CUT FROM A DIFFERENT CLOTH: Father Bill French, and why the Episcopal Church could use more like him

I like Father Bill French tremendously. As a student at Brookville High School in the early 1970s, I had him as a history teacher, and was always impressed with his passion for what he did. He seemed to awake to the world every morning with the desire to share his passionate beliefs, and as I recall, his history classes did contain a lot of history, but also a lot of teaching that would benefit me in other ways, and was often not related to anything in our course material.

Upon returning to church in 2005 after a 35-year drought, I learned that my former teacher had retired from teaching and become an Episcopalian priest. I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been. He simply continued doing what he did best...teaching.

I vividly recall a recent sermon of his in which he pulled an acorn from his pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it. He turned it, looked at it, and started his sermon. He spoke of the dwindling congregations within the Anglican & Episcopalian churches, and then told us exactly why it was happening. Episcopalians, he said, weren’t taking part in the Great Commission. We, as members of that Church, had ceased to share the Good News. Our faith was not only personal, but had now become private as well. And that, he said, just wouldn’t do.

Our lives, he said, should be like an acorn. As we grow in Christ, we must touch the lives of others, who must then also touch the lives of others. The effect would be like the growth of a mighty oak tree from a single acorn. The acorn contains the potential, but to be realized it must be planted in fertile ground, and the Episcopal Church as a whole wasn’t providing fertile ground...and so its congregations continue to dwindle.

Just yesterday, he preached a simple homily. He wasn’t scheduled to be at our church that day, but just happened to stop by and saw that we had a morning prayer service planned. He popped in, and was immediately pressed into duty for a Eucharist service. He spoke once again about how the Episcopal Church as an organization seems not to be focused on what really matters, which is looking to Christ as our example of how to live. He commented that the Lambeth Convention, currently taking place in England, seemed to be heavily politicized, and not focused on leading people to Christ. But that, he said, should be the driving force behind every decision they make.

Bill French seems to be a bit of a rebel, and I like that. His rebellion against the status quo is consistent with the example he lives by, that of a particular Nazarene who lived over two thousand years ago, and still lives today.

He also hasn’t lost his sense of humor. My sister Katy—who also had William French as a teacher—was attending church with me yesterday, and I was the lay minister. Part of my responsibilities were to assist in the administering of the communion sacraments. I was holding the wine, and Father French was placing wafers in people’s mouths. My sister Katy came to the altar, and after Father French gave her the wafer, whispered, “I’ll bet you never thought you’d be taking communion from me.”

My sister Katy, who’d watched over the years as I transformed from a self-absorbed, hard-drinking, drug-using wild man into a lay Eucharistic minister, pointed at me and said, “Or him, either!” I didn’t hear any of this exchange, but looked over to see both Father French and Katy laughing during communion, which struck me as odd. It was only afterward, when Katy related the story, that I enjoyed the laugh as well.

I realize all leaders within a religious organization must deal with politics and logistics. But unlike many, Father Bill French refuses to let those things cloud his single-minded mission to share the love of Christ. I wish we had more like him.