Reawakening 2023!
Bishop Andrew Williams of the Anglican Diocese in New England asked Kate and I to lead his Reawakening initiative at the end of last year. He recognized that his desire to re-engage and reawaken New England in the gospel of Jesus Christ in new and creative ways was completely consistent with our ministry here in Dandelion. We jumped at the chance. We partnered with a small but very effective team of four others (the Bishop and his wife, Elena, Kathryn Miller, and Scott Delong) to help bring this conference to life. Well done, team!
As we planned, Kate shared one of her latest paintings with the team on God’s re-creative work in our lives…bringing new life out of death (one of our favorite themes at Dandelion, which you know if you’ve read any of our blog posts), and everyone agreed it needed to be the theme for this year’s conference.
Recreate by Kate Norris, 2023 - 5’x7’
Bishop Drew, as he prefers to be called, also invited Kate to be the preacher during the morning prayer services each day, and he served as our keynote speaker. It was so clear that the Holy Spirit was guiding them both because their messages dove-tailed together perfectly to proclaim the awesome truth that God’s work of death and resurrection in our lives is not simply the how we get into the Christian family, but rather is the patter for the Christian life. He is constantly at work, acting upon us through his word, putting the old woman and man to death in a new area of life (because life keeps on happening to us this side of heaven) and raising up the new woman and man…forgiven and free. They both spoke with power, authority, and immense relatability.
I got the chance to work with the worship teams both liturgically and musically and had a blast leading worship. I thoroughly enjoyed bringing together the broad spectrum of Anglican expression in worship with hymnody and contemporary song along with liturgically low church morning prayer services and a beautiful higher communion service to close out the conference.
Kate introduced for the first time an art show of artists from churches around New England focused on the theme of life coming out of a place of death. The works were equally powerful and beautiful. The show brought an entire new language to the conference and gave voice to some we would otherwise not have heard. it served a potent way to engage your local community, wherever that may be, to hear where people are and to share how God’s grace has hit home in your life.
Reawakening 2023 Group Art Show
Finally, last but definitely not least, we also created space for the kids. Many of our young clergy and their spouses have not been able to enjoy the conference in years past as they have had to care for their little ones. Kate and I deeply understand this dilemma, so we gathered a team to take turns providing childcare during the main plenary sessions allowing both mom and dad to go enjoy the worship and hear the talks. Kate built a curriculum using some of our Betsy Bible videos from the first season that engaged the kids with the Bible. The age span was infant to 12, which anyone who has worked with kids before knows was a little too big of a span, but we got some help from the teenagers to care for the little ones. Still, it was a big ask and our volunteers all deserve awards for their sacrifice to help the parents out. Next year we’ll have two groups. (FYI, we did not take any photos of the children as a safety precaution)
We are so grateful to the Lord (and Bishop Drew) for the opportunity to help organize the Reawakening Conference. The Lord blessed this gathering and all the work building up to it. He is using Dandelion to spread the seeds of his gospel across New England!!!
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