Christ Church Accokeek Celebrates God's Faithfulness & Rededication of the People and Property of Christ Church in Accokeek, MD

by Brian Vander Wel

On Saturday, April 30, Christ Church Accokeek gave thanks to God for his faithfulness to the people of Christ Church Accokeek. With Bishop Guernsey as celebrant and 110 in attendance, Christ Church recounted the myriad ways God had been faithful to us in the last generation of our life together. Through Holy Communion, testimonies, a monument dedication, food and lots and lots of fun (!), Christ Church sought to honor our Lord and His good gifts. Below are excerpts from Father Brian’s testimony:

Come, Holy Spirit, with the fire of the living God. Come with the love of the Father. Come, Holy Spirit, with the Grace and Truth of Jesus Christ. Come and be released among us today, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Bishop Guernsey.

Distinguished guests.

Friends and Parish Family of Christ Church Accokeek.

Every week in our Eucharistic liturgy, we say that “it is our duty and our joy always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

On this day, however, our thanksgiving has even greater fullness and depth because today is the day we give thanks and praise to God for his faithfulness to us over a span of nearly a generation. (Now, God has been faithful to Christ Church for more years than that! But today, this past generation is our focus.)

How is it even possible to do this? How can we give thanks to him for his 30 years of work? We do understand that this is really an impossible task: to list everything God has done in a generation at Christ Church. Holy Scripture tells us as much. St. John, the apostle, closes his gospel by saying, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the [whole universe] itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

What we do offer today, however, we offer in the name of Jesus Christ and for the glory of the Father. And as we offer it, we invite you to join us in praising God for his faithfulness to Christ Church. (By the way, feel free to punctuate what you hear with an “Amen” or a “Hallelujah!” Like right now!)

Indeed, today it is our duty and our joy to give thanks to Almighty God. Because Christ Church Accokeek is a parish no longer in union with the Episcopal Church, but is a congregation of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic within the Anglican Church in North America. Doing this – at all – is no small feat. Doing this while keeping the people, the property, the Vestry and the Rector intact is nothing less than a miraculous work of God. (Well, the Rector is mostly intact.) In other parishes around the United States, congregations were lost, property was treated like mere chattel, relationships were deeply fractured and millions and millions and millions of dollars were spent.

By God’s grace, this is not how Christ Church made this move. Hallelujah!

Why we made this move is a long story in itself. You will hear snippets of why from those who will follow me. From where I sit, the “why” can be simply stated using the words which the Apostle Paul used, “[N]o one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, [that] is Jesus Christ.” No parish family, no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, no individual Christian can bear witness to any other story of salvation – any other means of redemption – than the one God himself has given. 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has given his life as a ransom. With his blood, he buys us back – indeed he buys the whole creation back! – from the slavery of sin and death. Christ Church Accokeek was convinced that we cannot change this teaching; nor can we change the corollaries and the implications of this teaching. We seek to bear witness – and live in submission – to no other reality.

In 2001 Christ Church Accokeek faced a crisis: it had been sued by its Bishop, the Right Rev. Jane Dixon, over its choice of The Rev. Father Sam Edwards to be Rector. Although there had been trouble before 2001, it was in this moment that many in the congregation simply said, we need to be faithful to the Lord and his plan of redemption. Christ Church cannot be defined by any other gospel. And so they stayed at Christ Church, and fought for its soul and its future. And by God’s grace, they prevailed. We are here today because they prevailed.

But as those who lived through those very difficult and painful days know, they succeeded not by their own might – not by their sword – but by the hand of the Lord. They prevailed because the Lord caused them to prevail. God’s work succeeded through their work. As Psalm 127 puts it, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it, labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches the city, those who watch, watch in vain.” In trusting in God’s defense and God’s workmanship, Christ Church trusted that he would continue to build this house with those whom he calls to it.

It has been a long road for Christ Church since those days in 2001. But we are deeply grateful for what has been and full of hope for what will be.

The Rev. Father Brian Vander Wel is the Rector of Christ Church, Accokeek, MD.