the village fete as a paradigm of post-modern refuge

One of the most fun times I’ve had in quite a long time was attending a village fete held at a medieval church in the parish served by the Leonards, my hosts in Wales. The gentle good humor, the mutual support given to one another, the sense of community are all things that people in the diocese I serve probably experience on a nearly weekly basis, but  as much fun as visitations are for bishops, they are not this vibrant yet understated sense of life-sustaining community I experienced in Wales. ,

It is this treasure of community that is one of the great gifts the Church can give to an increasingly fragmented world. The question many of us in the Diocese of California are wrestling with is how to really offer some possibilities for unchurched people to be part of  community such as I experienced it in Wales. It is painfully obvious that simply waiting for the opportunity of likely candidates for membership in  the Episcopal Church is an insufficient formula.

We need to find ways to actively invite into our communities, and beyond that to find out what the needs of a community are really, and how we could partner with them in meeting those needs.

Following is a video I took of the fete, the village choir singing Abba’s “Waterloo!”