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The Bishop's Address

 

February 7, 2009

35th Convention of the Diocese of San Diego

 

Listen to the Bishop's Address here

 

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

When we gathered for our 34th Convention in Palm Desert last year, I compared our community life to a shared spiritual journey that was consonant with that of our ancestors:  first the story of Joseph and his family moving into Egypt in hope of survival and later guided by Moses, God’s people are led through mystically parted seas to a land of promise.  That journey continued through times of great distress into exile in Babylon, followed by return and restoration.  Indeed, Jesus and his followers were heirs of Israel in a passage toward restoration, but instead of establishing an earthy kingdom, Jesus led his followers towards the Kingdom of God. 

 

And so, as spiritual travelers, we walk with Jesus in a miraculous and transformational journey in this world.  Yet, it is a journey that does not end in this world but is eternal with the One who goes with and before us.  We, twenty-first century Christians in this community of Jesus, continue that journey in a part of the world that is filled with both opportunities and challenges. In the midst of those opportunities and challenges,  we continue to travel together, and live into our diocesan strategic plan, carrying out the vision of our diocese.  Let me remind you of the words of our Vision: to be an open, diverse community of celebration and hope recognizing God in everyone, inviting all to a spiritually rich, life-changing journey of faith by practicing service, study, prayer, care, and advocacy.

 

The question before us is “What does this community of Jesus, this Church, in this place and time look like and how will we realize it?

 

I want us to dare to imagine together the community we are now envisioning, a different church than we probably see today. I am mindful of the challenges and uncertainty of our time.  But I also believe deeply these three things:  that the Gospel of Jesus Christ compels us to become this kind of community we envision. Secondly, I believe that God is indeed good, and that when God’s people act out of abundance rather than scarcity,  amazing things happen. Fred Borsch, the retired Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, said it so well, “the gospel is always about impossible things becoming possible.” This is the Gospel which leads us into places we have yet to imagine, and pushes us to dream greater dreams and reach farther than we can even yet see. 

 

And so, I invite you to imagine what we can become by traveling this road together. 

 

This community is inherently new and yet returns to ancient, Christ-centered core values.  It is a re-imagined community; this is what our dreams for the renewed Church would look like.  It will be a Church which gives hope, meaning and purpose to a world that sorely needs to be touched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

So how will we realize that vision?  I want to share with you today three ways I believe we can do that:

 

First, I am convinced that we can do more together than we can do alone.  This is central. We can be better builders of the Kingdom of God when we build it together, when we are committed to a common purpose, and when we partner together in the journey and in the building.  We need to step out and work together beyond our individual congregational doors.

 

It has now been just shy of four years since I became your bishop.  It has been a time of great challenge and significant progress combined.  We experienced a measure of turmoil in 2005 and 2006 as our church grappled with some of the more tough issues of our day. Vexing issues around ethics of our day. We see those issues mirrored in our cultural and political life.  In the process, we grieved the loss of members of our congregations and the disappointment of others on all sides of the issues.  And yet, through this time, the gospel of Jesus Christ continued to be proclaimed in word and deed.  The poor were fed, the lonely were given companionship, and the sorrowful were comforted.  As a diocese, we faced our brittle financial situation and made some hard choices that have allowed us to position ourselves for moving forward. 

 

These challenges have not all gone away.  In fact, this recent economic crisis has abated some of our progress and created new factors with which we must grapple.  It is not at all surprising that our congregations have tightened their belts and in so doing have decreased total mission share pledges to our common diocesan ministry. 

 

Even so, we continue to be a diocesan community committed to our common mission and vision, investing significantly in strengthening the vitality of our congregations. As we examine our budget for 2009, the main priority remains the highest degree of congregational vitality. Our budget reflects that priority through direct financial mission investment and parish program support, as well as through the investment in resources such as my staff who serve to support, coach, teach and guide our congregations in achieving that priority. 

