Bishop's Message

Celebration of New Ministry

+Sue & Diocese of NS & PEI
November 23, 2007

"So what can I do for you?" Mid August 2007, ++Fred asking me.
I suddenly remembered an occasion when I was teaching at Dalhousie. I had just explained the meaning of, and how to calculate a certain statistic, and looked at the class and asked, "Are there any questions?" One very puzzled looking student answered, "Mam, if I knew enough to ask a question, I'd be a lot better off!"
At ++Fred's question to me, I suddenly knew how he felt!

I wasn't as quick as Elisha to ask for a double share of the Holy Spirit! For better or for worse, I have just picked up the mantle of Elijah, or in our case, the crozier of the Diocesan Bishop. Like Elisha, I will need to listen and to watch for where God will take us.

Of course, since ++Fred left, I have discovered quite a lot of questions. There are still many answers waiting to be found. One Professor I had at University of Michigan, who taught research design, would repeatedly say, "You first have the find the right question to ask. You can get a lot of useless information by asking the wrong questions."

I am beginning to suspect that we are asking a lot of the wrong questions in our congregations and in the diocese these days. So we are getting some unhelpful information.

However, I think there are at least three right questions that we are asking in the Diocese now.

1. When/how did your parish/congregation begin?
a question of roots/history

2. Where is your parish/congregation going?
a question of future/vision

3. Do you have the resources to get there?
a question of personnel, money, property

1. Do you know your parish's beginnings? What are your roots? We are approaching a 300th anniversary. It is important to celebrate what has been good in our life. So the Anniversary Committee for 2010 has asked each parish to research their history - write a history - update a history - so that your congregation knows its roots. For example, many of our churches began with the military. 300 years ago in ANNAPOLIS ROYAL; 200 years ago it was St. George's in Sydney; 100 years ago, St. Mark's in the north end of Halifax, Some of our churches had United empire loyalist beginnings. Some congregations in the fishing communities were begun by missionaries from England. How have those beginnings colored who we are today?

As a Diocese, we have had roots in the military, in the provincial establishment, in the refugee loyalists. This has coloured how we see ourselves as a "historic diocese", old and firmly established, with a historic structure whose layers have multiplied over the years. Our history has influenced how we see ourselves and how we work today. But we are not now garrison churches. The Anglican Church is no longer part of the establishment. That leads to the second important question.

2. Do you know where you are going? Who is God calling you to be in 2007? 2010? Where are you going? The 2010 Anniversary Committee has asked every parish to develop a vision by 2010. That is why the SRDG produced the document 300 - A Journey Just Begun, to help parishes seek the vision of who God is calling them to be. It is why the Committee on Ministry funded the "Small Church, Great Church" workshop to help small parishes celebrate what is good in their lives. This is why there is money from the Capital Campaign, Healthy Congregations Fund to give congregations the resources they need to do this visioning work and to begin to build for a bright and hopeful future.

As a diocese we worked through this visioning process in 2002-03. We said we wanted to be a "Christ centered, mission minded, ministering community of faith." We have identified strategies and are now working to arrive at that fulfilling vision by 2010.

Where have you come from? Where are you going?
These are two of the "right" questions we need to be answering.

Third important question.
Do you have the resources to move from where you are into the future? Do you have the people, lay and clergy leaders, the money, the right property?
What kind of leadership team will work best?
How can our lay leaders learn how to be a warden, a treasurer? to chair a meeting?
When we close our church building, how will we make a contribution to our community?
Why do folks leave more money as a tip for the waiter than they put in their offering to God?

At the Diocesan level we try to support parishes with leadership team questions through our membership in Living Stones, Potentials East, Continuing Education for clergy. Handbooks and workshops for wardens, treasurers and other council members are now available. Creative solutions for empty church buildings are being fostered by the Archdeacons and Regional Deans. Stewardship education to transform a mindset of scarcity into a theology of abundance is being provided in regions around the diocese.

So the right questions are producing some useful answers and strategies to help us strengthen parishes and move toward 2010. We have much that is good to celebrate in our church world.

At the time of a leadership change there is also a
fourth important question. As we consider our history, our vision for the future, and whether or not we have the resources for the journey, the fourth question is "How will we work together on the journey?"

Paul had much to say about how we live and work together as church. We heard the well known image of the body in tonight's reading from Romans. Paul says, "Offer yourself and your skills generously. Respect and honour the different gifts of others. If you all do that, together you will build up the strength of the Body of Christ. Then the strengthened members of the Body of Christ can go out of the congregation into the world to build the Kingdom of God and to transform the world.

How will we work together as we move from our past into the future?

When the metropolitan chose Nov. 23 for this event, I had to look to see if it was some special day! Clement of Rome says the calendar. I have to confess that I did not remember Clement from my church history courses. However, a quick bit of research provided me a very interesting finding.

