Just a year and a few days ago, all of our lives, especially mine, changed.
Since last December 2, I have begun to know and love the people whom God has
called me to serve in the ministry of your bishop. For your part, you have
welcomed me and supported me and my family with your prayers and efforts. As
I said at a civic function just a week ago, Diana and I feel that after living
in many places, we have at last found a home.
I. Life in the Diocese of Bethlehem
There are some things about life in the Diocese of Bethlehem that I have already
come to treasure. The first is that I never feel that I am working alone. The
community at Diocesan House, the presence throughout our diocese of a deeply
committed core of lay leadership, and the collegiality of clergy who have made
a singular investment of themselves in the care of the churches, all make this
a ministry I more than enjoy.
The second thing is more important. It is that this diocese understands that
our primary loyalty is to Jesus Christ, and that the devotion we show to any
other ministry or cause flows from that loyalty. This is to say we need to
claim the word "conservative." We are conservative in the right sense of that
word. Conservatives are people who believe there is something to conserve,
the riches of God's love made known through our Lord Jesus; and that kind of
conservativism is never illiberal. Everywhere I've gone so far, the centrality
of the Christ whom we celebrate in word and sacrament has been apparent.
The third thing that cheers me is that people in this diocese don't just mumble
vague words about commitment. It is there, and to a degree far beyond what
our small numbers would lead one to suspect. It's possible that you have noticed
this small banner behind me. (I was told last night they can see it in Delaware.)
Our ministry to children, and our Jubilee ministries -- all of them -- along
with the work of our other commissions, task forces and ministries, are testimonies
that you are not just hearers of the word, but have heard God's call to be
doers.
And so in the context of faith active in love, we come to our first convention
together. I've learned something. Convention means something far different
in this diocese, and we make no apology for that. During these days, we do
not devote a lot of time to micro-management, nor historically have we spent
a lot of energy on debate. Certainly there is some debate; certainly, we do
believe that those people sent here, clergy and lay leadership, should shape
and endorse vision and mission, and most certainly should keep watch over the
use of our resources.
Notwithstanding that, more than anything else, we come here to be revitalized
for our common ministry, wherever that is carried out. We purposely spend a
good deal of our time in worship and Bible study; we purposely set aside all
of Friday night for worship and fellowship, for being with each other, for
the building up of the body of Christ in ways that cannot be done through any
formal mechanisms. That's why we have so many visitors; this is to be a time
for the whole diocese. I've tried to honor and expand that tradition of being
for everyone by having the Eucharist last night as Rite II and our service
this morning as Rite I, simply a way to symbolize that we are here for everybody.
Finally, I want to thank publicly those parishes who are enduring Wednesday
night visits from the bishop. Those visits are being made because I have a
deep need to be in every parish the first year I am here. I appreciate your
patience, flexibility, and hospitality -- and I promise never to do it again.
II. From University to Diocese
Leaving the university to take up this ministry was like suddenly finding
yourself awake, dimly aware that you were dreaming for a long time. I don't
say that to denigrate academic work, but to emphasize that the rapid transition
from the classroom to the diocese has brought some things in very sharp focus
for me, and has done so quickly. And I need you to know about them, as they
provide context for my actions and positions.
The first is the priority of the church over other religious concerns. I have
come to realize that there is no single issue in discussion among us that is
more important than our being the body of Christ in the world. Let me take
that farther. What we are as a community and how we relate to and serve each
other and the world, is to be the physical continuation of the earthly ministry
of Jesus, and nothing has priority over that. Another way to say that is something
I've learned in the diocese -- that we are community-based and not issue-driven.
We do the Christian thing of hearing the word, praying, and celebrating the
sacraments -- and out of that "doing" come our attempts to serve and our attempts
to understand. We recognize that we cannot serve all the needy; and, on a good
day, we recognize that we can't even detect all of the needy. We recognize
that we cannot understand, let alone resolve, every issue that arises. We continue
to work even though we have those limitations, even though we stumble sometimes,
even though we are often perplexed, because we are committed to following Jesus
with however many talents he has entrusted to us. It is uncomfortable not to
have all the answers, to find yourself just muddling through -- but that's
less uncomfortable than being paralyzed, totally inactive, because things aren't
perfect.
