Open Conversation Event Held in Beaufort

Nearly 50 people from the Beaufort area joined Bishop Skip Adams and other members of the diocesan staff for an Open Conversation event on Thursday, July 11, at St. John's Lutheran Church on Lady's Island Drive. 

Bishop Adams opened the event with prayer and and then shared good news about the continued growth of the Diocese. "Numbers aren't everything, but they are one outward sign of life," said Bishop Adams. He then turned the program over to the Rev. Bill Coyne, who took a few moments to discuss his work as Diocesan Missioner for Returning Congregations.

​Once the floor was open to questions and comments, the attendees spent about 75 minutes asking questions and sharing their observations. It was a positive event, and the Diocese looks forward to hosting similar events in the future.

The Bishop also included in his remarks the Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin that he found especially relevant. The text of this prayer is included below. 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)