Shaping
the Future of New Bethany Ministries
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
This is the text of Bishop Paul's talk at the November 19 *Souper
Day* luncheon benefit for New Bethany Ministries. Contributions waaayyyy
exceeded the initial $15,000 goal.
Before I say anything else, I need to express our debt to Bob Wilkins
and to the staff of New Bethany Ministries. Can we ask them to stand
and receive our thanks.
I am also grateful to Bobby Gunther-Walsh for all the airtime he
has given New Bethany in recent weeks. It is nice to drive to work
hearing the Valley being encouraged to support these ministries.
Now, I would like to preach to the choir for a bit, and then say
something about the future of New Bethany Ministries.
I am an animal lover. Well, I am a dog lover who has tolerated assorted
hermit crabs and chameleons and so on, and made peace with my children's
elderly cats. This is necessary because both kids left home years
ago, and Diana and I were left with the cats they swore to care for
forever, but you know how that goes. The point of my telling you
this is that last month in getting ready to preach on St Francis'
Day, when it has become the custom to bless animals, I found myself
feeling the weight of the not-very-original observation that it is
so easy to love our Golden Retrievers or Siamese more than we love
God's poor.
But I must immediately add that the ministry of New Bethany is not
about making pets out of anybody, of course. Pets are dependent creatures
kept around to please us. New Bethany is about helping others become
free to live their own lives. From its beginning, New Bethany has
been primarily about giving people shelter and other services so
that they can rebuild their lives with pride, and rediscover their
God-given dignity. Similarly, Restoration House provides a safe base
from which people can on a long-term basis simply have a life with
safety and, again, do so with rediscovered and renewed dignity. It
is because your presence here today shows your commitment to that
purpose that I thank you on behalf of all those whom you serve by
supporting New Bethany. Because you are supporters of this work,
you deserve to know how things are going.
I have always hated sitting through blue-sky presentations, to the
effect of "yes, we did have an unplanned horizontally vectored tactile
encounter with a significant mass of stationary frozen water in this
vicinity, and we do seem at the present moment to be in a transitional
situation floatationwise speaking, but we are highly confident that
R.M.S. Titanic will use this special time of transitional buoyancy
process to set several more impressive records before the night is
out," and so on.
Let me be plain then. The past year has been difficult for New Bethany,
and we have had to learn some lessons that were not pleasant. However,
we have learned them, even if it hasn't been pleasant, the year has
also been a real gift. Let me tell you a bit of what has been going
on. I will be as plain as I can be. There have been issues in management
and finance in the agency, and these have caused us to look at New
Bethany from the ground up.
The first thing that this has meant is that the Bishop and Trustees
of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem have been reminded of our role
in the Ministry's life, and have acted to keep it, as it were, afloat.
We have done this through several loans of money, and through the
added work of a number of our key personnel. It is with gratitude
that I can report that New Bethany's finances are under control and
that we are operating with a realistic budget with no curtailment
of services. Having said that, I need to add that the Diocese originally
provided New Bethany to be an ecumenical opportunity for the community
to care for those in need, and the board and the volunteers of New
Bethany represent a variety of faith traditions, and we expect that
broad base to grow. In fact, explorations are under way that could
mean wider cooperation with other ecumenical and denominational ministries
in the Valley.
Together with Bob Wilkins, I have convened a Blue Ribbon panel of
leaders in business, social service, church, and philanthropic fields
to assess our strengths and help plan the future of New Bethany.
We will continue to meet into January of next year. The committee
will report to the board its assessment of what New Bethany does
best, how it can focus its work, and how best to secure the long-term
delivery of the services it provides. At that point, the New Bethany
board will plot its course and hire an executive director to relieve
Bob Wilkins and take the organization to the next chapter in its
story. I thought it was worth taking a few minutes of your time to
give you those facts. We are open to many possible configurations,
but this work of helping people take back their lives will go on.
There is, as you all know so well, a deep satisfaction that comes
from helping others. We need to keep doing that. However, it's not
quite as satisfying to take on the forces in our national life that
cause, profit from, or even depend on the poverty of others. The
struggle each of faces is to follow our commitments into the places
where the culture does not reinforce us - and surely this is one
of them. The culture rewards us for mild commitment and occasional
talk about caring; it does not so readily reward us when we are counter-cultural
enough to risk the consequences of taking on the systemic roots rather
than just the symptoms of evil in our society. Permit me to encourage
you to hold, politely but firmly, our leaders' and legislators' feet
to the fire so that there can come a day when we have to consider
shutting down or limiting New Bethany's transitional housing because
it has so little business. Thank you for your kind attention.
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