The Uniqueness of Christ

This was given to the Christian Formation Conference at Camp Allen in September, 2010.  The theme of the conference was the Charter for Lifelong Christian Formation.

Let me begin very clearly with some thoughts about what our work as a Christian Church is… in general.

"The Gospel testifies to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in God's plan for the salvation of the world.”

“There can be no greater theme - no higher calling for the church to bear witness to salvation in and through Christ." (Sharing the Gospel of Salvation, GS Misc 956, Report to General Synod Church of England, 2010, from forward, SGS)

"...The Christian story is, quite simply, the most attractive account of the world and the human condition.”

“Theology, [how we believe, how we communicate about God] is not an adjunct to the social sciences - on the contrary, Christian theology is the prism through which the social sciences make the most sense.”

“The task of Christians is not to persuade others of the truth of the gospel story through propositional argument (which, John Milbanks - Anglican theologian - claims, always carries undertones of violence) but to "out narrate" other, rival and less attractive narratives.”

“Christians must so live out their faith, in communities which embody the gospel (especially in practices of worship) that others are attracted by the sublime beauty of God reflected in the Church." (SGS, 72)

"The Church...is called to be a "community of character", embodying "the peaceable kingdom."

“It is not called to prop up other social institutions, such as democracy or capitalism, however useful they may be, but to exhibit in its corporate life the radically alternative life of those who follow Christ.”

“Others will wish to join this community, not because they are convinced intellectually of its argument but because they are captivated by its example of virtuous living.”(SGS, 73)

I have taken these opening thoughts, these foundational beliefs about our work from a profound work on Evangelism which was received at the English Annual Synod meeting in 2010.

The Episcopal Church is a missionary society.

We are as our Book of Common Prayer says, "The family of God" and the "Temple of the Holy Spirit."

Every leader and every member has a story to share. Communally and individually we have the very best story of spiritual transformation to share with the world around us.

We are invited and charged with the proclamation of nothing less than the very best story that there is -- the story of Jesus Christ and the salvation of the world.

We are challenged to "out narrate" and to communicate our work of "virtuous" living to the world around us. Specifically we are called to do this work in our given mission context.

We are to be working hand in hand with Jesus Christ to transform the world around us. We are as the Charter for Life Long Formation says:

Carrying out God’s work of reconciliation, love, forgiveness, healing, justice and peace.

Faithfully confronting the tensions in the church and the world as we struggle to live God’s will.

Engage in prophetic action, evangelism, advocacy and collaboration in our contemporary global context.

Lift every voice and reconcile oppressed and oppressor to the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the area of Christian Formation we are at work helping to form individuals through the sharing of story, knowledge, experience, teachings, tradition, history, and the scriptures imparting from one seeker to another the sacred story of Jesus Christ and the salvation of the world.

The essential work for congregations is to “out narrate” the world around us. And, to provide the solid foundation upon which the individual and the community rests that it may at once live life within the sacred community and make the profane world around it sacred through its virtuous action.

The Uniqueness of Jesus

Central to our work is the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the prime actor in our sacred narrative.

This uniqueness rests solidly in our faith’s affirmation that God is one.

Deuteronomy 4.35: “To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.”

Nehemiah 9.6: “And, Ezra said: ‘You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, will all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.’”

Isaiah 45:5-6: “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no God; I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.”

Throughout the narrative of the Old Testament [As Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel: the law and the prophets and the proclamation of John the baptizer] the central theme is that the Lord, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah is unique because God is the one living and true God.

We proclaim this truth in the first article of the Creed and it is the response to the first question of our baptismal covenant. It is this God who upholds the universe and everything that exists within it and he is the sole sovereign of history. (Adapted SGC, 10)

From the Venerable Bede to Juroslav Pelikan, from Abelard to Justo Gonzales, from Wayne Meeks to N. T. Wright, from Augustine of Hippo to Michael Ramsey, wise men and women, theologians, desert mothers and desert fathers…regardless of who you read Christians have come to believe and proclaim that “in accordance with the promises that God had made to his people, the God of Israel, in the person of Jesus, ‘took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance’ in order to proclaim God’s kingdom and to bring it in by reconciling the whole universe through his life, death and resurrection.” (SGC 11)

Each one has passed the narrative to us. Over the centuries the proclamation of this Good News of Salvation has out narrated the secular world’s story of hopelessness. Each held “that after his resurrection Jesus ascended into heaven and at the end of the age he will come in glory to judge the living and the dead and to finally and fully manifest the kingly rule of God over all creation…” (SGC, 11)

John 1.14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Colossians 1.19: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.”

