Case Study
The Church of the Heavenly Rest is an Episcopal parish in Abilene, Texas. Abilene has a population of around 130,000 in Taylor County, a rural and relatively sparsely populated West Texas county about three hours west of Dallas. Heavenly Rest was founded in 1883, shortly after the town was established, and moved to its current location in 1953.
Our physical plant is a large gothic stone structure and is regarded as one of Abilene’s architectural gems. A small handful of parishioners can still remember when the church was built, and that heritage is deeply important to the parish. As an example, the recently built parish hall was named in honor of the rector who was instrumental in the construction of the current church building.
Heavenly Rest has long been an outward-looking parish: It established a parish school, as well as a thrift shop in 1952, and provided space on campus for the first hospice in the area. That tradition continues with a number of outreach ministries, including a grocery distribution on Friday mornings that serves hundreds of families each month.
Despite an affection for and attachment to tradition, parishioners tend to pride themselves on being open-minded, an ethos summarized by a recently composed mission statement: “The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest is dedicated to serving and creating community by proclaiming the good news of God’s love for all.”
In June of 2013, two Swahili-speaking families arrived at Heavenly Rest with their confirmation certificates in hand and announced, “We would like to join your church.” These families were refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) who had been placed in Abilene and were being partially supported by the International Rescue Committee (I.R.C.). The I.R.C. tends to place refugees in smaller cities like Abilene, rather than larger ones, because they are easier for families and individuals to navigate (relatively speaking) and it is harder for people to fall through the cracks.
Heavenly Rest began working with the refugee population, sponsoring trips to the grocery store, collecting and distributing furniture, and connecting people with job opportunities. Within just a few weeks, more refugees—from places other than the D.R.C. and traditions other than Anglicanism—began attending worship and participating in the life of the parish, at least in part because they had heard they could find a welcome at Heavenly Rest.
While Heavenly Rest became quite adept at meeting the physical needs of this refugee population, it soon became clear that we were not fully meeting their spiritual needs. We frequently heard refrains like, “We would like to worship in Swahili.” When we answered along the lines of “We’ll get to that once we address these other (presumably more urgent) things,” their response was polite, but unmistakable: “We joined this church to worship God.” These Christians did not come to Heavenly Rest for the social services the parish could provide; they came to nurture their relationship with the God who created and redeemed them, and sustained them through some of the worst experiences human beings can endure.
In response to this need, Heavenly Rest added a worship service in Swahili to the Sunday schedule. We offer an adapted form of Morning Prayer most Sundays, and once a month a priest from the Heavenly Rest staff celebrates the Eucharist in Swahili. As the relationship between the morning and afternoon congregations has deepened, we have begun having combined services in English and Swahili several times throughout the year, and we are about to offer our third annual Tamasha la wa Afrika, a celebration of East African music, culture, and cuisine. At Diocesan Convention last year, the Gospel was read in English, Spanish, and Swahili, a testament to the importance of that community’s presence in this diocese.
Creating cross-cultural community has required us to clear about what it means to be the Church. Despite our call to care for the poor and the vulnerable, the Church is not a social service agency: Our primary purpose is to bear witness to what God has done in raising Jesus Christ from the dead, an event that, in the words of the letter to the Ephesians, broke down the walls that separate us. Our call, then, is to create space and opportunities for people to worship God, no matter who they are or where they come from.
- Shifting the question. The question that initially guided Heavenly Rest’s response to our Swahili-speaking population was: “What are we supposed to do for and about these people in our community?” But we found that new paths were forged when we asked a different question, namely: “Why has God brought us—these two groups of people—together?” This shifted the emphasis from what we can do to what God is doing.
- Articulating hopes and expectations. The relationship between the morning and afternoon congregations improved significantly as we heeded Brené Brown’s reminder that “clear is kind.” When we act as if everyone has the same cultural values and is working from the same assumptions, a diverse community can’t help but stumble into tension or conflict. So we strive instead to clearly articulate our hidden cultural expectations, to give voice to our assumptions and motivations, and to be patient with one another and assume the best.
- Speaking the language of the heart. The value of trying to learn the language of someone’s heart cannot be overstated. Some of our Swahili-speaking members are learning English, while many others of them are fluent speakers. But it is overwhelming to observe how welcome one of our Swahili-speaking parishioners feels when a member of the morning congregation attempts to say something in Swahili. Making the effort matters.
Without question, the most valuable currency in a relationship is a sense of trust, and we need to find active ways to cultivate greater trust between our morning and our afternoon congregations. As humans, we don’t all come with the same emotional resources or with the ability to open our hearts to one another. Yet without opening our hearts, we cannot grow in trust. So as a church, we need to look for opportunities to build trusting relationships—for instance, by asking each member of the morning congregation and each member of the afternoon congregation to attend one of the services in another language. In the meantime, we are in a place of being patient and trusting that God is doing more for us than we can ask or imagine.
Church of the Heavenly Rest (Website)
Social Media: @heavenlyrestabilene
David Romanik
The Reverend David Romanik has served as the rector of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, Texas since May of 2019. He is married to Sarah Beth, and has three young children.