The Bishop's Address
The Bishop's Address
32nd Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego
February 11, 2006
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I.
I want to begin this, my first convention address as your bishop, with a word of gratitude. First, I want to thank you for calling me to be your bishop, which exceeds my greatest hopes for service in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Because of you, I have the joy of abiding in the apostolic life. After almost one year, I can tell you that it is mostly joy and the challenges are ones that I believe we, ALL, are called to engage together. I also want to thank our staff members, who have made this year of transition be a time of deep collaboration and deepening trust, respect and friendship. Beginning with my administrative assistant, Bobbi Hoff who has kept me organized and informed about the life and work of the Diocese so I can get to know this wonderful, faithful community more quickly; Barbara Britain, our accounting manager who has helped with the difficult tasks of preparing the budget in a new process and bringing our financial records into order, while developing new processes for fiscal accountability; Candy Mulkey, our staff and program aide and youth ministry coordinator, who gives support to Canons Smith and Vervynck, serves as the person who registers you for our many events, and has coordinated several youth ministry opportunities over the past years; Isabel Lynne, our Receptionist, the caring and helpful first voice on the phone; Sue Embick and Susan Cloyd, part-time accounting assistants, who continue to be of such help in the complicated work of accounting, payroll, and support to treasurers in congregations; the Rev. Ned Kellogg who has served as registrar and interim canon for pastoral care, keeping our licensing and background checks current and helping me stay in touch with the pastoral needs of our clergy; Rebecca Williamson, who has been the editor of the Church Times, webmaster and helpful in a variety of communications efforts and Canon Jenny Vervynck, who serves as master of deployment and congregational development and has over the years made direct contributions to so many congregations in our diocese; and the Rev. Juan Acosta who has served for a generation as our Hispanic missioner and who will continue serving our diocese as the full-time vicar of St. Mary's/Santa Maria, Virgen in Imperial Beach. I am particularly grateful to our new canon, Howard F. Smith who has sacrificed much to serve in this diocese. I am honored that he is with us. But most especially, I want to thank my dear wife, who has followed me literally across the country as I have served the church. She has sacrificed friends, proximity to family, and her work so that we could be here with you. In case you don't know it, you might have done okay bringing me here, but you hit a "home run" with Terri Mathes. So to everyone present, I say, "thank you from the bottom of my heart."
II.
When you called me to be your bishop, you asked me to come among you and to be a bridge-building bishop. As I tested in my own prayers and contemplation of this call, I found myself turning to Scripture and the Prayer Book. In Scripture, I have always been powerfully persuaded that Paul captured both the gift of Jesus and the church's relentless mission when he wrote to a conflicted community in Corinth,
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has been made new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. II Corinthians 5: 17-19
And so, as the people of God, we are to be fundamentally about the work of reconciliation. We are to bring together that which is separated. In a divided church in ancient Corinth, or in an Episcopal Church grappling with emotional theological divisions, we are to be about the work of bringing together that which is seemingly irreconcilable. When you listened to God in the discernment process, you heard God saying to you, "Call a bridge builder; call a reconciler." You expressed that call in your profile and I was elected. I am convinced that I have been called here for what you articulated, to be a bridge builder, to engage in the ministry of reconciliation.
And so, it was with this scriptural imperative as my lens that I continued my discernment by praying the ordinal for a bishop. What I found there was a symphony of prayer and consecration rooted in the apostolic tradition and connected in community to the mission of reconciliation. For me, this symphony of prayer reached its crescendo when the bishops present laid their hands on my head...
To you, O Father, all hearts are open; fill we pray, the heart of this your servant whom you have chosen to be a bishop in your Church, with such love of you and of all people, that he may feed and tend the flock of Christ, and exercise without reproach the high priesthood to which you have called him, serving before you day and night in the ministry of reconciliation, declaring pardon in your Name, offering the holy gifts, and wisely overseeing the life and work of the Church. BCP, p. 521
And so, I stand with and among you today as God's broken and humble servant, who in communion and community with you has been called to build, to build bridges of reconciliation by which we together carry on the work of reconciliation.