Hebrews 1:2-2: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, who he appointed heir to all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

“On the same grounds they further believed that God exists as the Holy Spirit, the one who had dwelt in Jesus and empowered his mission and whom Jesus had poured out on his followers on the day of Pentecost.” (SGC, 13)

This is the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. These are the faith responses of every Christian that has come before us. This is the truth proclaimed in faith responses of the second and third questions of our Baptismal Covenant and are rooted deep in our creed.

This is our story. This is the unique story of our faith. It is profound and it is the rock upon which my faith rests. It is the particular story which gives meaning the world of chaos proclaimed by the powers all around.

You and I are purveyors of a sacred narrative. You are not volunteers. You are not Sunday School teachers. You are not educators. You and I are disciples of the one God.

Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, we are bearers of the sacred truth of God, the Living Word.

We are marked on our foreheads with this sacred story; we are marked as Christ’s own forever. Hands are laid upon us by a bishop that we may be empowered by the same Holy Spirit for a life lived in discovery, a life lived in formation, a life lived out in the world as a missionary of God’s Holy narrative.

Anyone can carry out reconciliation, love, forgiveness, healing, justice and peace. But we understand it is God’s work.

Anyone can confront the tensions in the world. But we do so faithfully trying to live out the life of God’s will and sacred narrative.

Anyone can engage in prophetic action, advocacy and collaboration in our contemporary global context. But only we can engage through the unique prophetic witness of the Good News of Salvation.

Anyone can lift every voice and reconcile oppressed and oppressor. But only we can do the work out of the particular understanding that it is the love expressed through God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Uniqueness of Episcopalians

We have a sacred story. We are called to out narrate the world. Yet we must also understand that we undertake this work with a particular and unique perspective within the body of Christ and the catholic or universal witness which is Christianity.

You and I must reclaim our unique Episcopal witness. We must be at work inside and outside of our church helping individuals to understand a very unique narrative. We are Christians but we are specifically and unambiguously Anglicans and more precise still, we are uniquely Episcopalians.

We must be about the business of forming people who are Episcopalians.

Yes, we are interested in formation of Christians. But we are Episcopalians and we have a unique and important version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is articulated as our charter says, through scripture, tradition and reason.

This unique Episcopal witness is articulated through the words of our Baptismal Covenant:

• our particular manner of Sacramental ministry

• our understanding of Mission

• our fellowship

• our reading of scripture

• in worship, throughout the day, and at home

• our understanding of the importance of our monastic inheritance and spiritual formation

• our proclamation of the Gospel

• our treatment of every human being

• our particular gift for reconciliation and peace

• our work in social and cultural advocacy and just action

• our understanding of creation and the work of sustainable stewardship

• our understanding of service and virtuous citizenship

These are the themes of our story. These are the chapters of our narrative as Episcopalians.

The work…no the art of story telling…which is Christian Formation is specifically to tell the story, to tell our community’s story, to tell our story, and to teach others to tell their story.

Parker Palmer might offer us this reflection: Formation “is always done at the dangerous intersection of personal and public life.” (Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach)

He also said, “I now understand what Nelle Morton [Nelle Morton was a 20th century church activist for racial justice, and later a teacher of Christian educators] meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to ‘hear people to speech.’ Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken—so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence. (Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach)

You and I must reclaim our mission and ministry and tell the story in such a way that when those who retell it and those who hear it reshape the world into the reign of God.

Are we “out narrating” the world?

“Robert Raikes (1735-1811) is remembered as a pioneer of Sunday Schools. He was not; however, the first person to set up a Sunday school, but rather his work pioneered Sunday Schools as a national institution.

“He became aware of the needs of those children whose parents could not provide schooling for them. In 1780 he was dismayed at the sight of children running wild around the city on Sundays and began to consider the possibility of a School. There were other schools being developed by Hannah Ball and Thomas King – all followers like Raikes of the great evangelists George Whitefield and John Wesley.

“In July 1780 a Sunday School was established in the parish of St Mary de Crypt in Gloucester. There were to be two sessions every Sunday and four women were paid to teach children to read and to learn the Prayer Book Catechism. Raikes became actively involved. He visited the children in their homes, examined their progress in reading and gave prizes for good progress.

“While Raikes wanted to provide basic Christian teaching, the first challenge was that of teaching children to read. In 1784, John Wesley noted in his Journal, ‘I find these schools springing up wherever I go. Perhaps God may have some deeper end therein than men are aware of. Who knows but some of them may become nurseries for Christians?’ (Article from Grace online Magazine,

http://www.gracemagazine.org.uk/articles/historical/raikes.htm)


The great Awakening and the Sunday school movement went hand in hand and over the centuries has become exactly what John Wesley thought: a “nursery for Christians.” That is until recently.

