Preamble
In the Incarnation, God takes on human form in Jesus Christ. This foundational moment in God’s saving work signals the mission of those who are called to be disciples of Christ and ambassadors of the Gospel. This is the mission of God in Christ: to cross the border between the divine and human—to heal division, to make the broken whole, and to defeat death. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, God has called the Church into being to advance the mission of God and to echo God’s own boundary crossing so, as Paul says to the Galatian Church, all may be “one in Christ.”
The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego embraces this mission. We are placed in a unique mission field. Situated on our nation’s border and as a veritable gateway to the Pacific Rim, we are a place of multiple cultures and communities. In addition, we are home to one of the highest concentrations of military personnel in the country, many of whom make this region their home in retirement. In this area, we find some of the most affluent communities in the nation and many of the poorest.
In a world marred by sin, difference breeds fear, which leads to separation, which can spark greater differentiation. In all of this, the seeds of human suffering may be sown. As a diocese, we embrace this particularity of place and time. We are pilgrims who cross borders, not to make others more like us, but to come to understand, befriend and invite them into the “one Body and one Spirit.”
The mystery and miracle of our journey of faith is that in these liminal places, where borders are crossed and strangers become friends, we find ourselves paradoxically more in the presence of Jesus and more truly becoming the body of Christ for the world.
In the conviction that God is always guiding and inspiring, we present this plan as our sense of how we will join in God’s mission.
God’s mission is alive. And we are privileged to join in that mission.
This is a draft preamble as proposed by the Strategic Planning Committee at our most recent diocesan convention. The committee is still hard at work and hopes to present a final version at our next diocesan convention in February.