All Saints Then and Now
November 1, 2008
When I joined All Saints, the parish had no priest—layreaders conducted the weekly Morning Prayer service and read a sermon provided by the Bishop. Once a month, a visiting priest celebrated Holy Communion. The dozen or so people who attended each service was a significant portion of the membership of the parish at the time.
Like many of our parishioners, I had left the Episcopal Church. For several years, I didn’t attend church at all. When I felt compelled to join a community of believers again, I visited a number of different churches and denominations before ending up back in an Episcopal Church. Though I didn’t join, I attended regularly for a year or more. At the time, I was on a motorized scooter, and the priest brought Communion to me in the pew. I couldn’t attend the coffee hour after the service because it was held in a room with a step too high for me to negotiate on the scooter. After a year, I didn’t know the name of a single fellow worshipper, and no one knew my name. Though people I saw every week smiled and said hello, no one ever spoke to me beyond “good morning.” Amazingly, at some of the churches I visited, people had been rude to me—at one well-known megachurch, able-bodied members practically pushed me off the wheelchair ramp leaving the service. “Good morning” from several other people each week was a big improvement. Though I wasn’t happy with the 1979 Prayer Book, I hadn’t found anything better.
For several weeks, I heard radio ads about a traditional Anglican church that used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. After my unhappy experiences visiting a variety of churches, I didn’t intend to look any more. Yet one Sunday morning, as I drove down West Avenue on my way to the Episcopal Church, my car turned onto Larkspur and ended up at All Saints. Even though there was no priest and only a few people in the congregation, I felt I had come home, and I’ve been here ever since.
The parish had already been in existence for more than 18 years when I arrived in January 1996, but the growth in recent years has far exceeded what went on before.
The founders of All Saints wanted a church of traditional worship and values in an ever-more liberal world. The first worship service was held in Terrell Plaza Hall on All Saints Sunday, November 6, 1977. Through the years, worship services were held in a vacant shoe store, a ballet studio, a home, a hotel hall, and a Lutheran Church. In 1986, All Saints purchased the property in the Castle Hills area, and the church building was completed in 1990. Since then the Sunday School building has been added, and the house next door bought—first as the rectory and now as Elisha House for offices and other facilities.
We progressed from no priest to volunteer priests. The late Father Wesley Buck had been a Lutheran minister for many years before his ordination as an Anglican priest. He was a wonderful pastor with 50 years of ministry experience, but he limited his volunteer work to preaching and leading worship services. Father Bill McGinnis was ordained as a priest here at All Saints years after his retirement from the military. After Father Buck’s death, Father Bill preached and celebrated Holy Communion but left everything else to the vestry.
Father Jerry Sherbourne came to us as a layreader while he was still attending seminary. He taught school during the week, and drove to Denton for seminary classes one weekend a month. He was ordained as a deacon, then a priest, and eventually became All Saints’ Rector.
Father Chip, who was still in the military, joined the parish during this time. He attended seminary, was ordained as a deacon, and served here. After his ordination as a priest, he served a parish in Athens, Texas until Father Jerry felt called to the military chaplaincy. All Saints was blessed that Father Chip returned to us as our Rector. Father Ed Morgan joined All Saints after years in ministry and was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood here at All Saints. We are thankful that he is now our Associate Rector.
Until the last few years, the parish had no staff. Volunteers did everything. Now we have Patti Babb, Assistant to the Rector and Volunteer Coordinator, and Diana Dunlap, Parish Administrator, to handle the responsibilities in the office. We have a variety of ministries and discipleship opportunities that couldn’t even be imagined a few years ago. Many volunteers—as manifested in the huge number of members honored on Recognition Sunday—work for the Kingdom here at All Saints. It wasn’t very long ago that you could count the number of volunteers on two hands. The first Web site was met with great skepticism by most of our members at the time, but many of our current parishioners found us through the Web site. Adding a 9:00 AM service on Sunday morning was a big step. When Father Jerry first started holding Evening Prayer on Wednesday nights, often the congregation consisted of one of the Sherbourne children and me. Now we have a beautiful Evensong service with our wonderful choir and 30 or 40 people in attendance every week. Our membership has grown many-fold. The Sunday morning worship services that totaled a dozen or so now regularly host over a hundred. God is good!
On All Saints Day, let’s take a moment to look back and thank the people who organized All Saints 31 years ago and those who have worked to build the parish through the years. But, most importantly, thanks be to God for where He has brought us and for those He has added to our numbers daily. Let’s join together to pray our parish prayer cycle for His continued blessings as we seek to spread His Kingdom.
Lillie Ammann
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