For example, by coming together as a diocese to accomplish more together than we could possibly do as separate congregations, we  provided support and empowered the seven congregations who experienced the loss of their clergy leadership and a significant portion of their laity in 2005 and 2006.  I can report to you, that through our common resources as a diocese, through your willingness in so many different ways to provide spiritual and financial support, and through clergy and lay leadership who have given sacrificially of their gifts of time, talent and treasure, each of these seven congregations has grown and continues to grow. Each is thriving when surviving might have been their only goal, when they might have been devastated by the breaking of their community.  That's not a growth strategy I'd recommend to anybody butit has happened and it hasn't happened in solitude because we have been a part of each other.

 

Each of these congregations gives sacrificially to the work of the entire Diocese through their mission share pledge because they know how very important it was  to have been supported by their brothers and sisters in our Diocese.  St. Timothy’s, Rancho Penasquitos; Grace Church, San Marcos; St. Paul’s, Yuma; Holy Cross, Carlsbad; St. John’s, Fallbrook; and Christ the King, Alpine, thank you for your example of the courage and continuing hard work to move forward and be the Gospel people we are called to be in the face of unexpected challenges and disappointments and divisions. Thank you.

 

There are so many other ways this partnership in ministry is happening in our Diocese.  Episcopal Community Services continues to be revitalized with a remarkable staff and board.  I had to recognize Mark DeMichele because of what he's done. The homeless and mentally ill are given a new hope each day.  Children are given a more hopeful and helpful future through our Head Start Programs.  Battered women and their children find sanctuary.  And those who are hungry are fed.  Through the St. Luke’s Refugee Network and John McLevie, we join together and give support to our newest neighbors.  And through our international companion relationships with El Salvador and Maseno North, we connect and support with neighbors that are not as close. This is ministry larger than what  one congregation could  provide .  And yet our collective Diocesan partnerships, person to person, congregation to congregation, ministry to ministry, make it possible  to reach into communities across this Diocese to serve, in the name of Jesus Christ and the Episcopal Church, and on your behalf, the ever increasing needs for hope and healing, for welcome and home, for God’s love and grace in a broken world.

 

I am grateful for your encouragement as well as your financial support in our collective ministry.  Please know in these tough times that I am grateful to you and recognize every good gift you give. My charge to you is to become more familiar with these ministries that are ours together and to continue to remind your congregations that as partners we are able to multiply our common ministry in so many ways - as a Diocese, to do more together than we can do alone.

 

Secondly, every community represented in this Convention is unique and offers particular opportunities to reach out and to serve the name of the living God.  Archbishop William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, reminded us that the “Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of its non-members.”  Think about it. The gospel call us again and again to go beyond our own needs, beyond our own comforts, our own familiar places and go to the places where we can live the Great Commandment.

 

" You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Do this,” Jesus says, “and you will live." And we do that.

As I visit our congregations my dear ones, I see the world around us populated with hungry people.  Our towns and neighborhoods are inhabited by the lonely, the confused, the lost, the poor, the grieving, the sorrowful. They are hungry for the hope that we have found in Jesus Christ.  They yearn for the meaning in their lives that we know as a part of the Body of Christ.  They desire to have a purposeful life that can only be found in serving the world in Jesus’ name.  It is for this reason that each of our fifty mission stations needs to be stronger and more vibrant.  We need to do it not for ourselves, but for the hurting, the lost, the lonely around us.  We need to do it for those in our communities where God has placed us. 

 

Whether it's youth ministry at St. David’s, San Diego; St. James’, La Jolla; St. Dunstan’s, San Diego; St. Peter’s, Del Mar; or St. Paul’s, Yuma, or the collection of food for local distribution at St. John’s, Indio; St. John’s, Chula Vista, or Christ Church, Coronado who challenged one another to a competition to see who could gather the most, or the toy maker’s ministry at Trinity, Escondido, or feeding the homeless at St. Paul in the Desert, or the work of All Souls’, Point Loma in support of our missionaries in Kenya, or the prison ministry at All Saints’, Brawley and the orphanage ministry in Mexicali from Santa Rosa, del Mar or the ministry of our parish based schools reaching into their communities to serve children at  All Saints’, Vista, St. Margaret’s, Palm Desert, St. Stephen’s, Sun City, St. Andrew’s, La Mesa, St. Thomas, Temecula, St. Andrew’s, Pacific Beach, St. John’s, Chula Vista, Christ Church, Coronado, St. Bart’s, Poway, or the adoption of a family in need by Church of the Apostles’, Coachella or the Dorcas House ministry of St. Paul’s, Cathedral or the serving of the homeless at Brother Benno’s by St. Michael’s, Carlsbad, or the incredible ministries of prayers and squares, shawl ministries and healing ministries, offering peace and prayer to others in so many of our congregation. And so many, many others are not  named here, but you know who you are and what you do.  The hopes and hurts of countless people are addressed by each of you.  When we serve those outside the fellowship, we show them who and whose we are, and we are blessed in our service.  My charge to you, in times when it is tempting to turn inward,  is to look ever more deeply outward into your communities that you may seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbors as yourselves.

