Blogging Bishops

Some final words

The last day of General Convention is always filled with potential danger.  As we rush through the legislation, there is always the possibility of overlooking something we might otherwise pay greater attention to. As the resolutions to concur come from one House to the other, no one wants to prolong discussion or to amend unless it is absolutely necessary.  This year we managed to clear all resolutions from both Houses.  Even the retiring Vice President of the House of Bishops could not recall such an achievement during his long tenure.

At the same time, motions to refer help remove potentially divisive resolutions which we would not have the time to do justice to in our deliberations, while stopping us from increasing the potential headlines which are already flowing from the Convention.  In the meantime our e-mails as bishops begin to increase, as people back home react to what others tell them in the various media outlets what we are supposed to have done.  Just a simple oversight in the text transmission on a resolution on the Blessed Virgin Mary from the House of Bishops to the House of Deputies caused considerable distress and could have been very misleading had it not been caught because of a Deputy’s pained protest to what they thought had been passed.

I will have to wait a while until I can communicate with the people of Iowa. Just as I came to General Convention from a personal situation with my own parents in England, so I unexpectedly return to England to assist at the burial of a dear friend –my best man at our wedding, and the one who introduced me to Jesus Christ, and thus I suppose eventually to General Convention!

We carry out this ministry and call of God in Jesus Christ in the midst of situations like this. We ended the legislative sessions on Friday tackling issue after issue from the International and National Concerns Committee. Sometimes we wonder if we have any right to be commented on some of the things brought before us, but generally this is our opportunity to say that our faith is about societal transformation.  It is about “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”.  It is about our lives as citizens inspired by the values of Christ as much as it is about our lives as church people concerned for our liturgies and pastoral offerings or calendar celebrations.  We know this Convention has been about real people as we have had to face the difficult task of the Budget cuts affecting people we have been interacting with at this very Convention.

But the world needs our voice on issues of peace, and climate change, on international relations, and opposing discrimination. We have something to say on economics, and we have challenges to face on the nature of how we carry out our own collective life. I want to end with one statement by the Bishop of Mississippi which will linger with me long. Quoting the words of John Hines speaking form the 1970s, he said that we may well be called to become a prophetic church as we move into the future.  Such a church might well by its very calling become a smaller church, and are willing for that to happen for the sake of our prophetic call?  Bishop Grey added that we need to look at the disconnect between such a call and the comforts we like to surround ourselves with (my words not his, as I have already shipped his exact quote back to Iowa!). It was a sentiment present also in the LA night of worship in emerging church style.  There while we sang praises of our God, or listened to the words of encouragement to be the people of God, on both sides and behind the platform were photos being projected of the world’s needs – ecologically, socially, spiritually. It was an impressive way to place upon our hearts the imperatives of the Gospel of the One whose worship we were enjoying in song.  Increasingly, there is no escape from the realities of our lives and world, and the global demands of compassion and service. And we who claim to follow the Lord of Life, whose singular act among us was to take up His cross and die for all, have little choice, if seeking to be authentic and faithful, than to follow suit.

I walk away from this Convention renewed in that resolve, while hearing a heartbeat that say “mission, mission, mission”.

+Alan Scarfe
Iowa

They've been the best

Thursday, July 16, 2009
Day 9

Dear Friends in Christ,

In the House of Bishops we are all assigned to round tables and the membership of these tables stays the same for three years.  I share table with a group of bishops representing the geographic diversity of the Episcopal Church.  We also represent a diversity of theological and social views.  My colleagues are Dan Edwards, Nevada, David Lai, Taiwan, Michael Garrison, Western New York, Gary Lillibridge, West Texas, Dabney Smith, Southwest Florida, and John Buchanan, Quincy.  We have gotten to know and trust each other. 

This level of mutual respect was apparent when we came to consider C056 (Liturgies for Blessing) and D025 (Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion).  Before we began to debate a substitute resolution for B025, the Presiding Bishop asked us to spend time in quiet conversation around our tables.  I was surprised and moved how quickly we were able to identify areas of common agreement.  We then moved on to areas where we did not agree.  I heard phrases like, "I think if we removed these words (or added these words) you would accomplish your goal and allow me to remain true to my principles." 

After twenty minutes the Presiding Bishop called the House to order to consider the resolution.  The amendments proposed and passed all were very similar to the suggestions we were ready to make from our table.  When it came time to vote we were not all of one mind or vote at our table, but we were very much of one heart. 

I have been told that the table groups will be rearranged after this General Convention.  I will miss this group.  They've been the best.

