I was away from our Sunday services at All Saints this past Sunday preaching and celebrating at our Network mission on Maui, and I will be away next Sunday also preaching at our daughter church-plant in Puna. For a pastor who loves his parish, stretches of weeks like this are incredibly difficult for me, even though I am here during the week between my Sunday absences. The weight of it is heavy.

That heaviness notwithstanding, I am convicted that the work I do on these Network trips and the work you all do in the worship and liturgy (liturgy, after all, means “the work of the people”) and mission, are not dislocated or oppositional. They are one corporate response that our whole parish offers to the God who called us and loves us…