The Episcopal Church has reported that in 1965, there were 880,000 children in our Sunday school programs. In 2001, that number had declined to 297,000. Thus in 35 years Sunday school attendance dropped by close to 600,000 students.

Each one of us lives, and ministers, within a particular mission context.

We live in a different world: a world of Sunday sports, busy lives, busy jobs, and all with little time or space for God. We live in a world which is currently out narrating the church. The secular narrative teaches us that more is never enough. The secular narrative says technological relationships are enough. A secular narrative that promises Sabbath some day; maybe if you can afford retirement, if not after you work part-time at Wal-Mart or Starbucks.

We live in a context which largely expects us to do the work of formation as we have done it since the beginning of the Sunday school movement. But the world has changed.

I believe that the Charter’s most challenging words read, “We are to be doing the work Jesus Christ calls us to do… We are to be seeking out diverse and expansive ways to empower prophetic action.”

We have the most transformational message of hope in our culture. Moreover, the Episcopal Church offers a unique and much needed religious life of discipleship to a culture that is seeking spiritual meaning and meaningful action.

The challenge of Christian Formation today is to reinvent the manner in which we engage in the work Jesus has called us to do through entrepreneurial innovation.

I am using the word entrepreneurial to seeing before you, in your missionary context, greenfield potential.

I am using the word innovation to mean making a positive change in our current situation that brings about not only formation of the community and individual but transformation of the world through narration of our particular and sacred story.

We must renew the art of Christian Formation by reinventing, reconstructing, restructuring, restoring, remaking, re-establishing, and rebuilding what is now an outdated missionary system.

In the field of Christian Formation we must tap into our nature as Christian creatives for the health and well-being of our Episcopal Church and our local congregations.

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There are six basic stages of innovation and I want to apply them here to the process of reinventing Christian Formation for the Episcopal Church. The stages are: generate new ideas, capture ideas, mission innovation, mission strategy, reflection and improvement, and decline. (From Vision to Reality: The Innovation Process, http://www.bia.ca/articles/inno-vision-to-reality.htm)

Decline

I want to begin with the last stage first: Decline.

The sixth stage of innovation is decline. In time, it often becomes obvious that what was once an innovation no longer fits. I have made this argument already and we have seen the case of the Sunday school movements decline.

Once in the stage of decline it becomes obvious that continuous improvement of the existing process, product, or service is no longer of value. The reality is that the former innovation has now become outdated or outmoded.

In our case it isn’t that the rules have changed. We have always been responsible for the formation of disciples and the telling and retelling of our story. It is our culture that has changed.

In the sixth stage of innovation we see that it is time to let go of the past models and set new goals to start the innovation process once again. It is time for new innovations in response to external missionary context in which we the Episcopal Church find ourselves.

In fact as I travel around I see this innovation beginning to take shape in some of our congregations. In fact, it has been changing for about a decade. Nevertheless, I believe a more innovative and entrepreneurial approach is needed if we are to out narrate the culture in which we find ourselves.


Generate New Ideas

The having clearly reached the last stage first, we begin again. We must generate new ideas.  Always begin with bible study and reflection.  Each stage needs to be bathed in scripture and prayer.

I want to be very clear here. We are not generating a new story or a new narrative. We are not becoming Universalists. We are not becoming Buddhists. We can have a very healthy relationship with our ecumenical brothers and sisters. We can have healthy interreligious dialogs. These are essential in fact in the generation of ideas. However, we are Christians who call ourselves Episcopalians. And, I firmly believe that when a person enters into a relationship with us (either by coming to church or by meeting us out in the world) they want to know who we are. Remember, formation begins with the self-knowledge and understanding of the teacher according to Parker Palmer. We already know our narrative. We are looking to generate ideas that will help us provide a narrative within our churches and out in the world.

Begin by asking people you know, inside and outside the church, the following questions or questions similar to these:

• What has God called us to do? You might look at the Charter for Life Long Christian Formation as one source.

• What is impossible to do in our congregation, or in our formation ministry, today, but if it could be done, would fundamentally change the way in which we engage in the work of formation?

Answers to these questions will help you to see the boundaries of your new mission work.

An example is that I challenged the Examining Chaplains to evaluate our process of testing new priests. Is it working? What is missing? How can we improve it? They have developed a new proposed process that engages in conversation and discernment rather than testing, and takes shape within community and in the midst of prayer.
Capture the Ideas

Stage two is the Capturing of the ideas. There will be a lot of ideas. You will need a creative team of experts and ministers to discuss the possibilities of each idea through brainstorming.