Grace and Peace,

Neff Powell
Southwestern Virginia

What's next?

You could be tempted to think the headline in USA Today for this Thursday morning  “What Next?” is about the General Convention.  Of course, it is linked with the continuing difficult picture of the economic situation in the country.  Nevertheless, there is something more than coincidental about the sub-headline:  unemployment rate reaches 10.1%.  What pride we should have in much of the mission section of The Episcopal Church budget is more than tempered by the painful reality that we are having to cut back on staff and some gifted people of God are having to ask “What next?”

The pride comes with the fact that we have upheld the needs of the poorer among us in the budget both in the MDG line item being restored, as well as in the support to aided dioceses. We have laid foundations for keeping up our efforts to bring new generations of faith to Christ.  We have done this by preserving focus on young adults, youth and children, while also seeking to update our ability to deploy the advantages for communication and networking of high technology. There is a streamlining enforced by economic realities, and we are hoping this budget is one way of responding to that need.

What’s next will depend on what The Church is willing to be next as the Spirit gives impulse. How the various oversight or strategic committees set up for work over the coming triennium manage to maintain honest and transparent conversations about the development of a leaner approach to ministry and mission structure is critical.  The budget has provided much open space especially in the 2011-2012 years for doing things differently, even though no one can say what that will look like.

What next also covers the fine work of the House of Bishops with the legislation entitled C-056.  May be one set of answers is out of our hands. The resolution C-056 both moves us forward where we have not really gone before – to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources for same sex partnerships; and to acknowledge a breadth of generosity among our community as bishops to be pastors to all our clergy and people in our different contexts for ministry. Simply stating that the landscape in the United States is changing is a huge step for us, and I am most grateful to have this recognized, and hear pastoral generosity articulated.  The consultation or conversation process which moved us beyond the more divisive approach that can occur in a purely legislative environment, was a true gift – and a gift I would say from Lambeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury for his insistence on Indaba.

It spawned for me a new way to think about doing our General Convention.  What if we all met in Indaba groups– at a place with dozens of break out spaces, in groups of bishops and deputies for a good portion of the time for conversation on the major issues facing us in the next triennium. What if these things were written up and fed back to us for one Convention report which would then include some consolidated key resolutions for both houses to consider separately according to their respective rules and the Church’s canons? These resolutions would be the ones to help set the course for the next triennium.     
What if the identity of the conversations be established by vigorous online work ahead of time, and set up by the traditional time of the blue book or perhaps even later for deputies and bishops etc. to send in their resolutions?  New things could be brought up close to the time.

Of course, we heard another “What next” at the Eucharist yesterday – the reality that unless the environment and our ability to work together as one people across the earth for peace and care of the earth an done another regardless of religion, race, gender identity and orientation etc. – there will be no life or planet for life to be set upon – and there will be no need for any “What Next”.  This was the challenge of the prophetic witness of Steve Charleston, who boldly claimed “Thus says the Lord”. In the end it is the Lord’s words we seek and the Lord we ask “What next?” and to whom we respond “Behold the servant of the Lord”.

+Alan Scarfe
Iowa

Wednesday's events

I have been searching for the proper way to describe yesterday’s events and experiences—especially the ones concerning the budget. Intense, painful, real, transparent, hopeful, Anglican—all these words come to mind.  However, what strikes me is that yesterday was an experience of the Pascal Mystery in a nutshell.  It was about crucifixion and resurrection, all at once.

In the afternoon, the bishops came into the House of Deputies to receive the budget.  It’s the only time we enter that space.  The Presiding Bishop spoke of the drastic cuts that had to be made given the financial shortfall.  The pain is that many people lost their jobs at the Church Center in New York.  I know some of them and they are fine effective professionals who are victims of an economy that is not their fault or in their control.  In addition, many wonderful programs were cut.  She said we were moving mission down out of the Church Center and into the dioceses.

However, our Church also made some courageous and bold steps.  The Millennium Development Goals were restored to their asking of .07%.  We allocated a seminarian fund to aid those studying for holy orders.  We reduced General Convention by two days and made it paperless (both are moves I applaud).  Given the economy in many dioceses, in 2010 diocesan giving is reduced to 20% and in 2011 to 19%.

I am in awe of the work of the Program, Budget and Finance Committee.  They managed to present a balanced budget to Convention which was very hard but also necessary. 
We walked out of this meeting sort of shell shocked.

The afternoon was spent on a resolution about dealing with the future of same sex blessings.   I urge you to read the actual text of Resolution C056.  Our effort  here was to be transparent about our Church and the context of our dioceses as well as to hold up that Anglican quality of comprehensiveness.  The bishops wanted to write a resolution with room for as many bishops and deputies as possible.  Therefore, all sides gave something to try to include everyone. 

