I visited Bishop's Gray's journal again, this time with our Cathedral in mind. The same 1893 visit that brought him to Dade City also brought him to Pinellas, a town that is the predecessor of modern day Pinellas County. His morning visit took him to a location where he confirmed a small group of people. That evening, he visited Dunedin, where he worshipped in the "beautiful church there". He refers to the Church of the Good Shepherd (see below).Impressed by Bishop Gray's stamina, my thoughts turn to how the faith of someone who lived 117 years ago can still ignite imaginations today. The cliche is that people built churches for lots of bad reasons, like the display of wealth, a guilty conscience, or influence peddling.
But the south Florida churches of Gray's day were wooden structures whose windows were topped off by equilateral triangles, a trim that Architect Ralph Adams Cram sneeringly called "Carpenter Gothic". Gray's parishes were not monuments to pride. They were built in the rollercoaster of Florida ecomomics, in small communities with land donated by local farmers. These were the mission churches of a missionary diocese. People invested in them because of a robust faith that future generations would pick us where they left off. They invested heavily in the faith of their children.
Structures of wood or steel or stone are made possible because of organizational structures like the General Convention and Dioceses where vision is cast and shared on behalf of others.
Our Diocese (SWFL) has a "2020"Fund where a tithe of funds from one parish's capital campaigns are used to fund those of another parish. I hope that this sense of a shared investment is an ideal still good enough for the 21st century.