When my family and I traveled to California to be with you in this grace-filled yet challenging ministry, I was aware of some of the hills that we would have to climb together; there were others that I did not perceive. So, not surprisingly, this has been a year of getting acclimated and of new learnings. In the balance of this address, I would like to present to you what I believe are the three fundamental challenges for our diocese in the months and years ahead. Because I trust the Holy Spirit, I am convinced that each of these challenges has a companion opportunity.
Challenge of Theological Diversity
Clearly, a large part of the perceived work of bridge building to which I was called is rooted in the challenge of theological diversity. We are all palpably aware that our church's theological diversity reached a point of open conflict in the wake of General Convention. The consent to the election of the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson, an openly gay man in a committed same-sex partnership, created a flash point that has preoccupied much of the energy of our church. Many Episcopalians were confounded by this consent and Bishop Robinson's consequent consecration. We should also note that many others welcomed this development. In talking with many of you, who differ on this emotional and charged question of human sexuality, I become more keenly aware that this event and its implications are a surface issue for much deeper questions regarding theology and biblical interpretation. We are struggling to do the very work of discernment that is essential to join together in the work of reconciliation. Our church is tending toward political groupings based on particular theological and ethical positions. In this environment, the art of polemics and posturing has replaced too often listening and engagement.
I find many of the characteristics of this time strangely similar to the ecclesial world of the apostle Paul. Again returning to the Corinthian correspondence:
For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human?
The modern version is to say "I belong to Integrity," and another, "I belong to the Anglican Communion Network," and another "I belong to E-Way," and another, "I belong to the American Anglican Council." This jealousy and quarreling almost tore the church in Corinth asunder; it conspires to tear our Episcopal Church asunder today.
Paul counters this danger with a clarion call to recognize the interconnected web of relationship through evangelism and mission: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth....For we are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building." And so too, I call upon us to focus our attention on the call to be servants in Christ's reconciling work.
It is fundamentally a work of connections in which we come to know and understand the one whom we do not know and do not understand. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has written, "our baptism makes us part of solidarities not of our own choosing." And so today, we find ourselves in this assembly and this diocese with people with whom we would not necessarily bind ourselves. But communion is a gift of God; our being together is not our doing but God's.
In the midst of this strained time we have been given the gift of the Windsor Report. I say gift, not because I agree that it is a new scripture, but because I believe that it is an important teaching about our Anglican Communion, its history, its blessings and weaknesses, and its future. To quote, Archbishop Robin Eames, the chair of the Commission that authored the report in his preface:
This Report is not a judgement. It is part of a process. It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation. The proposals which follow attempt to look forward rather than merely to recount how difficulties have arisen.
As I have studied this report and its specific recommendations for our future, I sense a call to transformation. I believe that the spirit of the Windsor Report is consistent with the spirit of Jesus when he says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." I do not believe that Jesus is speaking to the community of the resurrected savior as a club with membership requirements, but rather as those gathered for an extraordinary pilgrimage that will include surrender, sacrifice and death as the only way to salvation, healing, resurrection, and new life. As an Anglican Communion and as an Episcopal Church in that communion, we are being invited to a place of repentance and transformation.
Part of this invitation is hard medicine. It includes an invitation to effect a moratoria on any future consecrations of partnered gays and lesbians to the episcopate as well as the development of public rites of same sex unions. There are those in this assembly that find that a bitter pill. There are others in this room who find the report's call on bishops to respect the diocesan boundaries of other bishops making a moral equivalency that is inappropriate.
Earlier today, Bishop Steenson and I attempted to model how we can and should use the Windsor Report as a tool for theological discourse and community leadership. We are committed to assisting each other in our respective dioceses in this difficult time. We were careful to avoid treating it as legislation. I hope that this diocese and our church will commit to accepting the spirit of the Windsor Report and live into the bonds of our affection by surrendering to Christ and by exercising a posture of restraint which I believe the Windsor Report calls each of us to do.
