November Parish Meeting Recap
- Amy Rowe
- Nov 12
- 11 min read
We gathered on the playground for a Parish Meeting after church on Sunday, November 9. I opened the meeting by again expressing my deep gratitude to the staff, vestry, and congregation for allowing me to take a sabbatical this summer. It was so meaningful and restorative, and I can't thank you all enough.
Below is a recap of all that was shared in the meeting.
Vestry Election Results
Thank you to all our members who voted in the vestry election. Our newest vestry members are Emma Wen and Andy Lau! I could not be more delighted that these wise, faithful, and humble leaders have chosen to serve our church. You can read their bios again here.
The new vestry term will begin in January. At that time, Jared Noetzel and Kim McKnight will roll off after serving wisely and prayerfully for three eventful years. I am incredibly grateful for their service. We will thank our outgoing vestry and commission our new vestry in January.
Thank you also to Nancy Sung for her willingness to stand for vestry again! Nancy served for four years on our first-ever vestry, and was a warden all four of those years. She saw us through COVID, a rector transition, and many moves, griefs, joys, and changes. It takes courage and commitment to stand for vestry, no matter the outcome. As Russell once said, "Every church needs a Grant and Nancy" — amen!
Ordination Updates
Incarnation continues to be a place where people discern and practice their gifts, and we are often approached to support people seeking formation for ordained ministry. We can't say yes to all of them (we are too small!), but for those we have said yes to, we are delighted to report and celebrate these milestones:
Grace Brooks Flake, who served as our summer intern in 2024, will be ordained to the transitional diaconate* this Friday, November 14, at our annual diocesan synod. Last year, Incarnation was asked by our diocese to sponsor Grace's ordination process, since she currently ministers within a diocese that does not ordain women to the priesthood. We happily agreed, and it has been a gift to discern with her ever since. I had a call with Grace several weeks ago and was moved by the stories she told me from her current work as a chaplain in a men's prison, or as she put it, "spending time with Jesus' friends." She will join us on Sunday for her first service as a deacon, and will fulfill the traditional deacon roles of reading the gospel, praying the Prayers of the People, assisting with communion, and giving the dismissal. Woohoo!
TJ Ono, who has served faithfully as our deacon all year, will be ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, December 6, right here at Incarnation. Last year, Incarnation was asked by our diocese to sponsor TJ's transitional diaconate. Every deacon needs a church context in which to worship and serve, and our bishop thought Incarnation would be a good fit, and so we warmly welcomed TJ into our community. TJ has jumped in to capably serve our church in a myriad of ways, particularly over my sabbatical this summer, and is also a beloved member of our DC small group — all while working full-time outside the church and continuing to discern his calling. I am so grateful for his friendship and service, and it will be a joy to celebrate his ordination together in a few weeks. Everyone is invited! (And I've gotta get a pic with TJ!)
Russell Vick, who has served as our Curate and Worship Pastor for two years, was officially made a postulant in October. Like TJ, Russell came to us after a one-year clergy development program at Restoration; he actually finished the final four months of that program "on loan" to Incarnation. This was a gracious gift from our mother church that met Incarnation's needs while providing Russell a different context in which to practice his gifts. After the conclusion of those four months, we asked him to stay! It has been such a joy to serve alongside Russell over these two years. He is a humble servant; he sees people others often don't see; and he loves the church.
Postulancy sometimes takes a long time in the Anglican tradition (mine and Katie's did), and usually involves additional formation, so we don't yet have an ordination timeline for Russell. But we are excited to cheer him on as he crosses this important threshold.
*Defining Anglican terms: A synod is the annual governance meeting of our diocese. A diocese is a regional or affinity-based grouping of churches under the leadership of a shared bishop. A transitional deacon is a deacon who is on the path to becoming a priest. (One might also become ordained as a vocational deacon; that is, a deacon who is called to be a deacon and not a priest.) A postulant is a candidate for ordination who has been approved at both the church and diocese level.
