Over the past five months I have been working hard to learn the history of this parish in order to appreciate its ongoing legacy. I have interviewed parishioners, worked with the Vestry, listened to the staff, and reviewed documents and data. I feel that I am beginning to understand this place.

Understanding and appreciating our past is a necessary first step to discerning our future. We can’t know where we are going, until we know where we have been.

Parishioners who have been participating in our Wednesday evening adult education class know that I am a Ten Commandments guy. The Lord gives us the Ten Commandments as a guide to becoming a healthy, vital covenant community. They are root values that transform us from a rag-tag crowd of self-serving, anxious individuals into an empowered people living in covenant partnership with God.

The fifth commandment calls us to celebrate our past. "Honor your father and your mother," includes more than mom and dad. It points beyond one’s parents to one’s heritage and history. Honoring father and mother includes grandparents and great-grandparents as well.

Who are the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of St. David’s Church? What is their legacy? How does who they were, shape who we are and who we will become? We cannot envision our future, until we have confessed our past.

Honoring our fathers and our mothers means appreciating our legacy -- the good and the bad. It includes the brilliance of the Council of Nicaea teasing out the subtleties of God’s Trinitarian nature. It includes the organizing genius of St. Benedict, the faithful humanity of St. Francis, the literary power of Thomas Cranmer, and the passionate preaching of John Wesley.

But it also includes the shame of the Crusades, the horror of the Inquisition, and our English fathers and mothers (catholic and protestant) burning each other at the stake.

Our legacy is the whole of it. We honor our father and mother when we embrace the gifts they have bequeathed to us, and confess the sin that continues to entangle us. Doing one fills our sails with wind. Doing the other releases our anchor so that we can fly.

As I have listened to parishioners, I have heard lots and lots of stories. I feel like I am beginning to understand this place. What is the legacy of St. David’s Church?

Our founding rector was a man of great charisma. He was an amazing orator. He had a way of turning any simple event into a memorable occasion. He pulsed with energy. He believed the impossible and took initiative. He practiced the grace of asking forgiveness rather than permission. The result was a parish carved out of what was then the genuine wilderness of Ashburn.

Long-time parishioners have fond memories of digging people’s cars out of the mud on the first Easter celebrated on our campus, of bush-whacking and clearing ground to uncover the ruins of Belmont Chapel, and of playing fast and loose with the authorities of Loudoun County in order to claim a right to worship on ground hallowed by the pioneering work of Margaret Mercer.

The achievement of truly good leadership, and the journey to it, is often evaluated with different results depending upon one's point of view. Dynamic energy can be perceived as impulsive leadership by one of a more deliberate temperament. An imaginative approach to financial management may seem unconventional or even disconcerting to some. A deeply pastoral heart may appear indulgent to some who find comfort in a more structured environment.

Because our parish includes perspectives and frames of mind of significant diversity, our legacy carries much to be celebrated as well as a few challenges to be overcome. But overall, the sum of our legacy includes the faith to attempt the unattainable, to trust the Holy Spirit to provide for the impossible, and the humility to overlook the overwhelming obstacle to achieve God’s purpose through the agency of very human beings.

Embracing our legacy truly honors our fathers and our mothers. It enables us to envision God’s best for our parish. It gives us confidence to commit to build a future we would never attempt, but for the power of the Holy Spirit who moves in the midst of us.

And one more thing: Thank you Greg Troxell (our Director of New Ministry Development) and Peggy Cuellar for a wonderful festival day on Pentecost Sunday. Can a church have too much fun?