The resolution says we are going to be intentional about looking at blessings over the next three years; it doesn’t authorize rites but explores the whole issue.  We also acknowledged that some bishops may exercise their pastoral prerogative to respond to the situation of being in states where marriage or civil union for gay and lesbian persons is legal.  The vote was 104 yes; 30 no; 2 abstain.  This now goes to the House of Deputies.
We were not only trying to be transparent about the mind of the Church; we were trying to be transparent about the deep desire to represent the Body of Christ. There are many members, and those members are different, but we all are connected in our common love of the Lord Jesus and our common desire to follow him as his disciples.  Some said we should just not act at all, but I don’t think so. I think we are called to show the world a different way, and that is the way of seeking the oneness to which Jesus calls us.  We will only find that by travelling on this road of being disciples in confusing times together.
It was a very hard and tiring day, but a wonder-filled day.  I was very proud of our Church and I hope you are as well.

+Porter Taylor
Western Nprth Carolina

An exhausting day

Monday, July 13, was an exhausting day. I returned to my hotel room from the Budget Committee meeting early that morning at 12.30am as the Joint Committee worked to cut the gap between income and expense.  On Saturday evening I had picked up one of those pedometers being offered by CREDO at a reception which I had briefly stepped into. Within the next twenty four hours I walked more than three miles just getting around Convention to the various duties. It doesn’t mean you lose weight! An average weight gain from previous GCs has been over ten pounds and I am afraid the same is happening this time.

By 7am on Monday, we were back to Budget work.  Every line item change has to be voted in by the Committee, whether an addition or subtraction. The mission priorities of Convention are kept clearly before us as well as the mission voices of our Hearings, and yet the hard work of living within our means has to be carried out.  We went to legislative session for a couple of hours, grabbed a quick lunch which by nature was probably not as healthy as a home made turkey sandwich and then back to the finishing touches before sending the Budget to the printer. The exhaustion is more than physical. It is spiritual and emotional. The Holy Spirit’s presence is tangible, and I tend to be a weeper when that happens. 

The House of Bishops afternoon session offered no relief.  Before us was the resolution D-025, which the House of Deputies had passed late on Sunday afternoon.  Some saw this as a repudiation of the B-033 resolution of last minute infamy or fame at GC 2006. Rather it was an opportunity to state clearly but gently who we are as The Episcopal Church in our recognition that God may call any one of us baptized to ordained ministry and that for each of us it is indeed a mystery. By implication some will claim that we rolled back B033. I believe that resolution remains in our consciousness and present in our common life until we act otherwise.  The impact on the wider Communion remains a relevant issue to most of us, and as one bishop said – B033 remains in place until we consecrate another Bishop that would appear to repudiate it.

The conversation around D-025 lasted two and a half hours. The tenor was respectful and mindful that we are not of a common mind.  The relationship with the Communion partners was always in our minds, but so was the importance of being able to be transparent as to who we believe God calls us to be in the context of our mission and baptized membership.  The vote of 98 to 25 probably shocked some. I was left once again deeply moved. Twice in one day and at such a magnitude was too much. And there’s almost a whole week remaining.

I am not ready to characterize this Convention but some impressions are forming. One Communion visitor said that it is not as “grand” as Columbus – their other experience from overseas.  But they added that it seemed calmer and more focused and more substantial in its debates and content. I think there is a renewing work of the Holy Spirit going on. The worship as always is the highlight, and Sunday’s Eucharist was no exception as we gathered around the choir afterwards for encore praise singing.  I then had to rush off to get eggs for breakfast – a brief but rare luxury of a late brunch – before running back to PB&F and the beginning of the three mile day I have just described that left me so wrung out but content. “Sufficient to the day” says Jesus. Today I will think of today! 

+Alan Scarfe
Diocese of Iowa

Our comprehensiveness.

Sometimes when I am in grocery stores or airports with my collar on, people will come up to me and ask questions about The Episcopal Church, as if I were Lucy (the cartoon one, not the saint) sitting at an advice booth.  “What does the Church have to say about…?” they ask.  Most of the time, my answer is “A lot.”

One of the reasons I love The Episcopal Church is our comprehensiveness.  We are always on a journey to discover where God is leading  us and God’s Church, and we believe that at our best, as in Pentecost, God speaks through many voices yet with the same refrain of our core doctrines and our common love of Jesus Christ. 