A glorious mess
One of the big dilemmas of the Church in the first five hundred years
was the murkiness, the ambiguity of its existence. The part of the church that
we can see has always been a mess. There never was a golden age. But that mess
is a glorious mess. One of the questions the great thinkers of the past had
to deal with was about that murkiness: how can we be the one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic church when there are people among us who very clearly do not
reflect all those attributes. On a good day, we even recognize that we ourselves
are a just a little bit less than perfect in our knowledge, in our obedience,
in our love.
Back in 1974 I had a tenth grader flatten me once by summarizing a whole semester's
work in Old Testament history with the observation, "God works... through jerks." His
eloquence summarized what I had been trying to say for months. But he had the
point.
Corpus mixtum...
Saint Augustine -- my personal favorite among the doctors of the church
-- was able to reflect on the moral failings of his youth, on the limited ability
of even his enormous intellect, on the imperfect nature of his love, and the
reality of his salvation nonetheless. From that realization about himself he
was able to extend his thinking to the church and say, "Aha, just as I am full
of internal and external contradictions and still am God's beloved, that's
the way the church is." So he went on to call the church a "corpus mixtum," which
is wonderfully delicate Latin for what we would call a mixed bag, a hodgepodge.
A hodgepodge through which God has chosen to work.
St. Augustine, hero
Don't get me wrong. Augustine never thought he was excused from doing his very
best to know and obey the will of God. He never thought he was excused from
naming and arguing against what he believed to be heresy. He just never believed
that he could always be right. He could never believe that he would always
love purely. In his old age he did something no other great thinker that
I can recall even tried to do. He wrote a book called Retractions,
better translated Corrections, dealing with all the ways in which
he'd realized that he had been wrong -- and wrote them down and said why
they were wrong and what he knew now. We don't expect that of heroes. We
expect seven-volume autobiographies explaining why they were right at Gallipoli.
To the extent we have that expectation, we don't understand what heroic means.
Protecting our discourse against the extremes of right and left
I've gone through all that to make the point that Christianity has
always had to live with itself as imperfect. Christianity has always done that
at the same time it was striving to grow into full maturity in Christ. I say
that because in the tension between what we strive for and what we appear still
to be, is born patience, tolerance, and the appreciation that we each have
very different gifts. In that tension is born the realization that we will
never have it all down right, and that our only hope is to keep ourselves centered
on Christ: to keep loving, to keep listening, to keep speaking in love whatever
truth we may know.
I have a dear friend in New Haven with whom I occasionally disagree -- like
all the time -- on issues of what I believe are of extraordinary importance.
Yet, I found myself saying to him a couple of weeks ago, "You're the only person
in the church who can discuss this issue without ever raising your voice." That
may well be a gift he brings greater than his intellect.
All of which is to say that I see my ministry proceeding from a realization
of the practical importance of our being the church before all else, from our
recognizing that God works through jerks, and yes, that each of us occasionally
fits into that category, and that we need to be patient with that. St Paul
said something like love is patient, kind, long-suffering, does not rejoice
in evil.
It is to protect that sacred quality of our discourse together that I have
had to go publicly, and quite unwillingly, against the extreme left and the
extreme right in the last month. I did so because in my judgment each in its
own way had gone beyond what is respectful of our commitment to each other.
I believe that in these instances the Right has been slanderous of the church
and has rejoiced in wrong, and that the Left has taken a course that they have
not supported with adequate theology.
It doesn't matter here whether you agree or disagree with me on those things.
What you need to understand is that I will do all in my power to maintain and
protect our primary sense of church, our primary ecclesiology, the arena in
which we deal with issues. I also want you to know that the agenda for our
ministry is not to be set in any place other than northeast Pennsylvania. Our
agenda is not to be set by anyone else. I say and do that because I think this
diocese has it all just about right.
