Church of the Good Shepherd: A Church Plant in Charlottesville

by Tuck Bartholomew & April Murrie

Tuck: "I am delighted that Robert Cunningham, who currently serves as the Reformed University Fellowship campus minister at University of Virginia has accepted the call to plant a new church with DOMA in Charlottesville. Robert and I started talking about his interest in Anglicanism and the possibility of planting in Charlottesville a little over a year ago. Sometime during the many different conversations I was having with people in the community about our desire to plant, April Murrie, who was working with Trinity Presbyterian Church at the time asked to meet and talk through her growing sense of call to ordained ministry. Robert and April have worked and taught together in the church setting as well as RUF and they started to explore the possibility of planting this new church together.

One of the lovely aspects of this plant is that as Robert and April were undergoing their own discernment about planting a church together within the Anglican tradition, a group of lay people started gathering in the home of Louis and Kristine Nelson for prayer, formation and discernment about their involvement in helping start this new church. The curiosity and interest has been a delight to watch. It seems clear to many of us that this is just something the Spirit is doing in our midst and we are all trying to play catch up!

April: Church of the Good Shepherd will embody and uniquely express the gifts of the Anglican tradition in Charlottesville. This church will be grounded in the Trinity - Father, Son, and Spirit - as host and provider (Ps. 23), as our standard for justice and love of the world (Ez. 34), with Jesus as our Good Shepherd, who leads us on a pilgrimage, whose voice we know and follow (Jn.10) as we participate with him and others in ministry, toward the horizon of dwelling together in his house forever.