Yesterday D025 was presented to the House of Bishops.  I read it as a descriptive document.  It states, “God has called and may call such individuals [gay and lesbian persons] to the ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church.”   It is true.  God has called, and at some point God may call again.  No doubt people have different interpretations as to the time.  We are in discernment about that, and we are in conversation about that with ourselves as well as the wider Communion.   D025 contains no language about moratoria or B033 or same sex blessings or unions. It simply tells the truth about who we are as The Episcopal Church.

Growing up in the South, sometimes in an argument some of my elders would say, “Let’s don’t have a fight. We are all saying the same thing.”  I would think to myself, “No, we having a fight because we are saying two different things.”  There are many things we could fight about concerning human sexuality and past General Conventions, but D025 ought not to be one of them.  It has enough Anglican ambiguity for most of us to live with it.  No doubt people will read into it what they will, but in my view it is a snapshot of who we are.

+Porter Taylor
Bishop, Diocese of WNC

Not a GC junkie

Last night I attended the United Thank Offering Dinner, at which Bishop Michael Curry was the speaker.  As always, +Michael was inspiring, telling the dedicated women of the UTO, their supporters and the recipients of their ministry, to “go”, supported by a multitude of scriptural verse and story.  The UTO is an organization of the Episcopal Church Women that has faithfully served the church in this country and around the world, day in and day out, creating structure and programming for ministry without which many acts of mission would not happen. 

I was aware, from having listened to the stories of individuals through the Public Narrative process, that each of us comes to our work of mission motivated out of a personal experience of transformation.  There are defining moments that motivate us to “go” in one direction or another.  The resulting commitment to ministry inspired within us is indelibly imprinted on our hearts and minds, so as never to be removed; much like a tattoo, or more specifically, the tattoo etched in the anointing of oil upon our heads at baptism.  You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.  What have been your defining moments, and how are they manifest in your life? 

I must confess, I am not a General Convention junkie.  I rather prefer interaction with people instead of legislation, and while I know there are tangible and personal outcomes for everything we vote on, singular defining moments that change our lives can seem in short supply for me at events like this.  This seems more true since this feels a much calmer convention: a notable lack of anxiety pervades this gathering in a way that did not define the last two.  While some might say this is because certain people have left the church, it might also be that after years of naming it at conventions, in worship, and throughout the church, we have rolled over the tipping point of identity, and are quite naturally more comfortable in our skin as a people who understand they are fully part of ‘the ministry of all the baptized’.  That baptismal covenant soaks into one’s heart and mind, doesn’t it?   We learn from it that defining moments are sometimes big and loud and public, but more often they are just a normal part of the daily life in Christ, from whom all things flow; slowly but surely deepening and strengthening our witness to the immense and abiding love of God for all creation.  Sort of like the UTO: most of us could not name even a fraction of the grants they have given over their years of ministry, and yet they are thoroughly soaked into the mission of The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion.    Next week when we move on to talk of sex, power and money there will probably be some loud, public defining moments for us as a church.  As we continue with the perhaps not always terribly interesting, day-in, day-out decisions of our church; and as we approach the media-worthy and anxiety-producing topics before us, may our decisions and our care for one another reflect a common life thoroughly saturated with Christ and the baptismal covenant we share.

+Mary Gray-Reeves
El Camino Real

Anglican Communion Visitors

Thursday, July 9, I met with nine other bishops at lunch with the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I was present as a member of the Presiding Bishop's Council of Advice.  The members of the the Council are either Presidents or Vice Presidents of the nine Provinces of The Episcopal Church.   We are all elected by our provinces and broadly represent the breadth of The Episcopal Church in the House of Bishops.  Included also was Bishop Clay Matthews from the Presiding Bishop's staff.  The purpose was to share with the Archbishop an overview of our common life in the Episcopal Church.

It was the last meeting on the Archbishop's schedule during a very busy thirty hours at General Convention. 

We each spoke about life in our dioceses and our Provinces, followed by questions and answers with the Archbishop.  I thought that it was a good and respectful exchange.  He did express that he finds our bicameral legislative governance to be "curious."   

There have been many other bishop visitors/observers from across the Anglican Communion present with us here at General Convention, including bishops from Canada, South Africa, Ghana, Sudan, Congo, and Liberia.  Bishop Cathy Roskam, Suffragan, Diocese of New York, has done an excellent job of orientating and shepherding these bishops so that they can have a richer understanding of the Episcopal Church.  Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, invited lay people from the Anglican Communion to observe the House of Deputies.  There is a good report on that experience in The Daily, issue Number 5, for Sunday, July 12, by Episcopal Life.