As you may know, my own theological position on the question of the day would be described as more progressive. I am persuaded that there is a place for full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of our church, including same sex blessings and ordination. However, as a bishop, I must be the one who must "feed and tend the flock of Christ, and exercise without reproach the high priesthood to which [I have been called], serving before you day and night in the ministry of reconciliation." As I understand my role, I must exercise my office in collaboration with you, the laity, deacons, and priests of this diocese.
Because this is our shared ministry, I have found the recent events at Christ the King in Alpine and St. Anne's in Oceanside most regrettable. In neither case have significant efforts of mediation and reconciliation been welcomed. The surface issue seems to be a confrontation with me about the authority of the bishop. The real issue is the violence done to the communion of the church. The actions of those who would pull us apart are inconsistent with the words of Jesus, Paul's clear teaching on the church as a body of Christ, and baptismal and ordination vows. Some might say that the point of walking away and breaching communion is false teaching and actions by others. Even if I grant that point, as my mother always told me, "Two wrongs do not make a right!" And so, regardless of our differences, we are called to be the body together, and to work at reconciliation. That is my absolute determination.
You see, Jesus said to me, "Follow me" in an Episcopal Church. I was formed in my faith in Jesus in a church full of differing opinions on a host of issues. In the midst of that, I grew in grace and love. I will fight for each of us to have a church where our divergent theological perspectives can be honored, whether I agree with them or not. Likewise, I will protect this church from every effort to cause it harm.
I promised to present an opportunity with each challenge. We do face an enormous challenge in our diversity and in the conflict that is happening. In many ways our church's divisions and tending toward splinter, reflect a cultural tendency towards balkanization. The great opportunity is at the core of our being. It is to provide a witness of reconciliation. In our Eucharist, we remembered Jesus. And as I have said before, this is not a mere memorial. The Eucharistic act is to re-member or to assemble Jesus in this place, in this community, in this communion. It is to embody Christ's incarnational reality anew so that we can do mission together. I call on us as the people of God in this time and in this place to not give up on the Holy Spirit's call to us to be a reconciling people. Our opportunity and gift is to model this for a world that desperately needs to be reconciled to God and to each other.
Challenge of Stewardship
I said to you earlier that there were challenges that I did not see before coming to San Diego, and in the main I would say that the challenge of stewardship and finance sums up that unforeseen challenge. As you know, our Diocese undertook an ambitious capital effort called the Season of Transformation in 2000. The hope was to raise sufficient funds to build four new church buildings for St. Timothy's, Rancho Peñasquitos; St. Thomas, Temecula; St. Mary's, Ramona; and Holy Cross, Carlsbad. The plan was to build a partnership with these congregations and the diocese in which several million dollars would be raised and leveraged against the anticipated growth to construct these facilities. Hope and anticipation were high during the nominating process for a new bishop. Unfortunately, the Diocesan Corporation and I came to realize in the first months of 2005 that just over $1 million had been raised and completely expensed in the construction of St. Timothy's and start up expenses on the other projects. Furthermore, the diocese was seriously stretched by loans on land purchases in Temecula and Carlsbad. In addition, this ambitious plan and other non-budgeted expenses were creating approximately $300,000 of annual expenditures on a $1.7 million operating budget.
While we have not abandoned the plans in Carlsbad, Temecula, and Ramona, we have necessarily slowed the implementation of the plan and perhaps its scope. In addition, I am beginning to actively raise capital gifts to advance this work.
In order to rectify our financial affairs, I asked Canon Smith and Diocesan Council and Corporation to create a clear and transparent budget process as well as a system of fiscal control in which the budget that you approve today is realistic and an active tool for financial management. Under the leadership of the Rev. Stephen Wendfeldt, our newly constituted budget committee has created a budget recommended by both Diocesan Council and Corporation that is realistic and balanced. It includes an increase in our mission investments and parish program support as well as cuts in staff in the Office of the Bishop and in our financial commitment to the National Church.