Clement is said, by some, to have been a slave who became a Christian and rose to a position of leadership as the third bishop of Rome. There he "reigned" over the church from 90 to 100 CE.

However, contrary evidence suggests that the church in first century Rome was governed by a council of leaders, not by a single bishop. Clement may have been the president of such a council.

How will we work? This service is not called an enthronement and I do not plan to reign over the church! I will, as you have heard already, work in the councils of the church taking counsel with those whose specific ministries serve the people and the parishes of this diocese. So, if Clement facilitated at council gatherings, I can follow in those footsteps.

How will we work together? As I looked various liturgies for this service, I discovered something else. An image, commonly used in this type of liturgy is the image of shepherd and sheep. Now Jesus as the shepherd and us as the sheep is a thoroughly sound Scriptural image. However, when the image of the shepherd is transferred to bishops or parish clergy, and parishioners become sheep, there is problem!

I am NOT a shepherd! I don't think of you as sheep. As an Old Testament professor once roared at our class, "Sheep are big dirty, stupid animals!" That is NOT who you are. You and I are all the children of God. I will not treat you as mindless sheep or attempt to herd you from one place to another. Nor will I send out any sheep dogs!

How will we work together? As children of God, as disciples of Christ, we can walk together, as brothers and sisters in the family of God. I might walk in front sometimes, to draw you into the future vision. I might walk behind you sometimes to give a little nudge from behind. One clergy's comment, "Sometimes I need a kick in the ___ to get me going!" In time, I hope that the Synod Office and the parishes will come to walk side by side in a relationship in which the parishes, which have been our strength for almost 300 years, are upheld by the mission of the Diocese.

As you have called me to lead, I will call you to faithful discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ. Faithful discipleship is more than saying, "I believe ..." It requires the public living out of what we say we believe as disciples. The basis of that discipleship is the teaching of Jesus.

One piece of teaching that is critical at this point in our church at home and in the world, we heard in the Gospel of Luke tonight.

"Do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned... First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye."

My colleague Katherine recently wrote:
"I frequently find myself talking about the language we use and it affects the kind of conversation we can have. When we use judgmental language, we inherently do violence to the human being who is its subject. When Jesus said, "Judge not." this is most centrally what he was talking about. True conversation means spending time with another person or group, and enough time to begin to know the other in a more than superficial way. That kind of knowledge does not arrive with the words leaving our mouth that pronounce the other as "evil" or "stupid" or "revisionist"... or …" any kind of label.

Why are we so quick to judge others, to condemn their speech or their actions? Why do we have such trouble allowing that some one with a different view than ours might be right? We all have some claim on truth and if we could put all our insights together, we might get a glimpse of God's truth.

As we move into a new future, could we have less judgment and condemnation, and more openness to conversation seeking God's truth with one another?
The other piece of Jesus' teaching that is critical for me comes from the Gospel of John. "Love one another as I have loved you." When this is read at a wedding everyone smiles and nods. It sounds good. But what about in daily life?

In our parishes - loving one another - the colleague who always disagrees with you; the keeper of the church keys who will not share them; the choir member who sings off key; the person who says nothing in the council meeting and afterwards in the parking lot disagrees with everything! Loving them - even when you don't feel warm and fuzzy toward them, when you don't particularly like them - loving them - praying for God's best for them.
- Loving them and living and working together, so that newcomers might actually say, "See how these Christians love one another!"

Beyond our church walls, in our communities - loving one another - when the other includes another a different Christian denomination, when the other includes a different religion - living out our baptismal promise to respect the dignity of every human being; living out the principle that whatever we can together we will not do alone. (Lund)
Just imagine what could happen if all the faith communities spoke to the public with one voice! On a few occasions we have done it. The marches against the war in Iraq - on those freezing cold days, we walked together to say, "War is not the answer."

Here in Halifax, we have an Inter Faith Council. A while back we did a series of lunch presentations on why we each of us do social justice work. Each faith community spoke from their own Scripture and tradition. There were very different reasons, but still it was clear that this was work that we could all do together - in big urban areas or small rural communities. This Sunday evening the IFC and the Face of Poverty will join together at Woodlawn United Church. We will speak out together against poverty; for me that is publicly living out love for my neighbour.

So this is how I propose that we move forward together
- being clear about our heritage - its dark places and its accomplishments;
- having a clear vision for the future to which God calls;
- rebuilding our resources for parish and community ministry;
- seeing ourselves as God's beloved children;
- living out Jesus' command, not to judge but rather to love one another as Christ has loved us;
- together building our strength as disciples of Jesus Christ;
- together building the Kingdom of God,
- together transforming our world to make God's dream come true.

"Draw your church together, O Lord,
into one great company of disciples,
together following our Lord Jesus Christ
into every walk of life,
together serving him in his mission to the world, and
together witnessing to his love on every continent and island.
We ask this in his name and for his sake. Amen."