For innovation to be successful in our culture today you are going to have to bring in people who are communicators, of different ages, creative people, strategic thinkers, doers, visionary leaders and followers.

It is good to brainstorm individually, then in smaller groups, and then as a team. Collectively organize and prioritize your results.

Not every congregation is going to have a large group. It can be as few as two and as many as eight. Remember though, the art of Christian Formation is a work that is undertaken within community. This is not the work of one individual and a team of teachers…that is the old model.

You will also need to remember your missionary context. You need to discover and think intentionally about those you are trying to reach. You also must be honest and transparent about what you can accomplish given the financial and human resources available to you and your congregation or team.

A good example of this is the team that has been put together to provide a curriculum to study the Anglican Covenant. It includes skilled individuals who know how to write curriculum. It also includes parish leaders and communicators.
Mission Innovation

The next stage is the actual innovation. Review the entire list of ideas and develop them into a series of clear and meaningful statements. The team will then need to agree on which ones to explore further. Quantify the benefits of each statement and discern through prayer and clarity which ones to pursue.

Be clear about your mandate. Are you working on Formation with adults or children? Are you working on Stewardship as a Formation program? What is your mandate?

Ask yourselves: how does this innovative idea fit with the strategy and mission of your church? Innovation can go wrong here. Good ideas which will not further the mission can take up space from essential ideas that will further the mission of formation.

What are the expected outcomes? How will you measure your success? What are the short term goals? Are they achievable? You are working now on the feasibility of your innovative idea. This is important to the whole process. We might remind ourselves of the story from our Gospels about the man who sets out to build a tower without counting the cost.

A good example here is of the process used by the Episcopal Foundation of Texas and the Quin Foundation to plan and structure the new Strategic Mission Grant process. They had to both figure out how to pool the money, design a process of giving the money away, communicating the application procedures, reviewing the grant requests, covenanting with the recipients, and how to do accountability visits.

Mission Strategy and Implementation

Mission strategy and implementation begins in the fourth stage. It usually means a re-think of an existing process and ministry. Once you have settled on the major innovation and even a basic strategy you must work with all those who will be involved in the change and figure out the details.

This is not the same as looking at an existing process and improving it. We don’t need a better Sunday school program. It is describing what a future process will look like and virtually walking it through to its conclusion.

The team will first develop this "picture of the future." You might begin by making a list of the basic assumptions about the way things are done now and begin to see how things will be different. This is the part where most innovative concepts die. They either get launched without fully thinking through this piece or the innovation looks too difficult and so is abandoned and a decision is made to simply repaint the rooms and add new carpet.

Writing or drawing a flow chart or using some other illustrations will enable your team you have to get a look at the entire "future process."

This part of the process is exemplified in the Executive Board’s Mission Subcommittee which reviewed and worked with me on the staff structure and development of the new office of Life Long Christian Formation. Their work with me looked at all the potential areas of conflict, overlap, budgeting, scope of the ministry, and in the end helped me with developing a process for searching for the new Canon.
Reflection and Improvement

Once the missionary innovation is in motion, it is necessary to continuously examine it for possible improvements.

I think a process of review and reflection needs to be in place before the roll out of the initiative. If it is not clear what the matrix of success is, who will evaluate, and when determinations about ongoing work and there is no clear time line given the innovation will have problems.

One of two problems will arise. The innovation will fail because it was not adaptive to either the changing process of delivery or the changing context within the setting. Or the process will go on forever with the assumption that it is still needed and necessary for the survival of the organization.

What are the gaps? What is missing? Where are we misfiring? What are the barriers and blockages that are making the innovation less effective? Are there changing benefits, costs, risks necessary to improve and refine the missionary innovation?

Then the team must recommend and apply the improvements.

A good example of this is the innovation of mission congregation reports. It was important during the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century for the bishop to know what was going on in the mission congregations. Therefore, they were required to give reports on their ministry. The report was written and sent to the bishop on a semi-annual basis. This report evolved into a form and the form was required on a monthly basis. The process seemed to be improving, except that the form required too much information, was not turned in electronically and consequently wasn’t being used by most of the mission congregations. Moreover, the bishop and the staff knew what was going on because of new oversight responsibilities by the Canon for Congregational Development. When a new staff organization was developed in 2005, they weren’t being done at all. Today the diocese receives a brief email report with only a few questions from mission congregations receiving money from the diocese for their ministry. The process was reworked and improved based upon the changing nature of the context.

Conclusions

The Gospel testifies to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in God's plan for the salvation of the world.

