Navigating the Future

In the movie Chariots of Fire Scottish Olympic runner Eric Liddell is talking with his sister Jennie. He is trying to convey to her why he is putting off his missionary work in order to run in the Olympic Games. He says, "God made me for a purpose -- China. But he also made me fast. When I run I feel his pleasure."

Colin Welland, who wrote the screenplay for the movie, captures the essence of what it means to be called by God and given gifts to achieve what God sets before you. The Diocese of Texas has a God given purpose to proclaim the Gospel. The bishop and your diocesan staff are there to help.


Sometimes bishops and staff undertake this work, commanding us into the future. It can look like this advertisement for Silva Navigation tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knu14TlvCQE . While parishes often feel like the lighthouse, we at the diocese can be perceived as the battleship. Power used in this commanding way typically hits a wall (or a lighthouse). People can only take so much dissonant communication. This leadership style uses a pace like a sprint, and does not take into account that we have long-term ministry goals that require pace setting like a marathon. Also, commanding styles of leadership require the expenditure of great amounts of influence to keep everyone in line. If you step out of line in this model or don't keep the pace, the leadership will assume there is something wrong with you and not question the system.

I served a small parish church that grew from 40 to 140 in average Sunday attendance as a restart by the diocese. Having been on the front lines, I remember what it was like to wonder what was going on down there at the diocesan center. I know that some of you think we operate more like this commercial for Becel Heart Health Makeover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAIHeGHi5yM. After speaking to some of you I know you think that we are ineffective and can't really see where we are or where we are going (or not going).

What I know and understand is that our work is your work -- our purpose in spreading the gospel is getting you the resources you need. We must be about ensuring that you have the right tools for navigating your mission field, and not try to navigate it for you.

In the last four years, the diocesan staff has faced very serious issues that were inherited or that grew out of current events. In 2002, our attendance began to drop. Then came the anxiety and conflict flowing from General Convention in 2003. Following this was the embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the diocese. As fallout from General convention, we had a church plant leave the diocese (St. Barnabas, Austin), another church shrink from a healthy mission down to a restart (St. Philips, Austin). We also had to come up with the funds to build three new churches. Increasing conflicts in parishes, along with rising deployment needs, have created instability in parish leadership. We are not in the flush nineties anymore and the challenges, conflicts, anxiety, and hurdles are coming more often and with greater force.

Despite these events, in the same four and a half years, through the dedication and hard work of the diocesan staff, we have been able to launch the Iona school, Crosspointes, begin the diaconate, increase bi-vocational priests for small churches, move the diocesan center, completely restructure and computerize our finances, and keep unity within the diocese. Having deployed 55 new rectors -- almost 1/3 of our congregations. 80% of churches with new rectors are growing. (A large number of the 20% have not been in their places long enough to see trends develop.) We have doubled the number of clergy under the age of 45. We have almost tripled the number of female clergy who are rectors and priests-in-charge, while loosing a number of very key women rectors to retirement.

What is next?

In 2007, the people of the Diocese created new vision, mission, and core value statements. In the first year of the next episcopate I want us to lay out specific strategies and goals for meeting this vision head on. Because of my resonant style of leadership that values listening and collaboration, once these strategies are developed, I want to take them out on the road. In each convocation, I want to meet with the clergy and laity to get input. I think the bishop should personally roll out the goals and strategies, listen, and engage in the larger conversation. The bishop has to be prepared to make adjustments based on the directions given out by our lighthouses.

One thing I've learned is that leadership can come up with a lot of good ideas and then command them to be undertaken; but, unless these ideas are taken out into the mission field, and those in the field take ownership of the great ideas, nothing will come of it. The bishop diocesan must listen and provide programing, resources, and curricula that are going to impact your work in the field in a positive collaborative way.

Church life is not going to get easier or any less challenging. I have been in the system just long enough to see how we can do things differently and better; but, not so long that my reply to new ideas is "well, we've never done it that way before". I will continue to lead us in striving towards greater efficiency and effectiveness. We also must be in dialogue with the people of the diocese. A vision can be a good thing, but it has to be YOUR vision, YOUR goals, and YOUR strategies.

Mission: Proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a New Century

We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God...because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5.3,5)


The Gospel is the light which salvation throws ahead of itself. It is nothing less than the arrival of the coming of God in the Word. (The Way of Christ , Jurgan Moltmann)


The essential work of the Church is the glory of God through the proclamation of Jesus Christ. All ministries flow out of this notion and our unity is dependent upon this most ancient theology. (Ephesians 4.1-7 )


As Moltmann reminds us, when we proclaim the Gospel, we are making incarnate the very real presence of Jesus. The Diocese of Texas has mission in its DNA. We were founded as the first foreign missionary field by The Episcopal Church. From our earliest bishops to our most recent, mission has been a perennial focus of our efforts. Today we are challenged to renew our missionary efforts within a culture no less daunting than planting churches in the wilderness of the fledgling Texas Republic.


