All Saints’ Episcopal Church Welcomes You

Bishop Phil LaBelle will be visiting us on July 12th. This is his first visit to All Saints’ although he’s been to the Goshen congregation before. This is a large diocese, almost 100 churches, so we can expect to see him every three years. That is the canonical requirement. In the intervening two years someone from diocesan staff will make a visit. Recently that has been the Canon to the Ordinary, the Rev. Cristi Chapman.

Mary of Magdala, a town near Capernaum, was one of several women who followed Jesus and ministered to him in Galilee. The Gospel according to Luke records that Jesus “went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out . . .” (Luke 8:1-2). The Gospels tell us that Mary was healed by Jesus, followed him, and was one of those who stood near his cross at Calvary.

I served in Northern Indiana at Gethsemane Episcopal Church in Marion, a small town in the center of the state. A few miles south of us, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was located in Gas City, a smaller town. It had been founded at the height of a boom in natural gas in the 1890s. Welsh miners organized the parish with the expectation that the gas supply would never end. Great prosperity was expected, but after a decade the gas wells dried up. Gas City remained a very small town dwarfed in size by the slightly larger town of Marion.