You and I as Christians are challenged to "out narrate" and to communicate our work of "virtuous" living to the world around us. Specifically, we are called to do this work in our given mission context.

We are to be working hand in hand with Jesus Christ to transform the world around us.

You and I, as uniquely created Episcopalians, must reclaim our mission and ministry and tell the story in such a way that when those who retell it and those who hear it reshape the world into the reign of God.

The challenge of Christian Formation within the Episcopal Church today is to reinvent the manner in which we engage in the work Jesus has called us to do through entrepreneurial innovation.

I pray that God, who has given you the will to do these things, will give you both the grace, and the power to perform them in his name. Amen.

Episcopal Identity for Episcopal Schools

Click on the link to hear the audio presentation.  This was preached at St. Mark's Episcopal School, Houston, Texas at the installation of the new head of school Gahrett Wagers.

At the inaugural session of the Continental Congress – with the weight of war and the hope of freedom on their minds, on Wednesday, September 7, 1774, Mr. Duché an Episcopal Clergyman was invited to read prayers to the Congress. As it happened the 35th psalm was appointed for Episcopalians as a part of Morning Prayer. So Mr. Duché began, “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help.” (American Gospel, Jon Meacham, p.65)

June 28, 1836, it was an Episcopal service that accompanied James Madison, our 4th president and founding father, to his grave. (p.230) And it was Episcopal prayers that accompanied the mourners in their grief.

It was an Episcopal Service of Morning Prayer with hymns that inaugurated the Atlantic Charter between Churchill and Roosevelt on the deck of the HMS Prince Charles on the eve of World War II. (p.160)

April 13, 1943, the Episcopal Presiding Bishop Henry St. George Tucker joined the president and five thousand people to dedicate the Jefferson Memorial with an Episcopal Prayer thanking God for raising leaders up among us. (p.248)

March 4, 1944, it was an Episcopal prayer that was said in which we prayed for our enemies and prayed for peace at Roosevelt’s service commemorating his first inauguration in the midst of a nation at war. (p.167)

Jonathan M. Daniels found his strength in the vision of God preached and prayed in the Episcopal and as an Episcopal seminarian on August 20, 1965 gave his life following the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma, Alabama. It was there that Daniels lived with an African American family, and helped integrate the local Episcopal church.

Three years later in the heart of the Country, Washington D.C., and in the heart of the Jonathan Daniels’ Episcopal Church, the National Cathedral, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. climbed the thirteen steps into the pulpit during an Episcopal service and said:

“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.” (p203)

On January 14, 2009, then president elect, Barack Obama attended an Episcopal prayer service at St. Johns Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, prior to being sworn in as our 44th president of the United States. After the inauguration he would attend a national prayer service in the same Cathedral and stand were Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed his dream.

From this nation’s very inception, our leaders have from time to time called upon the wisdom found within our Episcopal heritage of prayers and scripture to buoy the people to mission, service, action, and vision.

In times of great discernment…In times of celebration…In times of peace…In times of justice…In times of war…and, in times of civil struggle…our leaders, those whose names we know and those whose names we do not know have called upon the strength of daily prayers found in our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

Through regular chapel, and Episcopal Prayer, Episcopal Schools, and specifically St. Mark’s Episcopal School, seeks to provide students with a solid foundation of wisdom (which is quite different from knowledge). We combine this foundation of wisdom with a foundation of prayer. Together they combine to set a bedrock upon which our students may build a good and virtuous citizenship.

Episcopal schools strive to offer academic rigor combined with a spiritual discipline that strengthens the Episcopal student for a journey of continued religious life and public service.

For the non-Episcopalian we hope that we have provided an environment, a community, where the individual student and family may find a spiritual home.

We want all students to find here the possibility and hope of a healthy relationship with God. For the Christian and Episcopalian we want a deepening of relationship. We desire to form an understanding about all of God’s creation and our particular and unique witness to a loving and caring God in Jesus Christ. We hope that those of you of every other denomination, creed, or faith background will find us to be a faithful and partnering family and that you have a sure and certain knowledge of our friendship with all believers.

We do all of this for one reason. We offer this Episcopal heritage to you in order that together we might improve the lives of our neighbors. This is the work of virtue. To understand clearly that we as citizens of the kingdom of God have a very real role in the kingdoms and realms of this world. We are called by our baptism and through Christ’s own love to work for the betterment of all humanity.

President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The real field of rivalry among and between the creeds comes in the rivalry of the endeavor to see which can render best service to mankind.”

We wish to form Episcopal Students who outdo one another in benevolent leadership which seeks not personal glory but the glory of God in serving others.

