Dear friends in Christ,

February offers The Episcopal Church lots to celebrate. This week, we celebrated the feast day of Absalom Jones, our first African-American priest ordained in 1804, alongside the 30th anniversary of the ordination and consecration of Barbara Harris, the first woman elected bishop in The Episcopal Church in 1989. For their ministries, for Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, for Canon Stephanie Spellers, and for the ministries of my bishop, priest, deacon, and lay Sisters and Brothers in this church, I celebrate you and thank God for you. I’m praying for you.

Presiding Bishop Curry calls to become Beloved Community. As a member of my diocese’s Becoming Beloved Community Task Force, I spent last weekend on a Learning Journey to talk about race and racism. As one of four black people in a group of twenty-eight, I could feel my energy flowing with my tears as we delved into challenging conversations I didn’t want to have which led to pain I didn’t want to feel. When asked to write a commitment for the duration of this four-month journey, I wrote: I’ll keep showing up. That’s all I can promise. And that’s a lot.

I pray that you find your way to show up for inclusion and equality. Show up at Absalom Jones celebrations. Show up on the Twitter and Facebook pages and blogs of people of color and listen. Show up for Becoming Beloved Community meetings prepared to work. Show up at church and demand to sing the music of people of color. Show up at your libraries and bookstores and read stories about my people. Show up and listen to the stories of people who don’t look like you. Show up with your ears and hearts open and your mouths closed as we tell you what we need. Pray and discern about what you hear.

God calls us to live our lives of faith in community, and that community includes everyone who chooses to join us. In Beloved Community we feel the deep, abiding love we imagine God feels for us. Show up and be part of God’s dream for us on earth. I’ll be praying for you.

Peace,

Miriam McKenney
Development Director, Forward Movement

Clockwise from top left: The Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, The Rt. Rev. Herbert Thompson; Nia, Miriam, Kaia, Jaiya, and David McKenney; The Rev. Canon Nan Peete; The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris; The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows; The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry and my dad, The Rev. Wilson H. Willard, Jr.; The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers; Jaiya, Rev. Walter, David, Miriam, Ida, and Kaia McKenney.

Today’s Flash Sale: Walk in Love

Take a journey through The Book of Common Prayer, the Christian life, and basic beliefs of our faith, guided by two Episcopal priests – Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe. Walk through the liturgical year, the sacraments of the church, habits of daily prayer, and the teachings of Anglican Christianity. See how our prayer shapes our belief and our lives and how our beliefs lead us into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.

Regular: $22
Today: $16.50

*Discount is valid until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time

How is God calling you to enter the holy season of Lent? What path will you walk during these forty days?

Forward Movement invites you to explore and respond to how Jesus is tugging at your heart. While the season of Lent calls us all into a particular period of reflection, we choose different journeys. Depending upon where we are in our own seasons of life and faith, we may be called into a time of deep introspection, contemplation, and prayer. Perhaps God is calling us to an outward focus on works of mercy. Or maybe we need a time of formation, to connect our hearts and minds as we walk in love.

We offer three broad paths built around the Way of Love, the Presiding Bishop’s call for practices that support a Jesus-centered life. Each path suggests a primary resource as well as numerous others that expand on the central theme. We offer these as guideposts, as trail markers, knowing and hoping that you will choose your own path during this Lent, and in doing so, make a choice to choose Jesus.

Learn more and choose your Lenten path here.

Dear friends in Christ,

This Sunday, Episcopalians will hear Paul’s famous “love” passage from 1 Corinthians 13. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” Like many couples, my husband and I heard this passage at our wedding. Lately, however, many couples shy away from the “love” passage precisely because it’s read so often at weddings.

That’s too bad, because Paul has something important to say about love. Although we associate his words with weddings, Paul is not talking only about marital love, but about something much larger: the love all Christians should have for each other. Christian love, he says, is not a feeling. It is a decision Christians make every day, indeed every hour. Love is how Christians are called to act, not feel, toward others.

Our human inclination is often to act without love: boastfully, resentfully, insisting on our own way. We assume that love, if it is real, will make us happy. Paul insists that love also brings challenge. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,” he says. Such love is a gift from God—a gift received anew every day as we ask God to strengthen us for the Christian life.

In a world full of boastfulness, resentment, and wrongdoing, let us challenge ourselves to love: love that is patient and kind, love that rejoices in the truth, love that never ends. As Paul says, faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

Yours in Christ,

Susan Brown Snook
Canon for Church Growth & Development in the Diocese of Oklahoma

Today’s Flash Sale: Are We There Yet? Pilgrimage in the Season of Lent

Whether we’re taking the trip of a lifetime or the trip simply feels like it’s taking forever, the question on everyone’s lips is: Are We There Yet? As we make our way through Lent, we will come to realize that the journey—the wrestling and the wandering—is the real flesh and blood of our endeavor.

Our companions on this Lenten journey are fellow pilgrims, sharing their stories about following yellow arrows along the Camino and white blazes through the Appalachian Trail to bearing witness to the pain of historic lynching sites in the American South. Contributors recount their search for healing and wholeness at Marian shrines, in a reunion with birth parents, and around a prayer circle in a mental hospital.

Join us as we make our way toward Jerusalem with Jesus. Through this holy season, may we be open to the miracles of love and life, awestruck by the One who is both our journey and our destination.

Regular: $7
Today: $5.25

*Discount is valid until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time

Dear friends in Christ,

Today, a few team members from Forward Movement are driving to Indianapolis for the 2019 FORMA conference, a gathering of nearly 500 Christian formation leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from around the Episcopal Church.

In an era of video meeting services and free online libraries of keynote addresses, one might have concluded several years ago that in-person conferences were on the way out, replaced by the ease and affordability of a new, modern way to gather and share ideas in real time. To be sure, Forward Movement uses some of this technology regularly, and with success.

Yet, we still gather for in-person conferences. Why?

It turns out, despite incredibly powerful advancements in how we communicate, nothing can dethrone the power of being present for each other. Nothing forms bonds of trust, understanding, and empathy like hearing a subtle tone of voice, seeing body language of a presenter, or hearing directly from a peer dealing with similar challenges.

These experiences of community help lower our guard and open us to new ideas and fresh thinking. And that is the point. With our guard lowered, we are humbled as a member of a community. Our ego gives way to curiosity and an openness to learn. Innovation and creative thinking rarely come from the daily grind. We humans need space for that thinking, and more often than not, we need help from others. So, we pause and gather.

Please keep us in your prayers this week as we stop the grind to be present for each other and to be witnesses for the community at work around the Church.

Yours in Christ,

Jason Merritt
Deputy Director and Marketing Director

Today’s Flash Sale: Bible Women

Women of the Bible have been trapped in dry and dusty literary caskets for centuries. While a few women, such as Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Mary Magdalene, are familiar, many of the women who speak in the Bible have long been ignored. Yet their words are part of God’s Word, the Bible, for a reason. Through these women, God spoke, intervened, changed, illustrated, and proclaimed the story of redemption.

In this groundbreaking book named best Bible study of 2015 by Illumination Book Awards, Episcopal priest Lindsay Hardin Freeman identifies every woman who speaks in the Bible, providing their words, context, and historical background. We learn which women speak the most (hint: it’s not Mary!) and which books of the Bible have the fewest words from women.

Regular: $22
Today: $16.50

*Discount is valid until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time