Were you horrified this fall when you learned about the tragedy in Washington,
where two drivers who were angry with each other caused an accident that killed
three other people, one of them a young mother? It may or may not be true that
the people on the extreme sides of our church have a right to be angry with
each other. It may or may not be true; it's irrelevant. I cannot tolerate anybody
causing a crash that kills other people. The truth is that in the last 35 years,
the Episcopal Church has managed to alienate about a third of its membership.
The truth of that is we are approaching the size of a sect rather than a denomination.
And that will not happen here.
The diocese is the basic unit of the Episcopal Church
I hope you notice that in what I said to you so far I've used the
word diocese to mean all us, for that is the next thing I want to say about
what I think it means to be the Church. Where we sometimes get confused is
in thinking that the diocese is a bureaucracy or some alien life form on the
unfashionable side of Bethlehem. That's not true.
The fundamental unit of the Episcopal Church is not the local congregation.
It is the diocese. That's why when I institute a rector, the prayer book uses
the expression, "the ministry which is mine and yours in this place." Now
I don't like that example because the bishop is not the center in that sense.
We have met the diocese, and it is us. What that means is that our lines of
accountability, therefore, are primarily horizontal lines in the Episcopal
Church. In the simplest form, that means that if parish X ceases to bear its
share of whatever load we're talking about, that load doesn't disappear into
the ozone layer. It has to be picked up and borne by another parish or by other
parishes. This is the hardest lesson to learn for Episcopalians who have come
from other Protestant denominations: we are not a congregational church. Whether
we are talking about money, participation in programs, or joining in regional
efforts of any kind, we seek to work as one family.
In that context, long before you and I ever heard of each other, the people
of the Bethlehem Diocese made a decision. As I have come to understand and
respect it, it goes like this. Some of our churches are too small in numbers
to support a full-time priest. Many of those who can cannot support a full-time
secretary. Almost all of our churches can no longer support a full-time curate.
And while that's true on the one hand, it is also still true on the other hand
that we need to have youth programs, educational programs, social ministries,
and all the other things that big congregations with multi staff do. Just because
you're small doesn't mean you're not going to have Sunday School. It is precisely
because of our small typical parish size that we have a large diocesan staff,
to insure that every church in this diocese has someone they can call for help
with youth, education, communications, and so on.
The Diocese of Bethlehem is unique
No other diocese in the Episcopal Church has developed this idea as thoroughly
as we have, and I think you know that. We have reaped the rewards of our
efforts. Our commitment to this path of action was undertaken together; the
day may come when we want to change it, but we will change it together.
Two points flow out of that. First, be sure you are getting what you put in
place; be sure you use the resources we have established. Second, don't think
a decision to change a pattern of support to "the diocese" or to "the national
church" doesn't directly affect every other parish, either by putting a larger
burden on them or by depriving them of something we've corporately said we
want to have here. That's what it means to be a diocese, and not a federation
of congregations.
So, if you'll excuse a review from the school marm in me: Where have we been
in this talk so far?
. I'm grateful to be here.
. This diocese is a welcoming and loving community.
. We keep Christ at the center of all we do and say.
. We put being Christ's body, the church, before anything else.
. We realize that we're in this together.
. If we change, we change together.
III. Making Disciples in Northeast Pennsylvania
All that I've just said may be the longest introduction to a short speech
than anything since the president of the Northampton, Massachusetts Rotary
introduced Calvin Coolidge to speak at lunch. In any event, here comes the
bishop's address. It's much shorter.
Why I want to give my all to preserve all that is good about this diocese
is that I believe that we have so much to share, that we ought to be more intentional
about sharing it.
I don't mean, oh, let's see if we can get enough new members in parish X to
meet the budget or get the roof fixed. I have no quarrel with budgets and repair
bills; but I mean something very different, something much more fundamental.
We have sinned by what we have left undone
I think we have sinned by what we have left undone; I don't know any
other way to say this. I think we have sinned grievously against God and our
neighbors.
The Episcopal Church in general has pretended that when Jesus said, "Go into
all the world and make disciples of all nations," he mumbled something in the
end, "except the Episcopalians don't have to do this." We have sometimes allowed
ourselves to believe that wonderful social ministry, noonday organ recitals,
and our stunningly good taste in general, could substitute for evangelism,
could substitute for saying to the people around us that life can be a lot
better if they know Jesus Christ.
