After traveling the 48 continental states in church agency work for nearly 25 years, the undersigned newly retired priest has the opportunity for considered reflection on the state of the Episcopal Church. I write to counteract the doom-sayers who tell us our church is in a bad way. Nay, not so! She really is healthy and vibrant at the local level all over the place.

According to generally accepted figures, the Episcopal Church bottomed out on losses of people a few years ago, and presently is growing slowly but steadily. And the figures we now have are more honest than those of a decade or two ago. Further, there is a slow, solid, constant growth in overall giving, the rate exceeding that of the growth of the cost of living. Finally, since the late 1980s, we have been able to identify a lovely dozen or so jurisdictions where the growth in communicant population exceeds the rate of growth in the civil populations surrounding them. These are solid signs of health.

One of the thrills in the 37 years since I was ordained has been seeing our church become more Eucharist-centered (while having at the same time less extremes of liturgical practice).

In our church, the laity have a healthy disrespect for much of the hierarchy, but in shared authority, checks and balances. There may be a failure of nerve on the part of some of the hierarchy, but this does not bother most of the local churches which are active at worship, nurture and local outreach. This means that more money therefore goes to local mission, and less to diocesan, national and international purposes. A great number of persons in all places can live with this situation.

I bid my brothers and sisters in Christ to heed not the bad-mouthing, to work through the small but still too-large amount of peculation and peccadilloes sexual and manipulative, and to rejoice in our overall solid life in mission.

(The Rev.) James L. Lowery, Jr.

Old Lyme, Conn.