Do hold us all in your prayers.

+ Neff Powell
Diocese of Southwest Virginia

Three stages of GC

7/11/09
I have found that the General Convention has three stages: the greeting, the great bewilderment, and the convergence.  These happen over the ten days, but they also happen within one day or even one meeting.  First is about meeting.  We see old friends; we meet new friends.  It’s like going to college as a freshman.  You find your dorm and your classes, and figure out who all these other people are and who you are in relation to them. This part has been wonderful.  Being on a Legislative Committee means you work very hard with strangers and you become a community over the Convention. 

I want to tell you how touched I am to have the Archbishop of Canterbury come across an ocean and a country to be with us and to express his appreciation and love of The Episcopal Church.  The House of Bishops was also graced with having the 24th and 25th Presiding Bishops, Edmund Browning and Frank Tracy Griswold III, be with us. Both of these men have had a profound effect on my ministry.

At some point, however, the fatigue, the complexity, the pace, the sheer number of people affect you, and you enter the Great Bewilderment.  It’s where you wonder if anything meaningful can come from this process.  It’s where you sit through meetings for hours arguing over the wording of a resolution, about which you actually are not passionate, but you have become passionate about this word being in this sentence.  It’s where you hear all the perspectives on an issue and wonder to yourself, “So can our Church stand on any one position?”

If we were by ourselves, this is where we would remain.  But we are not. There is grace everywhere, especially here, and God’s grace often comes and brings people together in amazing ways.  Yesterday, the House of Bishops passed a full communion agreement with the Moravian Church.  We have been working on this at least since 2003 and I was on the dialog committee from 2005-2007.  It was an amazing moment, and is a wonderful expansion of our Church, especially for those of us who live in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

Right now, I confess that I am in the Great Bewilderment to see how our Church can take all the resolutions about human sexuality and find the great Convergence.  The resolutions around B033 and same sex blessings go everywhere.  However, I am hope filled because in the past I have seen deputies and bishops in General Convention let go of their political stances to win a point or a cause and collectively be moved to discern God’s will.  In the middle of bewilderment it’s hard to believe it happens, but I know it does. Scripture and tradition and our own history tell us so.

I admit that I am tired and that I am not filled with zeal to return to day long meetings. However, I believe in the One who is the great Convergence, and I believe He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Keep us in your prayers.

+Porter Taylor
Bishop WNC

I have hope

Jet lag had certainly set in. My apologies to the Presiding Bishop whom I described as “chugging back to her seat at the Opening Eucharist chanting “Mission, mission, mission”.  If you have ever met her on one of her morning runs, she never chugs, but glides. On reflection I realize that she was inviting us to listen to our heartbeat as Church and hear what God pulsates through our veins – “mission, mission, mission”.  Her observation was no clearer than at the Spend Hearing of the Joint Program Group on Budget and Finance last night.

From appeals to support ministry in Appalachia, to minister with the Native people of Alaska, Navajoland, North and South Dakota, to release the Hispanic/Latino evangelism strategy plan, to the repeated chorus to continue our witness of the love of Christ through  the global reaching out of the MDGs,  we feasted not only on the passion of God’s people but their skilled eloquence.  We had been learning how to focus our life stories as people of faith and compassion that morning in a joint session on Public Narrative, and if these presentations were evidence, either we are very fast learners, or God has already equipped some gifted people with the promise “whatever you need to say, the Spirit will give you utterance”.  May be it was a combination of the two.

The public narrative session took place in Diocesan table groups, and it proved beneficial in several ways.  We heard each other tell of key incidents which sparked God’s call to ministry, and tapped parts of our lives which we had not shared before with one another. As always happens in good conversation, there was a deeper bonding. The Holy Spirit gossips the Gospel and we can learn how to do our part in allowing that to happen.

The House of Bishops is under way.  I would not say that we are yet in our stride. I am sure focus will come more sharply upon us as the legislative burden increases both in volume and in more complex issues. Sex, money and power will raise their heads.  But a context of reality has been imposed upon us, both in the immediate mission emphasis, the vital centrality of our identity as God’s called people with a story ofhope and god news to tell, and the serious reminder by the Archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday evening of how human frailty and sinfulness has been revealed in our economic crisis. This, he said, was as much an issue of a failure to be truthful to self, one another and creation as much as anything else.

I have hope that we will be open to the Spirit’s redirecting presence at this Convention. I believe there are signs already that work is pouring out which will more than occupy our very relearning of who we are in Christ in the immediate years ahead.

+Alan Scarfe
Diocese of Iowa