Again, don't get me wrong: I love cultural events, and have myself given noonday
organ recitals. I have just told you that our social ministries are great.
These good things, and good they are, we know from history have not done the
job. We know that most of the people we know do not know Jesus Christ in any
important way.
The main thing...
When I have a big job to do I have an interesting dynamic. I sit down
at my desk and notice that, while I have to write this speech, the desk is
a bit cluttered. I tell myself that I'll work better if the mail got answered
and there was no distracting pieces of paper on my desk. Eventually I find
myself straightening out the drawers, wondering if I paid that American Express
bill from 1978, and so on. Before I know it, it's lunch time, and then perhaps
back to work. I never meant to leave my task unfinished, but I did allow myself
to get distracted, and so in a way I left my work undone with a clear conscience,
because I was very busy doing something that needed to be done.
If that's a clear conscience, then conscience needs to be educated. The facts
are that my generation -- the Boomers -- is getting ready for retirement largely
unconverted. The facts are that Generation X doesn't even look that good. Will
we dare to believe that this is our problem, individually and corporately?
Have we allowed ourselves to get distracted with secondary issues while our
neighbors, perhaps our next door neighbors, may be leading lives that are meaningless,
unsatisfying, and perhaps self-destructive? The facts seem to be that most
of us would rather have a root canal than talk about our religion, even if
it is the one thing the person we are with needs most to make some sense out
of life.
Episcopal evangelism
I want to assure you I am not here to recruit for the Jehovah's Witnesses,
but I don't put them down. I recognize that our style of evangelism will in
many ways have to be more public, other ways more subtle and other ways more
personal than theirs, but let's not knock them. They're doing it. Let's in
fact acknowledge that every time we make fun of them, we might be reinforcing
a belief that we are excused from the Baptismal Covenant's promise "to witness,
by word and example, to the good news of God in Christ."
Let's not give in to the mildly snobbish notion that evangelism is for those
other denominations -- the ones that don't have prayer books. At the same time,
let's be who we are about it. For the fact is the Episcopal Church has more
than its fair share of the wise, the creative, the go-getters of this world,
and has them for a variety of reasons. I expect that when we truly believe
that God wants our churches not just to grow to the point where they can survive,
not just to grow to critical mass, but to burst at the seams with people who
have found out what life in abundance is all about -- when that happens, it
will be because all our wise, creative, successful people have employed precisely
what has made them successful in their weekday occupations to the business
of bringing the world to know God in Christ. So, I assume that what we will
do will be different in some ways, and will be appropriate to the best things
about our heritage as an historic, sacramental, expression of the body of Christ.
Beyond the comfort zone
Now here's a nagging fear. Do we also need to confess that we would not particularly
like our churches to get too big, that we've grown to prefer a small church
where we know everybody and can be known by everybody, and that we recoil
at the idea of Good Old Saint Leonard's on the Lehigh being full of people
we don't know, some of them sitting in our pew -- where we sat for 35 years?
Well then, maybe our mission strategy would be to start a number of small
churches, or divide big congregations into small cells so there's always
somebody we know. Maybe not, but let's talk about the real issues: How do
we obey Jesus' demand that we share the gospel?
Obey Jesus
I am using words like obey and demand precisely for their shock value.
We tend not to use them, especially in church; but their urgency is there because
Jesus was serious when he said that, and the ONLY question for us is not whether
or not Jesus meant it, but how do we carry it out.
Part of my passion around this issue comes from the fact that northeast Pennsylvania
is growing in several places, and is growing quite rapidly; part of my passion
come from the fact that in other parts of Pennsylvania a kind of despair sits
heavily on people and on churches as towns are dying. We have some cities whose
level of trouble is increasing. Everyone of those places, all those people,
need the presence of Jesus Christ.
Showing our repentance in what we do
Now at this point it might be convenient to get some catharsis --
to call for seven weeks of repentance in sackcloth and ashes, or polyester
-- or perhaps seven years of repentance in hair shirt -- anything rather than
to get busy as "roadies of redemption," showing our repentance in what we do.