Financial Report
Jared Noetzel, the vestry member who serves on our Finance Committee, provided a comprehensive report on Incarnation's FY25 year-end finances for and FY26 budget. (Incarnation follows an October-September fiscal year.) You can read the report in full here:
This has been a year of surprising financial turnaround. We ran a signficant deficit last year, and had budgeted to end this year with a modest deficit. Instead, we finished FY25 with a healthy surplus of nearly $30k. This surplus is largely due to a sustained increase in the regular giving of those who attend our church. In a year with so much vocational and economic instability, you have given generously and faithfully to the ministry of Incarnation. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
The most significant change to our FY26 budget is the inclusion of Holy Comforter, our church plant in Hyattsville, MD. We are committed to providing financial, staff, and backoffice support to Holy Comforter over the coming year, including covering any deficit from Incarnation's reserves. We believe this is how God is calling us to be faithful to the unexpected work he has given us to do in Maryland, and our budget reflects this commitment.
Holy Comforter Update
Katie shared the following update:
Since January 2025, we’ve held ten monthly services in Hyattville, and we’ve learned that people who come to our services are looking for a local church. They’re largely not interested in driving 30 or 40 minutes, or more, to Virginia every week. So, this past spring, we made the decision to start offering weekly services in Hyattsville beginning in January 2026. Our last service with Incarnation will be January 4 and our first weekly service in Hyattsville will be January 11.
This timeline allowed for Amy’s sabbatical and Incarnation’s move into Beverley Hills United Methodist Church over the summer. It also gave our staff and vestry space to start laying the groundwork for planting this new congregation.
Our new congregation will be called Church of the Holy Comforter, and we’ll keep meeting on Sundays at 5pm at Hyattsville Mennonite Church, which has graciously agreed to lease us their sanctuary and fellowship hall through the end of 2026.
Right now, we have about six households from Incarnation joining us regularly, plus another two to four households who only come to the Maryland services, plus visitors. We’re hopeful that once we start meeting weekly — and have regular formation and service opportunities in Hyattsville — we’ll continue to grow.
Our Name
The name Holy Comforter came out of a lot of prayer and reflection. Our group in Maryland has been inspired by Kelly Latimore’s icon of Christ as the Mother Hen taken from Matthew 23:37 where Jesus says,
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
And while I was on vacation this summer, I was talking with a friend about that image, and her husband mentioned that it reminded him of John 14:15–17, where Jesus promises the Holy Spirit — “another Comforter” who will be with us and never leave us.
That connection between the image of Christ as a mother hen and the Spirit as the Comforter really struck me. It just felt right — nurturing, protective, and intimate. I brought it to the bishop, and he approved the name: Holy Comforter.
What We’re Working On
As we prepare to launch weekly services, we’ve been busy laying a good foundation.
We continue to meet weekly in homes for dinner and evening prayer.
We’re developing work plans and applying for grants from other churches.
At the end of October, Amy and I went to a church planting training in Chattanooga — it really helped us think through what the ongoing relationship between Incarnation and Holy Comforter should look like.
Erin Payne and I are taking Catechesis of the Good Shepherd training — that’s the same approach to spiritual formation we use at Incarnation — so we can build an Atrium for the kids in Hyattsville.
We held our first worship planning meeting in October.
On November 1, we offered our second All Saints cemetery walk which originally sprang from a conversation I had with Elena Benning.
And we just launched our second service project, where Anna Yong led a food drive with Homes Not Borders to support our immigrant neighbors. Our first service project was an Earth Day stream clean-up organized by Shannon Wooldridge.
We’ve also been sending out a weekly Maryland newsletter with updates and upcoming events. If you’d like to be added to that list, just send me an email — we’d love to keep you in the loop!
Prayer Requests
Pray that God would continue to send us people in need of shelter, protection, and care – particularly the vulnerable, the sick, the doubting, the despairing.
Pray that God would continue to raise up leaders in our midst. We particularly need someone to help us develop our Atrium who is passionate about shepherding the religious potential of our youngest members.
Pray that we would not turn inward as we prepare to launch weekly services, but would have the eyes to see how God is at work in all people, places, and experiences and the openness to respond with compassion and generosity.
Amy shared this update:
Katie has shared about everything happening with Holy Comforter. But how will this impact Incarnation? I’ve been part of launching two church plants, but I’ve never been part of the sending church that stays behind. So this is new for me, and new for our church, and we will learn a lot together over the coming year.