We provide the foundations upon which individuals may become honest, moral, and upright members of society; outdoing one another in kindness and in compassion to our fellow human beings.

We seek to provide for you an Episcopal Foundation of Faith.

 A foundation that can be drawn upon at times of discernment and when you are unsure of a course of action.
 A foundation that can be drawn upon for your celebratory events as in marriages and baptisms.

 A foundation that you can draw upon when you are in trouble, fearful, or in pain.
 A foundation upon which you may find resources for the daily living of life.
 A foundation upon which you may with others reshape and make the world a better place tomorrow than it is today.

Our expectation is that each student entrusted to us will be a leader, in their homes and within their families, they will be leaders in academia, sports, and in the arts, they will be leaders in the marketplace and within our governments.

There will come a time for each one of our students when every word will matter, every prayer spoken or silently prayed will count, every thought a necessary component of what comes next, every action an opportunity for change. Into these moments let the wisdom of our worship and prayer and scripture be present for you, uphold you, and sustain you.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I never told my religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wish to change another’s creed. I have ever judged the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives and not from our words, that our religion must be read.” (p. 34)

We expect our students to act so others may see in them what we see in them every day– a great and noble future. We expect our students to act so that others may see in them the best parts of our faith imparted and the blessings of your formation lived out.

This is how people will know their true religion, their true faith. This is how they will know they were formed at St. Mark’s Episcopal School.

 So to you Garhett, you are given a sacred trust as headmaster. To run the school well. Yes.


 To lead in development: working on endowment and debt reduction. Yes.


 To hire the very best educators who can form students and are devoted to the Episcopal culture of education. Yes.


 To lead in recruiting students of a diverse population that we may send forward to excel in the very best Episcopal schools and other schools in Houston. Yes.


 To increase the awareness of the gift of St. Mark’s School within the wider Episcopal and Houston community. Yes.

You are to do these things and many more.

But most of all you are to remember the sacred work of formation given to you as the head of an Episcopal school.

You are to form students with the tools of wisdom and Episcopal prayer that they may understand and live out their mission of virtuous citizenship.

Our Story, Their Story, Christ's Story

When Peter stands and addresses the men and women gathered in Jerusalem, he is addressing a crowd of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and many parts of Libya, Romans, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. It is quite the collection of people and languages. It is a diverse collection of stories.


Peter tells them the one story of the family of God. He tells them the dueteronomistic story of the family of God, which culminates not in the resurrection, but the coming of the Holy Spirit that the entire world may hear of the Messiah, the Christ. When they heard this they were cut to the heart, awe came upon everyone and there were many wonders and signs. (Acts 2)

Christianity is a story - a particular story. It is the story of God who is glorified through creation. When creation falls away from its ultimate purpose, thanks to the work of humanity, our sacred story tells us of the Messiah who comes to reorient and lead us to our eternal place within the family of God. Our sacred story leads us to undertake the work of glorifying God in all things.

This story is told and retold through the experience of people, the diverse spiritual journeys, cultures and languages. Many different people, more diverse than the first Pentecost gathering, tell and retell the story of Christ as they have come to know him and love him and worship him.

In telling the one story of the family of God, the strength of its truth is that missionaries have found the story alive over the centuries within the cultures and peoples who do not yet know Christ. The strength of the family of God, rooted in the Holy Spirit, comes because for centuries Christians have engaged in a conversation with their neighbors, listening to their stories, and seeing (as if for the first time) the story of Christ alive in the "other." Christians leave their world of comfortable symbols and journey to foreign places to discover and rediscover Christ at work in the world.

We might think of the biblical image of Paul speaking to the people of Athens about the "unknown God" (Acts 17.22ff). Paul, a missionary of Christ was able to see in the lives, even in the local worship of idols, the revelation of Jesus Christ. After listening and seeing how they believed, he used this as an opportunity to witness to his own belief.

For the church's mission to be healthy it must exist as a group of people who are dedicated to proclaiming the story of God in Jesus Christ, people who can listen, see and discover Christ at work in the world in the lives of others. The mission of Christ will die if all we do is say there is one way. Get on board! We must be at work in the world helping people to understand, in the words of Rascall Flatts, God blesses the broken road that leads to Christ. Faithful Christians make room for the story telling and for the listening. Christians make room so that those who do not yet believe may come to believe that their lives have been leading them to Christ.

For me, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. As a Christian missionary I have to be willing to listen to people and to discover how Christ is bringing them along the way, to the truth, that they might live the life of virtue. Christians must be willing to touch the lives of others, to listen to their stories of their journeys and see the revelation of Christ so that we can retell the ancient story again and again.