 

Third, every congregation must be intentionally engaged in welcoming and inviting others into a place of hope and heart, of mission and purpose. 

The Great Commandment, to love God and neighbor, and the Great Commission, to make disciples, are inextricably connected. I believe that people join the Episcopal Church because they fall in love with a particular congregation.  They find it a place of mission, of hope, love, heart and faith.  Their hearts, in the words of John Wesley, are strangely warmed and brought closer to God and stirred to do the work and will of God in their lives.  As I visit with you, I hear this from you.  You love your church.  It is a place of hope. 

 

I encourage us  to think of our collective church, our diocese, as a constellation of communities of heart and hope and places of active mission, serving the world in Jesus’ name.  We are in relationship to each other, drawn to each other, in an order and system much like the stars of the sky. And I sense that this  constellation of communities of heart and hope are no less ordained by God than the stars.  We are one church in fifty different mission stations.

 

As one church, one constellation of communities , we are called to bring people to Christ.  I challenge you to make the main thing the main thing.  That main thing is bringing people to Christ.  Each of us has a hand in that work. When we share our faith stories and invite others to join us in this journey of believing and following Christ, we are living fully into our Christian being.  From this day forward, let us make the work of the evangelist central to who we are as a constellation of communities of heart and hope.  Let us not keep this great gift the best kept secret in each of our communities.

To all of you, I ask you to pray each day for our shared work as disciples making disciples.  As a part of that work, pray for those that you know who have not found Christ.  Pray for them and then invite them.  Use the new tools you will be given in the upcoming evangelism workshops being planned throughout the Diocese.  As Grace, San Marcos is doing, use a program like the Invite-a-Friend Sunday program and amaze yourselves by the extraordinary surprises God has for you in the new people who will come. 

 

To the clergy who actively serve in congregations, I want you to also pray for God’s guidance in discerning who in your congregation has the charism of an evangelist.  Guided by the Spirit, I call on you to identify at least two individuals within your congregation to be commissioned as evangelists.  I know that this sounds very un-Episcopal but it is very much first Century Christianity and it should and must be Twenty-first Century Christianity. 

 

Each person so identified shall attend one of the diocesan workshops on Evangelism where they will be formed and trained to do the work of Evangelist.  Congregational evangelists would then be prepared to form their congregations to be communities of disciples making disciples.  At our 36th Diocesan Convention, we will commission these congregational leaders for the work that they will no doubt already have begun.  With these leaders and with God’s good gifts, we will bring others to Christ.  Our church will be blessed and our ministry strengthened. 

 

Today, we are a constellation of approximately 20,000 people who belong to one of our communities of heart and hope.  By becoming more a community of disciples by making disciples, we will offer the heart of Jesus and others will claim the hope known in the Risen Christ.  We will grow our ministry together. And so I want to lay out a big, audacious goal. Let us double the membership of this diocese in the next five years through this work of evangelism.

 

Why should we do this? Becasue Jesus told us to do it! “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  But we also do this to transform our church from a church struggling for people and financial resources to one living into abundance. Moving from a church of maintenance, to a church of mission.  We should claim our identity as a church of possibility.  This is a bold and ambitious goal. But it is doable. With God all things are possible. 

