Friends,

It is with great pleasure that we are writing this email, the first of a series of emails, to share some exciting updates regarding Church of the Good Shepherd! Toward that end, we want to first offer a brief recap of where we’ve been.

Just over a year ago, a small community began meeting in a family’s backyard to make space for silence, contemplative practices for connecting with God, prayer, singing, and potluck fellowship. Each person’s reasons for participating and hopes of what might come of it were many and varying, but there was a shared experience of the Spirit’s presence and an openness to something new. Psalm 23 served as an anchor in these gatherings, and a persistent theme of those first several months was learning to listen and respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd. 

As this group continued to meet, mix, and grow, it was eventually connected with leaders within the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic who had been praying about planting a church in Charlottesville for several years. Over the course of several months, the Diocese’s Canon for Church Planting, Tuck Bartholomew, invited each of us—Robert Cunningham and April Murrie—to consider stepping into this role and calling to plant this church. After our individual discernment processes, it became official in March that we were, indeed, going to step into this adventurous calling—honestly, full of a mixture of excitement, fear, and hope.
 
In March, we had our very first interest meeting in which we shared our name: Church of the Good Shepherd. It was an energetic meeting, but one in which we were only scratching the surface regarding our hopes for the church, as neither of us could fully step into our roles until the summer.

On the afternoon of Easter Sunday 2022, one of our supporting churches, Redeemer Anglican of Richmond, offered us a beautiful gift in providing musicians and a priest so that those interested in Good Shepherd could gather for an evening Eucharist service. This was an Ebenezer moment along the way and a small taste of what was to come. 

The summer months consisted of two more interest meetings. In these meetings we sought to orient people (including ourselves) to Anglican worship and polity, and we offered a window into the vision of our church and how it will be fleshed out in worship, formation and mission, all in the context of community. We also brought in Erin Bair, a priest from our diocese, and offered two workshops on grief and lament. The heart behind this was twofold. First, we wanted to demonstrate, as a church, our commitment to provide space for the difficult and often neglected emotions and to be acquainted with the practice of honest lament. Second, we recognized that each person who steps into a church plant is often, knowingly or unknowingly, bringing with them a combination of idealism, hurts, hopes, questions, and longings. Our hope was to offer a small step along the path of knowing what each of us is bringing with us, surrender those things to Jesus together, and recognize that we want to cultivate healthy soil out of which this church can grow and bear fruit.

The summer months also led to the formation of our Good Shepherd Launch Team. This group of women, men, and children committed to serve, share their gifts and resources, and shoulder the burdens of building out ministry teams and structures to get this church off the ground. Our time together as a Launch Team has been intentional and experientially rich. It has given us space to continue articulating and begin embodying our hopes for this church: a community that is learning to pay attention to God and to one another, to practice the way of Jesus, and to participate humbly and sacrificially in the Spirit’s work among and around us. 

Since late August, we have gathered for what we’ve called “practice worship.” In these gatherings we took time to intentionally become acquainted with the Anglican liturgy, practices and postures that are new to many of us. We've also become acquainted with our various roles and responsibilities. It has been a season of formation, of hard work and planning, and lots of prayer. And all of that now brings us to the most exciting news: our official public launch date is Sunday, October 30.

As we mentioned at the beginning, this is the first in a series of emails leading up to our public launch that are intended to orient you to Church of the Good Shepherd. We hope these emails will continue to invite you deeper into learning and discerning about our church. We will share more with you about our worship space and location, the culture we are seeking to nurture and vision we are living into, our expression of Anglican worship (and what to expect on a Sunday morning), our children’s ministry, and more. We look forward to continuing to take these next steps in our journey as a church plant!

As we mentioned this summer, please remember that we are a church plant with limited resources and space. If you plan on joining us for worship during the first month or so of our launch, please complete this form so we can prepare a place for you and be better prepared for any and all visitors! Regardless of where you may be in your discernment, filling out this form will be a tremendous help to us as we anticipate worship attendance, gauge children’s ministry needs, and continue overall planning and coordination with our volunteers!

Best,
Robert and April