The Reverend Ed Richards

Ed Richards and I first met about 2000 when I was Interim Rector at Grace Church, Panama City Beach and he was working to get Nicky Gumbel’s Alpha Course started at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. We were running Alpha on Wednesday evenings at Grace, and Ed needed to borrow my set of Gumbel’s tapes to copy and return. Seems to me he borrowed my tapes and took them to a local TV station to be copied. Seems to me also that he borrowed them on a Wednesday and I was beginning to get rattled as Wednesday afternoon grew toward the shadows of evening and the tapes weren’t back yet. They did arrive back in plenty of time though.

To my recollection I didn’t see Ed again until years later, after I had been back at Holy Nativity for a year or two, then Vicar of St. Thomas for five years. When I returned to HNEC, Ed was here and we served together, including he was in my Wednesday evening EfM class for his fourth year.

I know Ed Richards as a kind and gentle person who is a dedicated servant of Christ and a serious student of Scripture. I was his assigned mentor during part of his time in deacon school, and I was his supervisor the first summer of deacon school, when he worked as chaplain in training at Bay Medical Center. We met one evening a week, for “verbatims” and to discuss the hospital chaplain events of the week. Always and again, I found Ed to be a kind and compassionate minister and pastor. His most recent project has been to establish a food bank at Holy Nativity, a task I admired but did not envy, having established a food pantry that served local area residents and transients my fourteen years at Trinity, Apalachicola. It was a worthy undertaking, Ed.

The Bishop says to the ordinand
Will you be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of
Christ as this Church has received them? And will you, in
accordance with the canons of this Church, obey your bishop
and other ministers who may have authority over you and
your work?

Answer
I am willing and ready to do so; and I solemnly declare that I
do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to
salvation; and I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine,
discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.

Tonight, Bishop Duncan ordained the Reverend Ed Richards deacon at the Diocesan Convention in Fairhope. In the Episcopal Church deacons are under the direct supervision of the bishop, who usually assigns them to a parish other than their home parish for the servant ministry of a deacon. While I am sad to see Ed move on from Holy Nativity, I am proud and happy to call him friend these eleven or so years, and I wish him God’s blessings in all that he does in the Name of Jesus Christ. This Sunday he begins his new ministry at St. John the Evangelist, Wewahitchka.

Peace, Ed, my brother! Linda and I loved watching your service of ordination on video stream this evening!

Tom+

BTW today, Thursday morning, we had a CNA come be with mama for several hours. Linda and I got out for a bit including a short shopping stop at Sam’s, my first outing since returning from Cleveland. Friday I intend to stop by HNES to check developing plans to move the school’s portable classroom building from the church campus to the Holy Nativity School Foundation’s Cove School campus. I’m making good physical progress, feeling stronger each day and very pleased. I won’t be driving or riding in the front seat before April, but Linda is a patient chauffeur! T+