Our stewardship challenges are daunting, but they too have a corollary opportunity. It has been said that the church has all the money it needs. It is simply in your pockets. I think our opportunity is to live into the generosity to which Jesus calls us. Part of what we are called to surrender to Jesus is our tendency to fear and hold. We are called to be joyful givers. It is in giving that we receive. It is in giving that we join with God in empowering the work of ministry.
As your bishop, I believe that it is essential that I lead by example. Terri and I are committed to tithing what we receive. And so, we give half of our tithe to our cathedral which is the spiritual center of our family's life. The other half goes with me as I travel to each congregation. The reality of our financial life, particularly in this year of transition, has meant that we do indeed feel the sacrificial nature of this giving. But we are convinced that we receive richer blessings in return. If even half of our people were to tithe to their congregations, we would have vastly different financial realities in our congregations, our diocese, and ECS. And so, I call on each of us to work towards the tithe. I will be shameless in asking for your support of Christ's Church in our diocese. I invite you to join me in this invitational work as we call each other to discover the opportunity and blessings of joyful, sacrificial giving.
Challenge of Formation
The final challenge that I would like to touch upon is that of formation. As a baptismal community, we are asked as a first question to affirm the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are then asked, "Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?" We are to be a people who seek to know God and to delve into the teachings of the church in a Eucharistic and prayerful community.
The challenge for us today is to make this pledge a reality. Many have noted that our church members are not particularly well-formed. We hear ourselves described as "biblically illiterate." We are told that we do not know our traditions well. I do not think these critiques are unfounded. We struggle with the busyness of our lives. We struggle with adults who are essentially unchurched. And we struggle with perceived scarcity of resources.
In my ordination, I was given a Bible with these words: "Receive the Holy Scripture. Feed the flock of Christ committed to your charge, guard and defend them in his truth, and be a faithful steward of his holy Word and Sacraments." From the first centuries of the church to today, the bishop is to be the chief teacher of the faith in the diocese. It is for this reason that I have engaged in teaching on Stewardship, Christian Formation, and more recently in monthly Bible Study. I will continue to be an active, teaching bishop.
The challenge is to become a people who know the Bible, who know the tenants of our faith, who can engage each other theologically. I believe that dealing effectively and comprehensively with our challenge in Christian Formation will directly assist us with the challenges of our diversity and our stewardship.
The opportunity therefore is to live fully into our commitment to be a people of the Bible and Prayer Book, a people of Scripture and tradition. Parker Palmer, in his book, The Courage to Teach, talks about what is required to create a teaching environment that is charged and engaging. In particular, he notes that it must have the paradoxical quality of being bounded yet open. I would encourage and call on each of our congregations to be intentional about creating just this kind of congregational ethos, where the baptismal creed becomes the bounds for our sacred conversations and, in the midst of that, there is an openness of exploration and new learning so that we can each grow in the grace and love found in Christ Jesus.
My assumption is that this will require two things: a consistent program of Sunday morning adult formation and a spirit of shared learning where everyone is both learner and teacher. Our diocesan School for Christian Ministry will be a resource to you in this effort. In addition, as we create our diocesan strategic plan, under the leadership of the Rev. Brent Carey and Shannon Heuter, I hope that we will create a vision of a diocese passionate about being a community of Christian formation to empower mission. On my visitations, I will engage you in that sacred space where we encounter the Truth which is Christ. We will model and become a community of teachers and learners of the great Truth which is the faith once delivered.
III.
Three challenges and three opportunities: diversity, stewardship, and formation. I believe that these challenges and opportunities will define our ministry in the years ahead as we live out our mission of reconciliation and proclamation. That is really the main thing that I sense God is calling us to do. Imagine that enormous grace and gift that we will be to each other and the world around us if we are ALL about reconciliation. As your bishop, I am energized by my life with you, to join with you in facing these challenges and discovering the blessings of the opportunities that go with them. And so I end where I began with a deep and abiding sense of thankfulness. I give thanks to God for our sacred calling and to you for your affirmation.
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21