Address to the 228th Diocesan Convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania
November 5, 2011
by the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr.
(BCP Proper for the Mission of the Church: Isaiah 2:2-4; Ephesians 2:11-22; Luke 10:1-9)
Bishop Turner, Bishop Michel, Bishop Lee, Bishop Borsch, Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
We all know that horizons do not actually exist, but are simply the limits of our sight. To exceed such limits, the prophet Isaiah, in our first reading today, imagined Mount Zion topographically elevated above every horizon to such a height that all nations everywhere geographically could see it, come to its architecturally-prominent Temple, learn to turn destructive weapons into productive tools, and find peace.
It’s a lovely picture, save for one problem: it presupposes a one-way street whereby Israel says to others – like today’s Palestinians – God dwells on Mount Zion, so Israel sets the terms for peace.
Israel, of course, had alternatives to Zionism. God had appeared to Abraham outside the Promised Land, on Mount Sinai as well as at Mount Zion, in the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, and far from Zion among the exiles in Babylon. God could appear to Israel anywhere.
Our second reading today, however, argues yet a third alternative: God is truly present, not just in Israel, but only at the point of reconciliation between Israel and the other nations.
More than any other New Testament writing, the Letter to the Ephesians insists that by his death on Calvary’s cross Jesus Christ has broken down the wall dividing Israel and the nations, so that those far off and those near can unite in peace and “have access in one Spirit” to God’s presence.
No nation or group or individual can possess God for themselves. God is present, not on Mount Zion, not in any particular place, but whenever and wherever reconciliation occurs between those who once were aliens and strangers and sojourners, but are now “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”
Others, howsoever different, are absolutely indispensable to this household. Apostles and prophets are its foundation, and its cornerstone is Christ, in whom all are knit together. But it takes others constantly coming to the waters of baptism for the church to “grow into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” It’s a radical notion: God only dwells in, is experienced in, a baptizing, growing, reconciling, uniting church.
Now the theme of this 228th Diocesan Convention is “the Mission of the Church,” and its centerpiece is the excellent work-in-progress by the Rev. John Sorensen and his Diocesan Mission Planning Commission. As you consider their report today, bear in mind that according to the Prayer Book, “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” and “the Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.”
So, Luke tells us in today’s Gospel, Jesus “sent seventy others” to proclaim to others, “The reign of God has come near you.” Note that Jesus did not send out just seventy. He sent “seventy yet others” – seventy more in addition to those of untold number he had already commissioned. Jesus needs a vast number, not an elite few, for this apostolic work.
And Jesus sent them, as he sends us, “as lambs in the midst of wolves … into every town and place where he himself was about to come” – including, of course, Calvary. To go where he sent them, and where he sends us, is hard, challenging, dangerous, and outside our comfort zone: not once, but twice, he told those he sent to forget their kosher food laws and eat whatever is set before them.
Thus, long before the anthropologist Mary Douglas laid claim to the discovery, Jesus understood that dietary laws governing what we will allow into our open mouths correlate directly to our openness to difference, the extent to which our churches have porous, in contrast to tight, boundaries, and willingly and warmly welcome others.
Think of those food laws as symbolic of our cultural tastes in general, and you get an idea of the cultural sacrifices and adaptability required of us if we are to carry out Jesus’ mission and grow. And grow, not just in gross numbers, but grow in diversity, inclusivity, heterogeneity, catholicity, and in profound reconciliation with others.
Now St. Augustine said that “the role of the Bishop is to keep the church alert until the Lord comes.” There is an enormous amount of good news in the Diocese, and you will hear about some of it today when, for example, Dean Judith Sullivan reports on the Cathedral Development Project, when the Rev. Daniell Hamby tells us about the Episcopal Church Medical Trust, when Rev. Kirk Berlenbach, and John Loftus, Mac McCausland, and Arlene McGurk report on our solid financial condition, and when Alan Lindsay reports on impressive strides made at the Church Foundation.
But as Bishop, I would be remiss if I did not alert us to what we already know, namely, that, with rare exceptions, as is the case with almost every faith community in the industrialized world, the Episcopal Church is declining numerically and financially. At a time when, without either endowment income or diocesan aid or both, it takes 200 worshippers a week to maintain a church building, a full-time priest, and a traditional parish ministry, the average Episcopal Church domestically, as reported yesterday, had in 2010 a weekly attendance of 103 – or half of what is needed to maintain the inherited model.
For four centuries on these shores, we Episcopalians had our own form of “Zionism,” so to speak. We thought of ourselves as sufficiently elevated socially, culturally, educationally, economically, politically, and, yes, architecturally, that everyone would see us and more than enough would come to us. Enough did come, and, thanks be to God, some still do, but not as frequently and regularly for us to continue as is. We must adapt, or die.