 

Now, relatively speaking, our diocese is a young diocese.  This is only our thirty-fifth convention and I am only your fourth bishop.  While we have a wonderful cathedral and forty-nine other communities of hope and heart, we do not have what I have called a center point of our diocese, a place of gathering and gravitas that is worthy of our shared mission and ministry and our vision. And so I think in this decade that we are in, we should address this.  A diocesan center  should be a place of resource and renewal for our entire community.  I imagine it to be a place that defines for the wider community what the Episcopal Church represents.  It might be a place for teachings, for presentations, for respite, for outreach into the community, for retreat, for acquisition of books, films, and other resources that tell the Christian story.  It would be in a sense be our diocesan living room, the place we come to be together, our home. And so as you can see, what I am imagining for our diocese is centered is much more than a place where a bishop places his office and where there are a few meeting rooms for clergy. It should be a place that speaks of heart and home and hope. Because our forbearers are important and our history should be remembered and celebrated, I think it's only appropriate that in doing this we should remember our first bishop, Robert Wolterstorff and whatever we do named in his honor. 

Now I've laid out some things, some charges, some encouragement for you. It's a lot. We can do a lot. We have God on our side, empowered by the Holy Spirit. But it wouldn't be right for me to ask those things, to offer that direction and not tell you what I'm going to do too. And so here's my commitment to you. I am going to work as hard as I can in finding the resources to assist you, our congregations, in becoming more vibrant and strong.

 

I will continue to seek people for this work and gifts for our congregational renewal fund. In addition, I want us to begin discerning what our next communities of hope and heart will be, where they will be planted. And because we're disciples making disciples, we should wonder where we should plant our next church as a mission outpost to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I will work tirelessly to provide the financial resources to do that work as well.  

 

Part of raising those resources will include being attentive to those who will come after us.  Each of us has a capacity to give our time, talent and treasure to the life and mission of our church and the greater glory of God.  We are doing nothing less than those who have gone before us.  We also have the potential to give boldly as we give up the gift of life.  Or, as Dean Scott Richardson challenges his congregation of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to astonish ourselves with our generosity.  It is time for us to think about our legacy and to develop programs to assist those who are passionate about our congregations and their ministries to make legacy gifts. And so to that end, I will be working with you to  create a comprehensive program of planned giving to enable our congregations to build the endowments and reserves to be financially strong for generations to come. And so I propose that in the next five years we join together to acquire commitments in bequests, charitable trusts, pooled income funds, and other devices. I would just suggest that you imagine that in doing this work what future we might build.

 

It's pretty simple really I think.

 

We can do more together than we can do alone. We can become more familiar with the ministries that are ours together and  remind our congregations that as partners we're able to multiply our common ministry. 

 

We will strengthen that common work.

 

Every community represented at this Convention is a gift of God, and is unique and offers particular opportunities to reach out in the name of the living God. And so let us look more deeply into our communities so that we may seek and serve Christ in others, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We will be blessed in our service.

 

In every one of our congregations each of us must intentionally engage in that welcoming ministry, inviting others in. Identify your evangelists and begin to plan that work of doubling the numbers of people a part of our congregation.

And know this, I'll do what I can, do everything I can to advance our work together so that your heart may be strong and your hope may be infectious. I will strive with every fiber of my being to find the resources we need and I think they're out there among us. So pray for our shared ministry, for this constellation which God has set in motion in grace-filled relationship; pray without ceasing.  And as you raise your heads in prayer, let's join together in building up this ministry.  Let us build it with our passion and enthusiasm, our giving and our hard work, and most importantly our sense of gratitude for what God is doing. 

 

And finally,  be open.  Please be open. Be open to the Spirit moving through us.  The church of today is going to have to change to be the church of tomorrow.  We will need every ounce of our creativity, passion, and compassion.  There are hungry people out there. Hungry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and they don’t even know it.  We're supposed to feed them. And in feeding others, we will be fed.

 

As I have said to you in years past, I say to you again: it is a great privilege to be your bishop. I feel your prayers and support. I know that you were there every step of the way. Know this: I love you and it is my greatest joy to be your servant.  

 

May God richly bless our Church, our diocese, and each community of heart, hope and mission within it.

 

Thank you.