Friday, July 20, 2018

A Note of Thanks

A Note of Thanks from Bishop Doyle

Dear Members of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas,

I write today to give special thanks to Bishop Jeff Fisher, Halley Ortiz, Anthony Chappel and Scott Madison for leading our work at General Convention. I am grateful to the many hours that each of them gave to this project. I am grateful to their spouses, friends and family who also helped. I am grateful to Susan Fisher, JoAnne Doyle and Rob Montgomery who helped to organize and support the Bishops’ Spouses and Partners events. And, I am of course thankful to your diocesan staff who did not flinch at the challenge, but gave extra during a time when we were responding to the Hurricane, regular church business/ministry and all the rest to ensure we put our best foot forward.

I am thankful for you. You volunteered, served, helped and showed the rest of the Episcopal Church why I love you so much. You were amazing hosts! More than 1,000 of you joined our deputies and bishops and gave your time and gifts to this project. The churches in the Austin area and their leadership did extra work to support our efforts.

So, as each of us is resting, recovering and relaxing, I stop today to give thanks for the Diocese of Texas. I give thanks for you. Truly, each of you, are part of a great missionary diocese – a great and delightful family of faith. I am so proud to be your bishop. I am so grateful to be your bishop. We are glad that we get to call you our family and Texas our home. So, I pray:

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have
done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole
creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,
and for the mystery of love. Especially for your Episcopal
Church and the Diocese of Texas.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for
the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best
efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy
and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the
truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast
obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,
through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life
again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and
make him known; and through him, at all times and in all
places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.


Thank you,

Andy

The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, D.D.
Episcopal Bishop Diocesan of Texas
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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball