Parish Meeting Recap: May 2026

A scene from the shadow puppet theater at our shared Incarnation-Holy Comforter Easter Vigil

Dear Incarnation,

It was wonderful to worship together on Sunday, and I’m so grateful for the beautiful weather for our rescheduled parish meeting! Thank you to everyone who helped us quickly reset the sanctuary and set up the playground with the all-important sound system, coffee, and snacks. You all are the best!

On Sunday night, I headed over to Holy Comforter for their parish meeting. The parking lot was full and I was greeted at the door by a child I'd never met, who handed me a prayer book and said enthusiastically, "Welcome to this church!"

God is on the move in Incarnation and Holy Comforter. It's amazing to watch, and I am humbled and grateful to be part of it with all of you! Below are the updates from our parish meeting.

Vestry Updates

Will Montague, our stalwart senior warden, shared a reflection on the work of the vestry in support of the ministry of both Incarnation and Holy Comforter. He also provided an update on the roles of our 2026 vestry members:

Wardens: Will Montague and Elena Benning

Treasurer: Buz Schultz

Secretary: Andy Lau

Outreach Liaison: Emma Wen

Personnel Liaison: Katie Foran

Holy Comforter Representatives: Katie Hamlin and Matt Wooldridge (non-voting)

Children’s Updates

Josie Ortega, our Lead Children’s Catechist/Camp Counselor/Chief Vibes Officer shared a joyful update about children’s summer programming. You can see all of summer kids’ fun here, and this flyer will be available in the Narthex on Sundays.

Holy Comforter Update

Katie Hamlin, our beloved former Associate-Rector-turned-Church-Planter, shared this encouraging update:

"Holy Comforter has just wrapped up our fourth month of worship services, and I’m grateful for how steady and joyful our beginning has been. We’ve experienced a consistent stream of visitors, and most people are finding us through word of mouth — through the personal invitation of someone who is already part of our community. 

One family that recently joined us first heard about us through a member’s Instagram post on MyHyattsville. They realized they already knew some of our members through their local school, and now they’re registered for our baptism class and planning to baptize both their newborn and toddler. We’ve also had a few University of Maryland students join us — students I first met last fall at a gathering of the multicultural chapter of InterVarsity at UMD.

I’m also thankful that our worship life is beginning to develop its own rhythm. We’ve been offering an a cappella service about once a month, with contributions from a growing preacher team. And we’ve now celebrated our first Lent and Holy Week together, with visitors present at many of these services. During Holy Week, we offered Stations of the Cross painted by Lauren Little, hosted at the home of Matt and Jess Kuniholm, and it was a beautiful and prayerful way to mark the season.

A station from Holy Comforter's outdoor Stations of the Cross

Alongside worship, I’m seeing our spiritual formation begin to take root. We now have two small groups meeting — one in Takoma Park and one in the Mt. Rainier/Brentwood area. Our first baptism class is scheduled for May, which feels like an important milestone as we begin to form people more deeply into the life of the Church. We’re also planning a summer small group that will alternate between Centering Prayer and an Introduction to Anglican Spirituality. And we’ll be offering a Wild Wonder camp in Bethesda, Maryland.

As the church has grown, our staffing has grown too. What began with just me has expanded into a gifted and dedicated team. Lauren Little is serving as our Worship and Communications Coordinator. Matt Wooldridge is serving as our Children’s Formation Coordinator, working closely with Erin Payne, our Lead Children’s Catechist. Joel Chan and Anna Yong are serving as our Lead Parish Musicians. And Galen Carey is serving as our assisting priest. And beyond staff leadership, I’m also grateful for the wider volunteer team that has been emerging — especially in hospitality for newcomers and in outreach.

We’ve also begun building a presence in the community through local outreach. This has included Earth Day stream cleanups and participation in the Trash-A-Thon at the College Park Nursery School, which many of our families attend. Over the summer, I’m hoping we can build on this by hosting more informal social gatherings— hikes, park meetups, and neighborhood events that make it easy to invite others in. And we’re planning to hold a couple of prayer walks in the neighborhoods around Hyattsville.

And as we continue forward, I’m asking for prayers in a few specific areas: for continued growth, for wisdom about the best ways to connect with our neighbors, and for momentum and clarity as we work toward getting our Atrium for our 3 to 12 year olds — which is about 50% of our congregation — off the ground in the fall."

— Katie Hamlin

Staffing Update

I also shared that TJ Ono has officially joined our staff team (Sunday was his first day!) as a Church Planter in Residence. We're delighted to have him, and you can learn more about this position and its implications for Incarnation here.

Facilities Update

I also shared an update on our continued presence in the Beverley Hills building. I reminded us of our history: we moved unexpectedly last May after the school where we had been meeting announced — with only two weeks’ notice — that summer construction would displace our Sunday worship. 

Beverley Hills took us in before we knew how any of this would work out. They offered a generous lease with 24/7 use of the building, and for the first time ever, we are not setting up and tearing down for worship every Sunday.

We have now been here for almost a year. We have just renewed our lease for another year with an automatic extension for an additional year beyond that. So Lord willing, we hope to be in this space for at least 2 more years.

We often receive questions from you about the future of the Beverley Hills congregation and the building, and how that will impact our long-term presence here. The short answer is that we don’t know.

Beverley Hills is in their own discernment process about their future, and we are aware of all the possible ways that might impact this building and our place here. This is beyond our control. However, I do want you to know that we are paying attention. We are trying to “strike while the iron is cold” — learning, building relationships, having conversations, exploring possibilities, and praying now, so that if something changes in the future, we are as prepared as we reasonably can be to act.

And in the meantime, we will continue to trust, pray, keep watch. God has always been faithful to provide us a place to worship that meets our needs. He very clearly led us here, and we will trust him with our future.

We finished up this time by calling out all the things we are grateful for at Beverley Hills!

Mid-Year Finance Update

Treasurer Buz Schultz shared a big-picture overview of our finances halfway through our fiscal year (Oct-Sept), and Finance Team member Jared Noetzel followed with run-through of our numbers.

Thank you so much for your faithful giving to Incarnation and Holy Comforter! Because of your generosity, we are in a healthy place at the mid-year mark as we continue toward our goal of sustainability. I encourage you to read the full finance report here, and to reach out with any questions.

Testimony by Logan Williams

Logan Williams shared a testimony about personal discernment using the prayer of Examen. He offered us a helpful, practical picture of how paying attention to God’s presence in consolation and desolation can help us discern where God is already moving in our midst. I was so moved by his availability to God in prayer and by his honest vulnerability in sharing with us.

If you didn’t catch it, ask him about it! And if you missed the Lent sermon series on the Examen, you can find them all here (or wherever you listen to podcasts!).

Invitation to Discernment

Although our Lenten sermon series is over, I want us all to continue growing in the practice of discernment together, now and always. A lot has changed for our church, and it’s important that we continue to listen and wonder together, seeking God's guidance in this particular time and place. 

Among those changes, we have just planted a church for the first time. We are in a new-to-us city (Alexandria rather than Arlington) and a new-to-us building (a church rather than a school or parking lot). We are feeling more settled than we have in a very long time. These are really big changes, and they are good. But all change, even good change, brings some measure of loss. And these changes raise new questions for us. Questions like:

Now that we are in an actual church building, instead of a school or parking lot, how will we make sure our church still feels really approachable for people who feel far from God or from the church? How might the beauty of this place be a help to us in that?

Now that we are in Alexandria instead of South Arlington, how will we learn about our new neighbors? How will we express care for our immigrant neighbors — a common thread in all of our church’s neighborhoods? How will our worship reflect the place in which we are planted?

And now that we are not spending most of our energy setting up and tearing down for Sunday morning, how will we keep our sense of shared ownership in this church, which is precious? And how will we redirect that setup/teardown energy toward things that are enduring and meaningful?

To imagine this differently, I invited you to picture Incarnation as a tree. Our trunk, the core of this tree, is the same as its always been. Who we are as a church and what matters most to us hasn’t changed. 

But we are in new soil here in Arlandria, and we want to understand that soil. What is God already doing here? What has he done? What are the “nurse logs” around us (to quote our 1 Thessalonians series from last fall) — the things that have come before us to give life and nourishment to this place?

To discern that, we’ll be organizing a few prayer walks and lunches in this neighborhood over the coming months. We want to be present, to pay attention, to listen, to talk to neighbors, to really understand the soil in which we are planted now. The first one is Rogation Sunday, May 10!

We’ve also just transplanted a big, beloved piece of our tree into new soil at Holy Comforter in Maryland. And many of us are still feeling the place where this living part of ourselves has been cut. That part of our tree is still recovering and we don't yet know what it will be like as it regrows. So we will have patience and grace for that process, because these things just take time.

We’ve also just pruned away a lot of things that used to be part of our life together – like driving a van, unloading, reloading, setting up and tearing down every week. Pruning allows more of the tree’s energy to go toward growing the most important things. And we see that happening here. Other things are starting to grow and flourish. 

One obvious place we see this is in our children’s atriums, which are no longer temporarily setup in a distracting hallway each week, but have a permanent, peaceful, beautiful space where the faith of even our littlest children is visibly flourishing. 

And we also see it in our fellowship time on Sundays. For the first time, we are able to really linger and talk after the service each week, and this has been wonderful for our sense of community. In fact, people are often still here at noon when the Methodists are locking up after their service!

So I want you to consider where you might redirect some of that “pruned energy” to support these new things that are growing. Practically speaking, we need volunteers for our nursery and for hospitality; please let me know if you’re interested!

But there might be other things God is inviting you to do with that “pruned energy.” Maybe God is inviting you to practice just being more present, or welcoming, or invitational, or curious, or prayerful with the people around you.

Or maybe God is stirring a desire to invite new people into this community; people who feel far from God. Or a desire for a deeper kind of fellowship with people in this church. I’ve been hearing that desire in a lot of different places lately. 

Which brings me to the continued growth of this tree. We want our roots to grow deeper and our branches to grow wider. We want to see new leaves sprouting and new spiritual fruit ripening. We want to see seeds fall and germinate and shoot up in surprising places. I am hearing interesting stories bubbling up among us — people hungry to grow in spiritual practices, in intimacy and accountability, in service and generosity. People having dreams and visions and hearing words from God. What might God grow?

There is no joy like seeing God grow and flourish something. And that’s what I want for our church, for our neighborhood, and for each one of us in our life with God. And so again, I want to invite all of you to a season of discernment, of wondering together how God might want to do that. 

To that end, we sent everyone home with a version of the prayer of Examen focused specifically on our church. We want to invite all of you to pray this prayer over the coming weeks, on your own or in your small groups. There will be ways to share what you are praying and hearing so that we can see and be encouraged by what God is doing. And we'll have copies of this prayer in the Narthex on Sundays.

I am full of hope for the season ahead of us. I closed our time by reading the parable of the mustard seed as a prayer for Incarnation:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that all the birds come and perch in its branches.”

Questions? Ideas? Please reach out to me or a member of our staff or vestry. We love hearing from you!

With love,

Amy