(And Your Hands, Your Eyes, Your Head, Your Soul!)
The Annual Report of the Dean
by the Very Rev. Sam Candler
Dean of the Cathedral
“Lift up your hearts,” prays the priest at the altar every Sunday in our eucharist services. Some of us hear it every day. In my 2025 Annual Report, I am heartened to report that people are lifting up their hearts! We are a place that lifts people’s hearts. Thank you for a holy and heartening year!
We pray in this church. And we gather for holy moments, both joyful and sad. We gather for baptisms and funerals, celebrations and laments, education and mission, music and contemplation. The Cathedral of St. Philip stewards those moments with grace, excellence, and hospitality; and God blesses all those moments here. I bless them, too!
Every one of the presentations and photographs in this 2025 Annual Parish Report is describing holiness and witness of the past year. In my own report, I summarize our witness as a year of lifting up. We have lifted up hearts, and hands, and eyes, and heads, and souls!
“Lift up your hands!” Psalm 10:12 prays, “Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.” And we are God’s hands in this world. We have not forgotten the poor and the oppressed. In an amazing transaction this year, we completed the transfer of our physical Cathedral Towers ministry to an organization who is far more able and efficient in the details of that service. While we continue our good pastoral care in that facility (now named Parish Grove), we have also received over $40 million for the lease (not sale) of the property, money which we have committed to the continuation of our ministry in low-income senior housing. Our new Cathedral Towers Fund, whose first meetings were ably chaired by Susan Graham, will commit annual distributions to a wider network of ministries.
In other outreach and mission efforts, “Cathedral Giving by Design” raised over $330,000 for Wellspring Living! Canon Julia Mitchener helped shepherd our new relationships with intown ministries such as Intown Cares. Beautiful parishioners and friends served our Homeless Dinner and requiem. And so many parish groups have lifted up hands with the Church of the Common Ground. The Cathedral Farmers Market, the Cathedral Preschool, the Cathedral Counseling Center, also continue to be integral parts of our mission and outreach.
Yes, we have lifted up our hands in mission this past year (more details are in the other pages of this Annual Report). However, each of us has our own particular vocation of lifting up our hands in mission, too. Each of our daily vocations is service in the world. Thank you!
“I lift up my eyes” prays Psalm 121:1, and we have been thrilled this past year to lift our eyes to the ascension of the new Good Faith Chapel. Just over a year ago, we prayed Psalm 121 as we broke ground. “Levavi Oculus,” begins that psalm; “we lift our eyes up to the hills, from which comes our help.” We have been lifting up our eyes ever since, lifting up the structural outlines of the building, then lifting up a massive steel beam, with many of our signatures and names written on it! (That beam is now installed in the oculus.) We now lift up our hearts and eyes in the eager expectation of a beautiful new and creative space for prayer, contemplation, service, and imagination. Yes, the Cathedral of St. Philip is about lifting up. It is about lifting up eyes and hearts, in new and imaginative prayer. Oh, how I look forward to more prayer in this holy place, and in this holy community.
Lift up your heads! Psalm 24:7 says, “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in.” In my mind, “Lift up your heads” means be attentive and hopeful; but it also means “Use your minds!” Thus, we continue to lift up a new identity in this church. We are stewards of a careful, thoughtful, theological tradition here, a tradition built upon both scripture and reason.
We are a different and new identity in the world. We are not just a political party at prayer, no matter what that party is. I remember sermon after sermon in which I have said this very thing: We are bigger than any political party. We are larger than any civic identity. We are Christians, and part of a Christianity that has been navigating culture and politics for over two thousand years. We did not just begin our theological study yesterday. We depend upon the tradition of centuries of theological and biblical scholarship! With such a strong tradition, we welcome beauty and truth in such people as the poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, who was our excellent Spirituality Conference speaker.
Many of us teach and study here. Personally, in the past year, I preached and spoke at:
The University of the South, Sewanee, All Saints Chapel; several churches in Canada; the Atlanta Rotary Club; The Buckhead Coalition; and the Diocese of Atlanta clergy Renewal of Vows service (I preached on Melchizedek!).
I delivered an invocation at the blessing of The Interfaith Chapel of the new Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. I spoke at The Four Pillar Award Ceremony for parishioner Tommy Holder (and we continue to give thanks to him, his family, and his company, for their ministry and service in our spectacular Good Faith Chapel project!)
I love to teach the Bible, over and over again. And I delivered several more historical and theological presentations of the Episcopal Church titled, “Angles of Anglicanism.” And I continue to love the weekly discipline of sermon delivery; I like to preach!
I also delivered piano presentations (which I consider are expositions on the world and on faith!) at Chill on the Hill, Shrove Tuesday Mardi Gras, the Homeless Requiem dinner, St. Anne’s Terrace, and throughout the church at various times of the day and week!
“Lift up your soul!” Psalm 25:1 prays, “To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” And so we do. We lift our souls to God in this holy community, throughout the holy moments of our lives, from baptisms to funerals. I pause to remember all manner of Cathedral saints who have died in the past year, but in particular I mention: Terry Dornbush, Harry Pritchett, Carolyn Vigtel, Larry Burns, Bill Kelly, Pamela Isdell, Joan Gilbert, Shelby White, and so many more.
Finally, I give thanks for this parish, who lifts up my soul! Thank you! Thank you to this most excellent staff, clergy and lay, who lift up my soul, and who lift up the souls of faithful parishioners. Thank you to George Maxwell, my longtime friend and talented vicar. And thanks, in conclusion, to my lovely wife, Boog, who lifts up my soul even as she lifts the souls of so many others in this holy community. We love you!
Lift up your hearts!
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip
Watch the 2025 year in review video