Leaving the Shire
By Bill Boniface

A short time ago I was attending a church mission partners meeting where a new couple had shown up to explore signing on with our team. After introductions, someone asked them what had brought them to our parish from one in another clearly orthodox and untroubled denomination where they’d been highly active and involved.

The reply to that simple question was both inspiring and intriguing:
"We decided we had to leave the Shire and join the Battle for Middle Earth." The husband went on to say that they had watched the battle for the soul of the Episcopal Church raging from a distance, and after a great deal of prayer and discernment had felt called by the Lord to come and take an active part in it. They seemed to clearly comprehend that the battle in our own Church was but the front line in a war being waged against all churches - indeed any such forces that serve as moral authorities in an increasingly confused culture.

"We decided to leave the Shire and join the battle..." That was a metaphor I hadn’t heard before, but which resonated so deeply within me that I knew immediately that I was in the presence of kindred spirits. My wife and I had also left the comfortable Shire of a southern Maryland country parish at roughly the same time to venture across the river into Virginia. We knew a great army of faithful Episcopal clergy and laity was coalescing there to fight our denomination’s downward slide from faithful Anglican Christianity into apostasy and irrelevance. We knew that the battle to save our Church was raging there. And we, too, knew we had to travel whatever distance was necessary to join them if we were going to be more than observers of the decline of our lifelong Church. We, too, had felt the call to "leave the Shire."

Click here: The rest at Stand Firm-don't miss this!
Art