Dear Friends in Christ,

Nine years ago we began a journey together. That journey, as friends and as fellow servants of Christ, continues but our walk together as pastor and parishioners is coming to a close.

I have accepted a call to be the director of a new initiative within the Episcopal Church called the Center for Discipleship and Renewal. It is being founded and led by Forward Movement.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe says of this new initiative,

“Helping people grow as disciples is exactly the work our church needs to do at this time. The world needs our church as a witness not of a comfortable Christianity but, rather, a transformational and compelling faith rooted in the Gospel.”

I have long said that there is no parish I would consider leaving Saint Philip’s for. There is no diocese to which I’ve accepted an invitation to submit my name for bishop searches or the like.

Karrie, the boys, and I have found so much here for which to be grateful. When we arrived Brayden was barely walking and in rompers. Nikolas was just learning how to carry a torch without lighting himself on fire.

Now Brayden is running and climbing everywhere, has done solemn communion here, and been an acolyte, too. Nikolas is carrying himself with ever more confidence, was recently confirmed, and has dived into choir and organ both. Karrie has directed the pageant year after year and it has grown to be our largest Christmas Eve service.

When our boys imagine what church is, this will be the place they imagine. When they describe what church can be, you will be the community they describe. When they sing they will hear your voices, when they pray it will be with our common prayer, and when they wander this will always feel like home.

The Presiding Bishop’s new initiative arrives at a critical juncture in the life of the Episcopal Church. As confident as I am in your continued growth and life here, I have long felt that more needs to be done to equip the wider Episcopal Church to discover that same confidence.

This invitation arrives at an important time for our family. For the last several months, after Karrie’s remote work was terminated, we’ve tried to figure out a new normal for our work and life balance—at the same time we’ve imagined what the months and years ahead could look like.

I will be able to carry out this new position remotely from Tucson. That will give us a degree of stability while Karrie transitions to new work that she will carry out in person—not remotely as before.

There are ways I have failed here over the years. I hope you’ll hold those failures lightly. There are ways we’ve thrived here over the years and I hope you’ll hold those fondly. There are ways we’ve striven and ways we’ve stumbled. There are ways we’ve achieved success and ways we could have reached for more. There are things done and left undone.

Through all of it, I have been grateful to be your pastor. and I remain grateful to have you as sisters and brothers in the years ahead and beyond.

A friend recently told me, as I wrestled with this decision, “Robert, we always leave in the middle of the story.” It has been my privilege to have walked with you for this little while as this chapter of your story has unfolded. What I will take with me is the deep gift it has been to know some of your stories. I have gotten to walk with you through joy and heartache and everything in between.

Your stories have become a deep part of my own.

It will be a gift to see your stories continue. It is a blessing to know that every goodbye in the Church is also a hello. You will welcome your next rector. She or he will walk with you for a time. She or he will also leave in the middle of the story. But it is a story of faithfulness. From generation to generation. From deep to deep. From one heartbeat and one step to the next.

I am grateful to have been your priest and pastor and I will always be grateful for the life in Christ that we share together across the miles, the years, the stumbles, and the joys of life. If I had any doubt of your future I’d not have accepted this new call. But I am confident in you. I am confident in your faith. And I am confident in the movement of the Spirit in this place.

More information will come in the weeks ahead about next steps and transitions. You are blessed with extraordinary wardens and vestry members and a dedicated staff—all of whom will help guide the transition process along.

My last Sunday here as Rector will be Sunday, August 31. For the moment, though, I hope we can simply sit with gratitude for what has been and in prayer for what might yet be as the story continues to be written.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert