Hope for the Church, Workers for the Harvest

DR. GARWOOD ANDERSON, Dean of Nashotah House

The state of the Anglican tradition and our churches is a source of a seemingly never-ending discussion – not to mention some handwringing and blaming. Much depends on how one chooses to look at things or which things one chooses to look at. The Western and Northern hemispheres are one thing; the Southern and Eastern something else. Statistics tell us something – not everything – and I would not put a lot of stock in any analysis painted with a broad brush.

While it doesn’t change the statistics, my vantage is a bit different than the graphs which chart membership, average Sunday attendance, and “pledge and plate,” valuable though these are. What I see – and this is a privilege of working at a seminary – are people. Not only, but especially, young people. Bright people. Faithful people. People leaving their nets to follow Jesus and fish for men.

One of the subplots of the decline in religious affiliation especially among the younger generations is that the religiously affiliated have very little social compulsion to identify as Christians, to go through the motions, to spend Sunday mornings in church. That being so, what is left is the genuine article. If being a “none” is a perfectly acceptable option and the path of least resistance, the “somethings” are going to be really something!

Secularizing social pressures and the antagonism toward “organized religion” are the refiner’s fire of our generation. And while nostalgia might have us longing for a bygone era, God might have us accept the fruit of his discipline as just what we need. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11 ESV).

Nashotah House is filled with extraordinary students: brilliant, sold-out, all-in – exactly the sort of raw material from which one might hope to form the next generations of priests, bishops, and lay leaders. Like the best and brightest from Daniel, our students are “versed in every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge and insight, and competent to serve in the [K]ing’s palace” and “they are being taught the literature and language of the [Gospel]” (Daniel 1:4 NRS, generously contemporized).

So, this is the Nashotah House challenge, and I hope you will join me in gladly choosing to accept it. We have more “demand” than “supply.” We have more parishes and dioceses that would love to have our graduates than we have graduates to send them. A “business” with more demand than supply is normally in a good position – for a while.

This is where you come in. Send us more. Send us more students – have we mentioned that our enrollment has doubled across all programs since the Fall of 2017? Send us the financial resources to support these extraordinary people so that their heart’s desire to be a Nashotah House alum can be fulfilled, lest they attend a seminary which is their distant second choice.

The fields remain white unto harvest, and the Lord of the harvest – and the church – is calling Nashotah House graduates. Pray to the Lord of the harvest. Join the Lord of the harvest. It is his Church; its future is in his hands.