Today, "Christians are now the foreigners in a post-Christian culture, and we have got to wake up to this reality if we haven't." (Dan Kimball, author of They Like Jesus But Not The Church)


Research, conversations, and mountains of experience are offered to us about just what people who don't belong to churches are looking for and expecting from us. I have been studying this new culture, and book after book has the same message and themes.


People outside our churches want us to talk about Jesus and the Bible. Some Episcopalians are comfortable with this, many more are not. We cannot afford to be uncomfortable talking about our faith. These days, it is not politically correct to talk about Jesus. Miss Manners says don't talk about religion or politics. We all love Emily Post and want to use the right fork, but we must be willing to talk about our faith. People who are seeking a relationship with God expect those who say they have a relationship with God to be able to speak about Jesus. We have to be able to speak about Jesus and listen like Jesus.


People outside the church want our churches to be places with discussions rather than just sermons and lectures. We have to respect the intelligence of those who come to us. (This is especially true as we attempt to work with young people and other cultures.)


We must get beyond the church building, and get the Gospel out into the world: book shops, restaurants, coffee shops, homes, offices. We are literally, figuratively, and financially trapped within our buildings! At the same time, we will always need traditional churches, where belonging is so important. Our places of worship must be places where people can gather, think, pray, be quiet, sit together. Imagine churches as urban retreat centers where people can wonder, and be at home, and find sabbath and peace. I wonder how many of our churches and church yards are places of retreat and open to the public.



The church must be a loving place. We must understand our unity and love for one another is essential if we are to love those outside our church walls. In a denomination where almost 75% of congregations report moderate to major conflict within the parish in the last five years, we have a long way to go in this spiritual discipline of love. Yet Jesus was clear, we may have a great commission, but the commandment is to love God and others. (Matt. 22.37-39).


The Church must be proactive in its mission. Today mission includes local outreach, foreign mission, and mission to our environment. This key component of being stewards of God's love and grace for the world means we have a Gospel imperative to take our proclamation of the Gospel and make it incarnate in acts of mercy.


We really don't have to change much of our way of following Jesus. After traveling around the diocese, I have come to understand that there is no single expression of Episcopal liturgy. In fact, we enjoy an abundance of ways to worship in the Anglican tradition. There is a place in our missionary field for the 1928 Prayer Book, Rite 1, Rite 2, Rite 3, contemporary, blended, emerging and any other style we can come up with. It must, however, be authentic. New generations will not be attracted to churches doing the "new-now" worship for the sake of commercializing the Gospel.



To be missionary in this age means that we must review, rethink, and figure out funding for this work. The Diocese must plant churches. The churches must plant churches. We must give permission and room for congregations to plant different kinds of congregations. These needs and the financial costs must be thought out, planned out, and we must venture out. We must look at the cultural and ethnic surroundings, and get into the mission field.


We also must be prepared to try church plants that don't work. Too often we read the parable of the sower and think the work of the church is to ensure that 95% of our planting efforts are seeds only thrown on fertile ground. The gospel message for us from Matt. 13.1-8 is that we must scatter the seeds, knowing full well some will take root and some won't. This is modeling Jesus' own ministry: sowing the word everywhere allowing it to take root as it may.


JoAnne has a beautiful garden. (I just haul dirt and dig big holes.) But she can only prepare the soil, plant the seeds, water, prune. God handles the growing, and we are often surprised at what we get, versus what we expected.



It is going to take vision, creativity, energy, unity, fearlessness, and hope to spread the Gospel in our new age.




Questions for meditation and conversation:



When is the last time you had a conversation about your faith with someone who does not go to church?



If you were raised outside the church and hadn't met a Christian who represents Jesus in a good way, do you think you would like Christians?



How difficult would it be for a 25 year old to get involved in your church in a significant way?



What specific stumbling blocks can you list that prevent people from ever reaching the gospel?



(Questions are from: They Like Jesus But Not The Church.)

Why Elect A Young Bishop?

Our vision of being one church in this diocese is going to continue to need energy, creativity and time. I have hope for this vision and the church it describes. I have energy for the work this vision requires. Whether you choose me to be your bishop or not, over the next fifteen years of my ministry I will continue to work to fulfill this vision. I believe in what we are doing and believe we are engaging in work that changes the world.

Some people worry about electing a long tenured bishop. They worry that the bishop will become entrenched or burned out. But it will take an energetic, long tenured bishop to nurture the promise of our diocese and hold the vision that promise brings to our future.

Thomas Friedman makes the case that the world is flat in the sense that globalization has leveled the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries. The same flat world dynamic gives us the opportunity to build real relationships with partners throughout the Anglican Communion where we can share our vision of the church and our ministry. Sharing vision across the Communion will take creativity and energy. With an energetic leader, a diocese in the 21st century can engage in this work now.

