GAINSVILLE, FL: An Episcopal Parish Dies, an ACNA Parish is Born and Thrives [VirtueOnline]

GAINSVILLE, FL: An Episcopal Parish Dies, an ACNA Parish is Born and Thrives



GAINSVILLE, FL: An Episcopal Parish Dies, an ACNA Parish is Born and Thrives

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
December 26, 2016

It was inevitable of course, but no one wanted to admit or concede that its day was done and the parish would have to close. But close it did, and the dwindling congregation at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Gainsville, threw in the towel and called it quits, handing their keys over to the Episcopal Diocese of Florida and its bishop, Samuel Johnson Howard.

VOL first covered this story in 2006 when the parish split from the Episcopal Church over the confirmation of V. Gene Robinson as the first publicly proclaimed homosexual ordained to the episcopacy in TEC and it was downhill from there.

At that time, we reported that the Rev. Alex Farmer had resigned as rector of St. Michael's and he and his members would begin a new ministry, Servants of Christ Anglican Church, that would meet at a Vineyard Christian Fellowship, down the road, at 5 p.m. Sunday.

St. Michael's was one of the six congregations (out of 77) in the diocese that petitioned Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard, to find a new bishop to oversee them. At stake was the faith and the parish's disagreement with the Episcopal Church's ordination of an openly partnered homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. The bishop refused their request.

Later in 2010, it was thought St. Michael's Episcopal would be torn down to build a Walgreen's. But St. Michael's Episcopal Church was designed in the seventies by Nils M. Schweizer, a student of the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and apparently survived the chopping block.

From thence forward the parish went into decline. In 2005, there were 175 baptized Episcopalians with an ASA of 135 and a plate and pledge of $180,000. After the split in 2006, the baptized plunged to 28 with an ASA of 22 and a plate of pledge of $30,000. The church never recovered.

"I feel the Episcopal Church USA has left the Anglican tradition," Farmer said at the time. He and most of the congregation left and joined with the Anglican Church in North America.

And thrive it has. "We seek to live out a core purpose to make disciples, learning to do all that Jesus said and did," says its rector, the Rev. Alex Farmer, who trained at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. "If you choose to visit one of our services, you will find a multi-generational community of 200 adults and children," he writes. The parish is thriving.

"We wholeheartedly embrace what it means to live in a university city where there are many competing values systems and spiritual beliefs. By the grace of God, we call people to life in Jesus Christ and then lovingly walk with them in life-long transformation." Their community values include Scripture as the foundation of everything they say to each other and the World. Their common life and worship are shaped and nurtured by the riches of their Anglican Heritage.


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