SJA In The Tennessean

The local media is reporting on our parish's discernment process:

Members of Hendersonville's St. Joseph of Arimathea Episcopal Church will spend 40 days and 40 nights praying for an answer to an issue confronting Episcopalians everywhere.

They must decide if they will remain members of a denomination they believe has strayed from core beliefs based on their reading of the Bible, or break away and join the much larger Anglican Communion.

"We have reached a point at which many of our parishioners feel they can no longer continue in the Episcopal church, even in an orthodox parish in what has been a safe diocese," wrote the Rev. Patrick Allen in the church's February parish newsletter, "as the Episcopal church continues to be formed by the spirit of the age, embracing new teachings and a form of life that carries it away from the Anglican Communion and far out of the mainstream of catholic Christianity."

Here's the whole thing.

Update: A slightly longer version of the story is in our local paper, the Hendersonville Star-News.

It's a short piece, and, as they say in Congress, I always want to "revise and extend" my remarks, but I think the reporter presented a good sketch of where we are.