We will create a younger church together. Our flat world gives us new tools and technologies to create new and widening conversations with young people inside and outside the church. We will become the evangelical church of the Great Commission as we make our mission the real life experience of young people both locally and abroad. We will develop new ministries that relate real life to real vocation, going deeply into the lives of young people so that they can be guided by their own rules of life. Vocational discernment will not be for church professionals alone; it will be for anyone who wants to experience transformation in his or her life. In this way we will create a church that lives in the real world, sharing the Good News of Jesus and leading others in the miraculous transformation of life.

We will follow the Spirit’s lead in building new churches and collaborating in new ministries across the Communion. Different kinds of congregations must be explored, evaluated and planted. We will start new, emerging church communities and traditional congregations. Each will be deeply rooted in scripture, grounded in personal rules of life and nourished by our common worship.

We will build on our successes in local outreach throughout the diocese. What we have learned in one community will be used in developing new ministries in another community. This increase in ministry will only come as we serve and raise up leaders – the master craftsmen of our faith – to share their wisdom and experience in starting new work.

As we work in this common mission the vision of being one church becomes a reality, not just a marketing phrase. When we bring the best we have to offer and share it freely with one another we can thrive and grow in the ever-changing world where we preach the Gospel and live as Christ’s Body.

I promise you that I will use my energy, my time and my creativity to make the church a thriving place for old and young, insiders and outsiders, tenured and newly arrived. I want to lead you in this work now.

When were you first given great responsibility? How old were you? What was the job? How did your energy and ability affect the work? How does your experience inform our missionary choices in the Diocese of Texas?

The Wesleys

Today, March 3rd, is the day when Anglicans and many others remember John and Charles Wesley. What is it that makes the Wesleys so important to the Church? Many Methodists think the Wesleys were Anglicans, many Anglicans think they were Methodists. The truth is they were deeply devoted to people...to all God's people.

Their ministry became historic, because at a moment when our institutional church was not attentive to the individual, they were. They believed that the church had to intersect and engage people in their daily lives.

We talk about Mission. We talk about Evangelism. We talk about "sharing the Gospel of Jesus." But what is the incarnational reality of this Gospel work? I believe that it means each of us has to be so changed that we change the lives of people, and make a real difference in the lives of others.

To live the way of a Christian also means practicing an intimate relationship with God--modeling ourselves on Jesus, who called God "Abba." And this closeness with God, this intimacy, cannot help but have an impact on our relationships with all of God's other beloved children.

We can talk about mission. We can strategize about mission. We can come up with great mission plans. But until we reach across the chasm which separates those within the church from those living in the equally real world outside our walls, we have not engaged in mission at all.

The problem the church has to fight is its own narcissism. It ceases its missionary work, its work with suffering humanity, in order to care too much for the institution. It becomes too protective of the institution, and the executives forget that the Church was created by God not as an institution at all but as the Body of Christ on earth

At these moments the reformers come along. People like the monks and nuns of the Middle Ages, the Franciscans, Luther and Calvin, Tyndale and Cramner, Elizabeth, and then the Wesleys. In our own time we know Martin Luther King, Jr., or in our own denomination Bishop John Hines.

These visionaries change things: but they often become new powers and then become institutionalized. We have continued to believe in this reformation model of doing things. After serving in my office as Canon to the Ordinary for four and a half years, I see the struggle. I see how protecting the church can become a full-time business. Except that isn't our business.

We must seek a more catholic, universal model of stepping out into mission. We have been given resources: they must be unlocked. We have been given diverse worshiping styles: we must use them effectively and not squabble about them. We must embrace different styles of church planting and mission work. Twenty years from now some of our churches will be the same, but many more will be transformed into places with missionary distinction. Where the people in their communities and neighborhoods will know and say, "In those places, those Episcopal Churches, you find God, a God that cares and loves you. That church is filled with people who make a difference in the world around them, they taught me God is with me too...in fact they changed my life."

I believe that we need a Bishop who will protect our gifts, and make them work for us, while at the same time creatively and energetically helping us to do what we were created to do: practice our faith in such a way that it changes the world.



This is what I want to do, with God's help, and yours.

My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease; 'tis music in the sinner's ears, 'tis life, and health, and peace.

Charles Wesley

¿Qué es lo que Texas necesita de su próximo obispo?

Lo invito a que venga y vea que forma esta conversación toma mientras, juntos, decidimos como la Iglesia Episcopal en la Diócesis de Texas se moverá en el futuro. Deseo escuchar de usted: ¿qué es lo que le entusiasma? ¿A dónde desea que nuestra diócesis vaya? ¿Qué es lo que anhela de su próximo obispo?

Este es un blog moderado y solamente comentarios relacionados a las preguntas arriba mencionadas serán puestas y solamente si el autor incluye su nombre.

Yo creo que el asunto más importante que podemos hacer es ser fiel en preguntar las preguntas acerca de lo que Dios propone para el futuro de nuestra iglesia, y siendo fieles a la oración en este tiempo de discernimiento.

A partir del 3 de Marzo, 2008 comenzaré a poner los comentarios.