Willis Family Update

Please extend me grace as I write this update, I feel a little pretentious in doing so. Seriously. Why does my family's life need an update posted to the internet? I'm not sure. But, I know I want to communicate well about something near and dear to who we are as a family. This is the best medium I have for offering broad communication to anyone who wants to receive it. As my mother-in-law says, here is the long and the short of it: we are going to join a parish in the Anglican communion and this means a change that affects people that we love. I can't sit down and have coffee with everyone I would like to share with and churches of Christ don't have a formal process for leaving (to be frank, I'm not sure any Christian tradition does?). In this brief update, I hope to give enough of the shape of our journey to avoid leaving people in the dark or asking, "Where are the Willises?" That was one of the most terrible mysteries of pastoring... people just leaving without any communication. 

First of all, I want to share a deeply felt thank you to Ethos Church. My first Sunday worshipping with Ethos was on a Sunday evening in the fall of 2008. I'm not sure I knew I was even going to a church service that night. We gathered in a park south of Lipscomb with around around 30ish people and it looked very different from the churches of Christ I was familiar with. I was intrigued and would be involved intermittently over the next 3 years before beginning an internship on the pastoral staff my senior year. After that internship finished, I would work on staff at Ethos for the next 10.5 years. What a grace. I had the opportunity to grow up, get married, start a family, learn how to pastor, fail, struggle, lead, and more in a community full of grace. I have many friends who got chewed up and spit out by toxic churches in their first ministry settings, I had none of that. As imperfect as any congregation is, Ethos created space for me and allowed me to learn who I am and what God has called me to do. 

Ethos Church is also the community that enabled this fundamentalist church of Christ boy to begin a marriage with a girl from a Free Will Baptist background with a heavy dose of charismatic spontaneity that she picked up along the way. We almost broke up a couple of years into dating over my then cessationist convictions butting up with Molly's anointing of the Holy Spirit. Ethos had a table for us both to grow together and shape each other in Christ. 

Ethos further nurtured in me a heart for the poor. Perhaps my favorite thing about Ethos to the present day after 16 years of journeying together is that it is a community that has always had people deeply embedded in our family who found themselves experiencing homelessness. We did not solve homelessness and people were not reduced to projects, but we honored the poor among us. I could say a lot more about this but I'll stop by saying that I've seen our people humble themselves and invite the challenges that come along with creating space for all people to be invited to Jesus' table. We did this imperfectly for sure, but Ethos has faithfully loved the poor for our entire existence. I know that delights Jesus' heart. 

Finally, many of our dearest friends in the world we have met through our participation with Ethos. We are better followers of Jesus, our marriage is richer, and our children are blessed because of our journey with this expression of the body of Christ. Thank you for 16 wonderful years and we are going to continue to partner with you as we all seek to witness to the glory and goodness of God. 

But alas, we are making a change. What started as a dream in my heart during a sabbatical has given birth to the conviction that our family is being led to join the Anglican communion. Introduced to this tradition by the late Fr. Thomas McKenzie, he had no idea how much healing took place within me as he described Anglicanism as "a way to be Christian" which stood in stark contrast to my fundamentalist Church of Christ understanding of "the only way to be Christian." To be clear, that was never taught at Ethos but it was very clearly taught in the churches I grew up in and that stays with you, unfortunately. Exploring the Anglican way of being Christian has been a blessing to me for the last 5 or so years as I have been through my own renaissance of faith. My faith is deeper than it ever has been and I am more committed to the gospel than at any point in my walk with Christ. 

For Molly, this has been more of a stretch. Molly is a free bird. Left to her own devices, she would probably have a tambourine and flag dancing in her church that had 3-hour worship music sets ;). So, this exploration into a more traditional and historical vein of the church has been a slower one. But, after over a year of intentional discernment and prayer together, Molly agrees with me that this is the way forward for our family. My post is far too long already to go into details but know that there are meaningful reasons why we have discerned this is what God has for us. 

Overall, I am deeply grateful for what churches of Christ have given me. But, I do not feel called to lead in this tradition. That's ultimately why I chose to apply for my job at Saint Thomas Hospital, which is wonderful. I could be happy doing this work for a long time. However, ultimately, I do feel a call to lead and shepherd in the body of Christ. Molly and I believe that there is opportunity for us to do that well in the Anglican communion. We are excited about jumping in with two feet into a parish to learn and contribute. We have already found the Book of Common Prayer and the Liturgical Calendar to be incredible tools for our children and our own formation. 

So, we'll take the best of our upbringings and Ethos with us. We will celebrate the fruit being harvested from every corner of God's kingdom in the diversity of traditions that exalt Christ. We will raise our kids in a particular way of following Christ while encouraging all others on the journey who have the same goal. After all, there is only one church and it is where Christ alone is the head. I think we'll all be overwhelmed when we see Christ face to face and are surrounded by multitudes from every tribe, tongue, nation, denomination, political persuasion, and time period. What a glorious day that will be! Until then, let all of us partner more across the body of Christ and critique less. 

We are excited about what God is doing in his church and are eternally grateful to be assured that we are living members of the body of Christ and heirs of his eternal Kingdom. So now, may we be sent out by the Father to do the work he has given us to do in the power of the Holy Spirit as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.