But let's just say that we will repent by getting busy, for repentance means "turning
around." The truth is, there is a lot of joy to be had in welcoming new Christians,
joy that far outweighs any momentary feelings of regret and helplessness we
may feel when we think of opportunities lost in the past. Jesus says bear fruits
that befit repentance. I think that means not dwelling on the past, but learning
to receive a future.
For me, the fundamental question for this wonderful diocese, for this healthy
diocese, is this. Do we share God's passion for the world? Or do we just like
to go to church? If we share God's passion for the world, are we willing to
act on that passion?
There are some things to do
If we decide the answer is yes, there are some things to do. The first
is to stop and not do something without a plan; because then you have this
phenomenon of people leaving churches as quickly as they come in, and you burn
yourselves out in the meantime If we believe that God still means the Episcopal
Church to evangelize, we will all need to pray, reflect, and plan.
To assist us in this I will be asking every department, commission, task force
and committee of the diocese to consider their part in that. Let me give you
a few examples. I will ask Council to find ways to coordinate those efforts.
The Commission on the Ministry of the Baptized will be asked to work on ways
to teach us how to incorporate new members into parishes and how to reclaim
those who have dropped out. The Commission on Ministry has already been asked
to think seriously about how we recruit, yes, recruit, clergy who have a desire
to tell the gospel, a desire to build up the church. Renewal and Evangelism
and Communications will have a very big role to play in any efforts we undertake,
as will Congregational Development, and so on.
Demographic data
Anything we do on the diocesan level is meant to assist all our local parishes,
and my hope is that in the next 12 months each parish will have a mission
goal and a mission strategy in place. To assist you in this, Congregational
Development has already begun the process that will bring to each parish
sophisticated demographic data.
Auditing our Sunday experience
Because we have relied heavily on people visiting the Episcopal church
as the place where we get new members, I hope each church will seriously audit
what the experience of coming to your church is for the first time. You might
very well ask people from the other end of the diocese to appear some Sunday
unannounced in your church, incognito, and then give you a detailed report
of what the experience was like. Make sure some of them don't wear ties. In
the meantime, I am consolidating financial resources from my discretionary
fund and the Leonard Hall Fund to assist us in mission work in our 14 counties.
I don't want to get more specific at this point. I believe that God has called
us to raise the issue, and now needs us to work together in the spirit to respond.
I believe we are called to work together to assess our task and to plan how
we will do it. We have an enormous amount to give the world, and there is no
doubt there will be great joy each new time we share it.
Reviving the districts
Finally, I think that it is essential that we revive the districts,
even if we have to draw the lines in some more convenient way. In the first
place, I feel very awkward that the bishop ends up by default appointing many
of the lay and clergy members of the Council who really should be elected by
their districts. But I think there are even more important reasons that local
meetings get going. First of all, it is important that they simply meet --
we have to be in touch with each other if we are to grow as a diocese. But
the districts can be centers of discussion; they can be think tanks, where
issues that we simply cannot discuss at length among 325 people in a room can
be addressed in some detail. They can be where mission strategy appropriate
to your local situation can be developed, where plans can be made for joint
efforts.
Feeling the urgency of Jesus' commission to us
If you had asked me 24 months ago if I thought I'd ever be saying
things like these to any church group, let alone a diocese as distinguished
as that of Bethlehem, I would have asked you if you had skipped your medication
that day. Nonetheless, everywhere I've gone, every day since late last spring,
I have felt the weight and the urgency of Jesus' commission to us.
There's something else I know. As I have come to know God, there seems to
be nothing that God requires of us that God will not empower us to do -- if
we put ourselves where the power is. A call to mission is a call to prayer,
contemplation, and study, as well it is to proclamation, action, community-building
and celebration.
So, to reinforce that, let's end where we did last night, with the collect
for yesterday:
O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the multitudes who have been
created in your image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus
Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of your holy Church, they
may be brought to know and worship you as you have been revealed in your Son;
who lives and reigns with you the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
AMEN
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