Reawakening 2024
This has been a very busy and exciting fall for Dandelion Ministries! Over the next couple weeks we’ll be sharing some of the awesome things the Lord has done through our ministry over the last few months.
To get us off to a good start I wanted to give you a full write up on the Reawakening Conference last month. We posted a couple things about the art show and the new song “Awake”, but haven’t really given you the full picture.
As we have shared before, Kate and I were honored to have Bishop Drew Williams ask Dandelion to take the lead on the Reawakening initiative for our Anglican Diocese in New England. The annual conference is the center tent post of that initiative. Our main theme this year was “Growing in the Gospel,” and what an appropriate theme growth was. We set goals earlier in the year to break 200 attendees. Over the last three years the conference has steadily yet slowly grown, which worked out to roughly 15-20 more people each year. We hit 160 in 2023, so 200 felt like an ambitious enough goal since it would be about double the usual annual increase. To that end we found a new location at Hope Community Church in Newburyport that could accommodate a larger crowd, we revamped the registration to make it more user-friendly for lay people who couldn’t take Friday off from work, for first time we offered a full youth program and teen track to be more family friendly, and we employed a new communication and marketing strategy to reach a broader group in our diocese and beyond. We prayed that the Lord would give it a significant push. During some of our prayer times, Bishop Drew said that he had a feeling that we were going to get to 250. I must admit, I was a bit skeptical given our previous numbers…but hey, if the Lord wanted to do that, great! Well, the Lord did his thing and completely blew up all of our expectations. We had 281 attendees this year!!! It was dramatic growth.
Thankfully, all of the prep work we had done leading up to the conference was able to absorb the larger group. We certainly had to flex in a lot of places, but our team did a great job and everything worked relatively smoothly.
While increase in numbers is always great, the real hope of the conference was that it would help us grow deeper in our understanding of God’s grace for us in Jesus. As our professor, Dr. Erika Moore, at Trinity Anglican Seminary used to say, “When you grow in your Christian faith you don’t move on from the gospel, you go deeper into the gospel.” In the opening communion service, Bishop Drew began the deep dive by re-examining the fear of the Lord, helping us to see that it is not a fear of being zapped by a capricious Zeus-like-god. (watch it here) Rather, the fear of the Lord is in fact a natural fruit of being met with the overwhelming mercy and love of God where we really need it. A trembling in his amazing grace. As the old African American hymn says, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”
Bishop Drew
Our good friend, the Rev. Ethan Magness, from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA took that baton from Bishop Drew and ran with it as our keynote speaker. During his masterful plenary talks (all of which you can watch here) Ethan did just what Dr. Moore described…he took us deeper and deeper into the amazing grace of God for sinners in Jesus Christ. He artfully described our reality where we constantly try to manage what we present on the surface in order to cover up the raging inferno of brokenness underneath. Then he moved to the diamond of the gospel carefully defining it using Paul’s summary in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4:
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures… (italics mine)
Rev. Ethan Magness
In his last talk Ethan painted a picture of how the Lord comforts us in his grace so that we might comfort others echoing Paul in 2 Corinthians 1. Ethan’s use of poetry, plays, literature, and humor gave so much depth and color to every point he made. It truly felt like we were swimming the vast depths “of the oceanic Christ,” to borrow one his phrases.
In addition to Ethan’s talks were 10 workshops led by friends from all around the northeast. Many were leaders from our diocesan churches, but also neighboring churches with shared hearts for proclaiming God’s grace like our new dear friend Danny Ovalle of FCC Bradford. We also had our partners in the gospel from Isaiah 40 and Trinity Anglican Seminary lead workshops. It was a rich tapestry of voices all working in unison to go deeper into the cross of Jesus.
Speaking of crosses, we celebrated all that the Lord had done through the floodgate pilgrimage led by Elena Williams and her intercessory team. The Lord gave Bishop Drew and Elena a vision for a wooden cross that would travel from church to church throughout our diocese in order to inspire prayer for our region, for the Lord to open up the floodgate so that his Spirit might be poured out on the northeast and that he might bring in the harvest. And on Friday night Drew and Elena led the conference in prayer and worship for all that the Lord has planned for the northeast. The pilgrimage covered thousands of miles and began a movement of prayer and intercession amongst our churches that continues on. Check out the video below.
Surrounding and permeating through all of this was music and art. Kate recently shared about the art show here. It was an awesome example of creating space for others to experience the grace of Jesus in their place of need. Kate invited artists of all ages from all over our region to share their art about where the Lord had met them in those “out of season” times of life. It blessed everyone and used artistic language to open up our places of need to the Lord’s love and grace. There was poetry, song, narrative, photography, sculpture, paintings, and drawings.
And there was the worship. We invited our friend Dave Edwards of Trinity Church Greenwich to come and lead the worship once again. From the opening communion service to the very last note on Saturday we were led in beautiful song reminding us of all that Jesus has done for us and inviting us to respond in praise. Worship is always the result of hearing Jesus’ word of forgiveness and love for us. We can’t help but cry out, “Amen!” To lift our voices in gratitude and adoration, to love him who first loved us (1 John 4:19).
All of it worked together. The little touches by our Reawakening team in the decor, the excellent food, the beautiful brochures, videos, and pictures along with everything already mentioned created an environment that simply ministered to you. We were being marinated in the richness of God’s love for us in Jesus. Soaked to the bone. As he continues to show us deeper and deeper places in ourselves where we need him, he simultaneously opens our eyes to the fact that he is already there. His love penetrates into our marrow, and we spend a lifetime realizing “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that [we] may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19). And we just can’t help sharing it with others. It is a Reawakening. Amen.
Kate leading a panel discussion with Ethan, Bp. Drew, and I was there too;)