Establishing a new congregation is a destabilizing event for a church. It calls on all of us — those who will go, and those who will stay — to grow in faith, in sacrifice, in a willingness to bear discomfort and extend grace. We are all on a journey together with God, but we have not traveled this way before and only God knows the way. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what lies ahead, and we will all be called upon to trust God in deeper ways over the coming year.
It’s normal to feel all sorts of things in response to this. Sadness and loss about saying goodbye. Fear that Incarnation won’t make it, or that Holy Comforter won’t make it, or that things won’t be the same and we won’t like that. Worried that maybe we don’t have what we need for this journey — the money, the people, the skills and gifts. I feel all of these things too.
But I also believe, along with our vestry, that this is where God is leading us. We are all going to be stretched, and we are all going to grow, and as a pastor, I am grateful for this opportunity to deepen our trust together.
Last week, Katie and I were in Chattanooga at a church plant training intensive. And one of the trainers, who has been part of many church plants over the years, was so amazed by the story of what God has done here. Without our setting out to do so, we are doing a thing that is apparently really hard to do. We are a small church, planting a small church; this alone is very unusual! And at a a time when so many people are giving up on the church for so many reasons, we have actually fostered two communities that draw people who were almost ready to give up on the church.
The story of Holy Comforter is giving other people hope, even beyond our this community. There’s so much to be discouraged about in the church and the world right now, but this is a really good thing happening in our midst.
So now, a few practical questions:
Will we hire someone to replace Katie?
The simple answer is, no. (Katie is irreplaceable!) We have not budgeted a full-time clergy person for FY26. Our congregation will be a little smaller, our staff roles have shifted over the past few years, and it will take some time to learn what we will need moving forward in terms of clergy and staff. We have budgeted for a part-time clergy person to begin in spring 2026, halfway through our fiscal year budget, but this is more of a placeholder than a concrete plan, to make sure there’s some money budgeted if we need it.
How connected will our churches be in 2026?
Big-picture, we want our churches to continue to work together in a spirit of mutuality, friendship, and generosity. We have a lot of shared DNA. It will make sense for us to continue sharing some things: back-office administration, money, our fall retreat, and some of our formation offerings like baptism classes. Our staff – especially me and Emily – will continue to offer support to Katie and Holy Comforter.
Our vestry will oversee both churches. Katie already attends all vestry meetings as a non-voting member. Vestry member Elena Benning is part of the Holy Comforter core team, and will continue her vestry service in 2026. And we intend to create an ex oficio (i.e., non-voting) seat on our vestry for an additional Holy Comforter person, so that they are amply represented and can learn how a vestry works.
Clarity is going to be really essential to all of this, so we are working now on a Memorandum of Understanding between Incarnation and Holy Comforter to outline areas of overlap and timelines for revisiting those arrangements. In addition, our diocese oversees all church plants, and has clear benchmarks around attendance, finances, and governance as plants transition to increased independence.
How can we participate?
As we’ve said before, nobody is expected (or forced!) to attend either church by virtue of their location. But I’d like to invite everyone to pray about how God might be inviting them to join the work of Holy Comforter. This might be by joining the launch team and actually attending church there, starting in January. It might be by praying for them. Or it might be by giving.
Every year at Advent we collect a special offering for an outreach partner. This year’s outreach partner is Holy Comforter, and you’ll have an opportunity to give during the season of Advent.
We will also be working with those committed to Holy Comforter to transfer their giving from Incarnation's general fund to a designated fund for Holy Comforter.
Finally, we will hold a joint Incarnation-Holy Comforter service and potluck on Sunday, December 28, in Hyattsville at 5pm. This is the fourth Sunday of the month, when we typically hold our Maryland services. We will not hold a service in Virginia service that day; we hope everyone will come worship in Hyattsville! Virginia folks will gain a new appreciation for how much the Holy Comforter folks drive each week, and will be able to see feel the worship there for yourselves.
Finally, we will hold our last service together in Virginia on Sunday, January 4. This will be a special service of giving thanks, commissioning, and sending, followed by a special feast together (details coming soon!).
***
We closed our time with Katie praying for Incarnation and Amy praying for Holy Comforter, and responded to questions from the crowd. If you have questions about any of this, please send them along!
Warmly,
Amy