As I reflect upon the work of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Texas this summer I relish in the news of churches who have undertaken mission trips in their own back yards and around the world. Engaging, listening and discovering Christ in the midst of diverse cultures and peoples is our work. These stories beckon to us to renew our missionary commitment at home. We must return to our congregations with the news that Christ is alive in the world about us, God is truly at work in and beyond our churches and we all we have to do is step outside to see the manifest opportunities for transformation. Our missions abroad help form us in the knowledge that we are to be missionaries locally.

Unfortunately, just as we are sure of our one story of Christ, we are sure of the one story about the people who live in the neighborhoods and communities that surround our churches in the Diocese of Texas. We tell ourselves, they already go to church, they don't want to hear from us, they aren't like us, they are unbelievers, they are … they are … they are … As your bishop I would remind you of the missionary knowledge that they are Christ's and we are called to minister to them, reach out to them and to discover Christ already at work in their lives.

Our next issue of the Episcopalian is a celebration of the good work we are doing in Galveston, in Belize, in Honduras, in Uganda, at Camp Allen and in South Africa. I hope it will be a reminder that we have the opportunity to change the world across the street and across the world. Moreover, our own transformation may lie within the work of listening to the stories of our neighbors and witnessing God already at work in their lives.

Stewardship: The Divine Economy: Make our Life the Vision of Thee

Summer is coming to an end. I have just returned from some time off. I fished, worked on some genealogy, listened, read, and listened some more. I also enjoyed listening to a lot of music while I was relaxing. As I prepared for this talk on stewardship I was reminded of a hymn that is somewhat like a summer prayer. The song is by Rascal Flatts and it is called, “Backwards.”

You get your house back

You get your dog back

You get your best friend Jack back

You get your truck back

You get your hair back

You get your first and second wives back

Your front porch swing

your pretty little thing

Your bling bling bling and a diamond ring

Your get your farm and the barn and the boat and the Harley

That old black cat named Charlie

You get your mind back

And your nerves back

Your achy breaky heart back

You get your pride back

You get your life back

You get your first real love back

ohh big screen TV, DVD and a washing machine

You get the pond and the lawn and the rake and the mower

You go back when life was slower

It sounds a little crazy, a little scattered and absurd

But that's what you get

When you play a country song backwards

The economic culture that we live in is economy based upon the loosing of things and the gaining of things; the selling and the purchasing of things.

Sometimes, our church economy is based upon the increase or the decrease of things as well: people, pledges, and plate.

So I thought we should begin at the beginning. We must begin with a sense of the “Divine Economy.”

The poet, author, and Dean of York beginning in 1941, Eric Milner-White, wrote a poem called Thy God, Thy Glory. Here is the last stanza:

O God, most glorious,

Make our life the vision of thee

To the praise of thy glory;

that we all as a mirror may reflect it,

and be transformed into the same image

from glory to glory,

world without end.



Excerpt from: Thy God, Thy Glory


Eric Milner-White, 1884-1963

So we begin as our ancient texts tell us, in the beginning was the Word and the word was with God. (John 1.1)

God looks upon God, and in this looking has a perfect image of God’s self, the perfect and beautiful idea of God’s self. God looks and sees God perfectly, wholly, and corporately. And, in this looking in this perfect beholding of God’s self God is both Father and Son. There is God and there is God’s perfect self the Son.

Our human language cannot incorporate or speak adequately of the eternal, whole, and incorruptible nature of God and God’s self; so we say in our Creed, “God is Father, almighty,” and we also say, “God is Lord, Christ, only Son of God, eternally begotten,” and we say: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.”

God looks upon God and perfectly sees God’s self.

In seeing God, God perfectly loves God’s self. God perfectly is bound to God the son. So perfect, so unblemished is God’s love for God’s self that it, too, is actualized and repeats the perfect and beautiful and manifest glory which is God…This perfect love is that than which no greater can be thought.

Once again our human language fails to capture the movement and work of God or the perfection of God who we proclaim as love, so we say in our Creed that we believe in God who is “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” And, we recognize this God of three and three in one as eternally present in community one to another.

So perfect is God’s love for God, the Father for the Son, that God’s beauty and perfection and glory overflows, spilling out in the action of creation. God is creator of heaven and earth, God creates through God’s self (the son), through him all things were made. And the creative power and force is itself the very spirit of God, the hands of God at work in the world about us, the Holy Spirit. So it is that all things come to be and are given shape and form. Out of nothing they were created, but for the pleasure of God they were created and God saw all of God’s creation and the reflection of God’s image in its watery forms and green canopies, and creatures and saw that it was “good.”

