Moments...

I admit there are moments when I'm very tired when I drive down the river road to LaCrosse. It's in those moments when I come to grips with how difficult it can be to help a small church reach its potential, how idealism alone doesn't always make it, and that sometimes its just plain work.

In Seminary they often told us that it was actually easier to start a church from scratch then to help a small and struggling parish to the next level. It's true. Small parishes have a hard time in the world and St. Elias has struggled from the start. Begun as a good work it has spent the larger part of the last century just trying to get some traction and in the process lost a generation because it was caught in the bind of being too small to afford a Priest yet without one there was no constant presence to keep people and things going. The "action" moved north to St. Paul and other places and when they restarted things in the 1970's they literally had to knock the birds nests out of the building.

In those days there was no diocesan support, no strategic planning, and little sense of mission as the development of strategies and policies to implement church growth. It was all about just finding a group of people and a Priest willing to go, yet without a plan its a recipe for struggle and failure. I admire the core of people in LaCrosse who have held on for decades in a situation that lesser folks would have simply abandoned.

And these past few months have been especially good. The people who remained at St. Elias have always been the "keepers", the core that matters, and those who've proven their virtue of love and service in the hard times. But now there seems to be, by the grace of God, a renewed sense among some of the value of what we have at St. Elias and what God can do. People are stepping up in a new way and many are working like horses on behalf of our Parish. Whatever else can be said about St. Elias it is not a church of slackers. And all of this means there is hope.

For those of you who read this blog I simply ask your prayers. St. Elias is small but full of good people and in a place where there is a need for an Orthodox witness. Pray that all of us will be given God's strength so that we can "run and not be weary, and walk and not faint." Pray that God will send His angels to watch over us so the Enemy of our souls will not have his way in and among us. Pray that in reponse to all the steps of faith, large and small, that our Parish has taken God would send people to us, people who need our good Faith, people who will make this little Parish become everything it was meant to be.

On a personal level I can tell you this. I have served in parishes that were larger and had more but never one of which I was prouder in the best sense of the word. The people of St. Elias are at least trying, and I pray that their work is rewarded. And every time I get tired I remember them and the drive doesn't seem so hard, the load rests easier on my shoulders, and the car flies down the road even when I'm doing the speed limit.