I love this picture. It was taken on April 25 when our Presiding Bishop Thomas E. Gordon came to visit us at Blue Ridge Anglican Mission.

When I look at this picture, I am filled with hope about the future of the Anglican Continuum and especially our little corner of the Lord's vineyard in the Orthodox Anglican Church.

Some people say the Continuum is doomed. A bunch of old blue hairs clinging on to the Anglican past, they say. I don't believe it. Think the Battle of Helm's Deep.

In this picture you can see men ranging from old to middle aged to youth, and this is an icon of things that are happening throughout the Continuum, in those parishes and dioceses that are forward thinking. And we stand to gain more.

The temptation to go to Rome or Orthodoxy is strong. I understand why some do, but I know a few Romans and Orthodox who understand why most of us won't go. There has to be an English Catholic Church that is neither Roman nor Orthodox. Not Roman, because we, with the Orthodox, believe that the Church is organized along nationalistic/ethnic lines, not a "universal" one. Not Orthodox, because our episcopal patrimony is English/Scottish/Irish, not Greek or Slavic or Arabic or some "vicariate" standing in for them.  And when I say that, though I speak of an English Catholic Church, Anglicanism is manifested in nationalistic\ethnic lines that are anything but English only, and which speaks to the power of Anglican universality.  Anglicans are Anglo-Celtic, Asian, African, Indian and Latin American, among others.

Just a few doors down from our place of worship is a Carpatho-Russian Orthodox mission. I know its priest and we have communicated face to face and through email over the years. He is an ex-Anglican, but he reserves nothing but the utmost respect for us Anglo-Catholics, and has confided to me that he's experienced some cruelty at the hands of Orthodox bishops and that in theory he would be happy as an Anglo-Catholic priest. I have confided in him that I truly do miss my Orthodox past. Neither of us is going anywhere, however. We are charged as priests to faithfully tend our little corner of the Lord's Vineyard under the authority of our bishops. The conversion thing is done for both of us.

Who knows, maybe the Lord will use the both of us in an ecumenical endeavor of some sort.

Anyway, said picture. Here is our outpost of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina.