28th a Drive-By Welcome Parade was held for Jonathan and his family. Drivers met at the Upperville Farm and Feed and drove through the overflow parking lot to greet the Adams family. They were thrilled and truly felt loved. Thanks to Martha Williamson, our Parish Life Chair, for making this happen in a safe, social distancing manner.
Dear Trinity Family...
Dear Trinity Family,
Wow, it feels good to finally say that! I am so glad to be here in person in the great state of Virginia as the Rector of Trinity Upperville. Your kindness and hospitality in the midst of the Coronavirus has been beautiful. I would like to say thank you to the many of you who have provided meals, wine and cheese, cards, emails, calls and especially the Gow’s who opened up their guest house for us while we were moving in. We have been blown away… the parade last Sunday was over the top!!! WOW thank you to all who pulled that together. When we left, my son said, “Dad, I think these people like you”. Indeed that is true.
As we enter this new relationship with one another, I want you to know that first and foremost I am your priest… I am here for you and my phone is always available to you. I want to walk with you in the good and the bad, the celebrations and the heartaches, the joys and the trials. That is my calling and commitment to you.
Second, I want you to know that I’m here to be your pastor. I’m here to preach the good news of Jesus every week. I’m here to offer a time of confession and absolution, and I’m here to put the bread in your hand and the wine to your lips. I will be faithful to that calling, and I will remind you that you are loved, forgiven and in the family of God, not because I say so but because Jesus says so. You might wonder why the gospel every week (A.K.A the good news)… Martin Luther was once asked that question by a class of seminarians and he said, “I preach the gospel to you every week because you forget it every week”. We humans tend to think the gospel is the thing that gets us into heaven and that is true, but it’s also the thing that keeps us in His grace. Tim Keller once said, “The gospel is not the ABC’s of our faith but the A-Z’s of the faith”! It’s the beginning, the middle and the end! And so, you will hear the “good news” proclaimed week in and week out.
Finally I’m here to be your Shepherd. I’m here to listen to God and lead the congregation spiritually toward Him. This means I will spend a lot of time praying and reading the scripture. In my prayer time, I will be praying for you so please keep me up to date on how I can pray for you. Trinity is a wonderful place and we have so much potential. I truly do believe the best years are ahead! We will get through this season of Pandemic, and we will come together soon.
In fact, I have asked the re-opening committee, with advisement from the worship committee to roll up their sleeves and get us back together ASAP! This means we may have to add a new service so that we all can come together. In so doing, I want to ask that you begin to pray for the committee, that they would have wisdom as they advise me in making the best decisions we can for the community. It may also mean we will have to be creative in how we meet, which may mean we need to adjust the budget. Your faithfulness in giving allows us to move in that direction without budgetary restraints. So let me thank you in advance for praying, being creative, and giving not to me, not to Trinity, but to GOD.
I can’t wait to meet you FACE-TO-FACE! This will happen soon. Until then…
Grace and Peace to you
JA+
The Rev. Jonathan V. Adams
Announcing our New Rector-Elect
On behalf of the Vestry, the Discernment Committee, and the Diocese of Virginia, I am pleased to announce The Rev. Jonathan V. Adams accepted our call as Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Upperville. Jonathan’s official start date is July 1, 2020.
Jonathan comes to us from Houston, Texas where he has served as Associate Rector for Pastoral Care and Outreach at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church for over three years. He has had an exciting and varied career serving God overseas, leading student ministries, planting a church in Georgia, and developing new outreach activities at St. Martin’s. The Discernment Committee found him energetic, warm and keenly pastoral, and the Vestry wholeheartedly concurred. We are eagerly anticipating his arrival and the chance for our fellow parishioners to meet him and his family.
The Rev. Jonathan V. Adams
Jonathan is married to Jana and they have three children, Noah, Lily, and Caleb. I know we will welcome them to our church and community.
You will learn more about Jonathan in the next few days. The Vestry already is organizing mailings and social media announcements in an effort to help you get to know him. Jonathan is eager to reach out to all of you and begin to know you as well.
The success of these many months of searching is due to the commitment of the members of the Discernment Committee, the willingness of the Vestry and Jonathan to explore the call in the middle of the pandemic, and the patience of the entire congregation. Louise Crane, Matt Blunt, and I are deeply thankful to all who worked so hard. We are delighted to begin the next chapter in our life at Trinity with The Rev. Jonathan Adams.
Johanna Jackson
Senior Warden
What I Believe
A few weeks ago I heard someone talk about “God’s plan” for us. For complicated reasons, I always bridle a little when I hear that term. What I hear in the idea of “God’s Plan” is the understanding that there is some kind of predestined path on which I am supposed to walk, if I can figure it out. I believe something rather different from that.
God’s plan is, I think, a matter for ongoing discernment. I do believe that the holy and life-giving I AM (ego eimi, Yahweh, G*d, Being)** that willed and still wills all things into existence continues to be engaged in our every action. I believe that G*d’s interaction with us is dialogical and co-operative, rather than pre-determined. In my understanding, that means that any plan is emergent, worked out as time and circumstances require. (“But,” you might ask, “isn’t God in charge of those circumstances?” And I say that in Jesus G*d gave up control in favor of friendly persuasion.) Because of the divine spark ignited in us, we are co-creators with G*d of that plan rather that predestined to fall in or out of line with a pre-existent and unknowable plan.
I believe that every fiber of our being, and of all being, has the inbuilt will to exist in the image and likeness of Love. And Love guides, giving up control. That is why Being became flesh in Jesus – to walk along side us as a companion rather than above, controlling us. That conviction is grounded in my own experience of being free to make variously good and bad decisions. No matter how hard I try to discern G*d’s will, I am still responsible.
We are unavoidably limited in our ability to talk about G*d. We are stuck with metaphors. For those of us who have children, parenthood is a natural image to use for our understanding of love, obedience, rebellion, freedom, restraint, relationship and alienation – all subheadings under the general title of “God and Theology.” Whether we experienced – or are – controlling or permissive parents, that might shape our understanding of the very nature of G*d.
I loved watching my children grow, each taking their own very different rates and directions. I have loved watching them grow into independence even more. Yet more than once I have had people tell me of having had an abusive father; to speak of God as “Father” is a troubling and negative image. So Jesus uses lots of different metaphors to enable a more profound understanding. Although he addressed G*d as Abba (Father, but better translated as Daddy) he also images G*d as a brood hen, a shepherd, an unjust judge (!), a bridegroom, a woman who has lost a coin, and vineyard owner. These images are an open acknowledgement of our inability to nail down how G*d is. (That refusal to be nailed down is surely one understanding of the ultimate meaning of Good Friday.)
So does G*d intervene directly in human affairs? I have to admit the evidence is inconclusive, but I behave and pray as if yes, G*d is in charge. Do my prayers influence G*d? It seems presumptuous to say they do, but my own children’s requests influence me, so… And besides, I do know that prayer influences me. It opens my horizons, gives voice to dreams, acknowledges my own lack of control, expresses private grief and joy and gratitude. And I do believe that all of those things are part of any plan that G*d, ego eimi, Jahweh, I AM, Being has for me.
** The greatest single difficulty in speaking of God is the limitation of language that seems to require that we speak of G*d as a being. G*d is not a being but is rather, using the terminology of Paul Tillich, the Ground of all Being. Holiness is the core reality of all that exists. As Christians we affirm that that holiness is most concretely expressed in the person of Jesus.
The Rt. Rev. Martin G. Townsend
Interim Rector