Now we have to reach out vigorously and sacrificially to others, as, indeed, we are doing. I never cease to be amazed on my Sunday visitations, sometimes to churches with but a couple of dozen worshippers, as I witness our outreach to the hungry, the homeless, the very young and the very old, the lonely, the broken-hearted, the illiterate, and those struggling with addictions. In this sense we Episcopalians are increasingly what the church is meant to be: a sign of hope in a world dominated by fear. But relatively few of those we serve in this way eventually join us and our work.
Who will join us are our children, youth, and young adults if we can bridge the generational divide that makes many of them what Ephesians terms “aliens and strangers” to us. Bless the Rev. Ken Bullock and the Liturgical Commission for planning a major conference on children in the liturgy this coming year. Bless Andrew Kellner and all the adults who work with him for their commitment to the youth of our diocese. Bless the Rev. Renee McKenzie-Hayward for assuming responsibility for our ministry at Temple University earlier this week, now based at the Church of the Advocate.
Yet, despite these efforts, and many more throughout the diocese, we are falling behind in passing on the Christian Faith to our young people; we are losing them from the church. On a diocesan level, the decline is seen above all in the steep loss of participation in our summer camping program, which only four years ago attracted more than 300 of our own youth. I ask the Diocesan Mission Planning Commission to make its overwhelming priority this coming year the question of how we can better nurture the faith of our children and youth.
The rate of the Episcopal Church’s decline, moreover, is accelerating, especially for small churches, and even more especially if they are worshipping in a large, older building that is costly to heat and maintain. We are facing an unprecedented number of churches that can no longer afford a full-time priest. More and more either share a priest, or are served by a retired priest or a part-time priest who has secular employment, or are closing their building and uniting with another church nearby.
Some churches are spending down their endowment principal in order to maintain the inherited model of parish ministry long after it becomes obvious that doing so will not reverse their decline. The result is that when the church closes, the diocese inherits a property which, in a region where Philadelphia alone now has more than 300 vacant religious buildings, will possibly take years, if ever, to sell, and on which the diocese must pay the taxes, security, maintenance, and insurance with monies that otherwise could be used for mission. I ask any parish that is depleting its endowment in this way to stop doing so immediately.
In the next year, working with the outstanding Deans of our deaneries, my staff and I, led by Sean McCauley, the Diocesan Property Manager, will seek to: (1) do a property audit of every church, deanery by deanery; (2) establish a set of guidelines for re-organizing struggling churches for the sake of, not just their sustainability, but their vitality and mission; and (3) support and serve all congregations with property issues.
Given the challenges we are facing, we must become far more nimble than our present organizational structures allow. I fully support the Presiding Bishop’s request that we adopt a resolution such as our General Convention deputies will present to us today, memorializing next summer’s General Convention to create a Special Commission on Missional Structure and charge it to return to the 2015 General Convention with a proposal for a complete re-structuring of the entire Episcopal Church. Many dioceses are engaged in similar restructuring efforts, and I have asked John Sorensen, as Chair of the DMPC, and Stephen Chawaga, Chair of the Finance Canons Review Committee, to begin working closely together to the end that their groups produce for our consideration: (1) a strategic plan to fulfill our mission; (2) an organizational structure for carrying out that plan; and (3) a completely new set of diocesan canons governing that structure.
Fr. Sorensen and Mr. Chawaga and those working with them need our patience and support, and our time, energy, and engagement, so that together we can continue to be bold and audacious, and to take risks, in our thinking and planning. Today in our liturgical calendar, we commemorate William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury who saw that our church is an endangered species and decided it will last longer if it acts dangerously.
Talking with protesters at the Occupy Philly demonstration in front of City Hall last Monday and again yesterday, I have been struck by the sense of historic struggle in which all of us are engaged – and for some, a struggle, on a personal level, for mere survival. Given the present alacrity of technological advancement made possible by the investment of the growing accumulations of capital wealth in the hands of a minority, and given the ubiquity of globalization of a winner-take-all economy, there are fewer and fewer winners, a growing number of losers economically, a heighten potential for violence and terror, and a desperate need for the ministry of reconciliation we Episcopalians can and do exercise, regardless of our numerical size.
That is the ministry in which we are engaged! Jesus did not commission us to found hundreds of churches, but to make disciples of all nations. He never promised us a rose garden. He sends us out as lambs in the midst of wolves, and commissions us to go before him, even to Calvary and the waters of Baptism, dying there to sin and rising to newness of life.
There is no doubt about it: the Episcopal Church no longer looks like Mount Zion, but, then, we were never supposed to. Jesus calls for our commitment to others, not to our own survival – to turn outward, not inward. These are tough times – for the world and for the church – but never, ever forget that Jesus died for you, he died for me, and he died for all, “that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace,” and that we “are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God … a holy temple in the Lord … a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