All of creation is formed out of the divine imagination reflecting to God the glory of God’s self eternally united in a Holy Community we call the Trinity.

This is our sacred Truth.

This community of mutual affection and perfected friendship and undivided unity by its very nature, its very being creates all that we see, all that we have, all that we are for the pleasure and enjoyment and reflection that it provides. It’s as if to say, God creates out of the love for the Son and offers it to God saying, you are my son, see the love I have for you and I give to you in this creation which I hold in the palm of my hand, and offer to you. See in this creation formed out of nothing and given life by me the reflection of our beauty.

This is what we are made for. This is the purpose of all creation. We are made, formed, and given the breath of life for the purpose of glorifying God.

This is what we are made for…this is the divine economy.

We are created out of nothing as a gift to the Son from God the Father so that we might as a whole creation, not just human beings, not just one individual, not just the human self – the whole of humanity in conjunction with all of creation, reflect the dignity of God.

The glory of God is the ultimate purpose of creation.

Our story of beginnings, our heritage of community tells us of our all-to-human and all-to-imperfect attempts to do this work, to make this our ultimate concern. In fact, not only is God’s glory not our ultimate concern or our primary undertaking, it is the opposite of our human willfulness. Through all of history we have perpetrated the primary work of self-glorification, self-preservation, and self-manifestation making us the Gods of creation. This is the lie we live.

So tragic, so pervasive, so broken is this understanding of creation that we – on our own – outside of community only see imperfectly the shape of the world intended by God. So it is God who comes into the world, to possess the world which is a gift, to participate, to undo the powers of this world, by reorienting, refocusing, and drawing our eyes to the greater work of God. They asked Jesus, “Why did you come into this world?” He answers us clearly, “To glorify God.” This is his answer and he is our teacher in the life of holiness – in the divine economy.

Jesus’ death on the cross purchases, redeems for us the freedom from the bonds of self-service that we may follow him along the way, imitating our teacher, and undertaking the glorification of God. We are given by the cross freedom from sin which is nothing less than freedom from avarice, the insatiable desire of a God like self-preservation above all else – the root of all sinful desires and actions.

God not only enters and claims creation as God’s own, but also redeems it, providing a missional map to the work of creation, and breathing, loosing on all creation the ever present Holy Spirit, God with us, to strengthen us for the work of glorifying and magnifying God. The lens is polished that we may see more clearly, with the help of the Holy Spirit, our work and the work of community.

The Holy Spirit, the empowering agent of Godly life, transforms and binds individual sinners into virtuous community. This is the family of God, the community called the Church, with the primary working outwardly, on a daily basis, the inner life of the Holy Trinity. The mission of true virtue, co-creating with God, the community of God, the reign of God, the kingdom of God, on earth and in this moment.

We are as the family of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, enlarging and actualizing God’s Holy vision in creation.

If these themes of “glorification of God” and “building virtuous community” are our work, what then? (And it is most certainly the orthodox view of creation and redemption rooted deeply in our Anglican theology and tradition.) If this glorification of God is our ultimate created purpose as community and our penultimate work is the perfecting of human relationships one to another in undivided unity – the building of the virtuous community at work in the world -- then stewardship is at the center of our life and our ministry. In fact, we might say, our life and our ministry is stewardship.

Virtuous life, a life lived to benefit God, is a life of stewardship the essential ingredient in the divine economy.

We are created for stewardship of the eternal.

We cannot look upon creation, our use or abuse of it, without the knowledge of its ultimate purpose and our fallen desire to manage it for our own benefit rather than for God’s glory.

We cannot look upon our communities, our towns our cities, without acknowledging the brokenness of human interrelations, and the collateral casualties of economy of wealth, power, and authority which benefit human aggrandizement and not the divine economy.

We cannot look upon our families, our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and children and not acknowledge how we live out our relationships into horizontal alignment along competing self-indulging sibling relationships. The cost of this economy is broken families, record divorces, bankruptcy, astronomical debt, and abuse. God rather intends the family of God to be one of caring and support with roles ordered out of virtuous care for the “other” in our midst.

We cannot look upon our church without recognizing the result of ego driven communities, with mob mentalities, conflicted loyalties, political maneuvering, and argument measured in electronic sound bytes, followers, and power rather than in discerned corporate stewardship of the divine economy.

When we stop, when we pause, when we take a moment to recalibrate and measure our journey along the way – we see clearly that our priorities may indeed be out of sync.

Our ultimate concern may not be God’s. Our primary interest may not be what has been intended all along.

All of this is to say that what we intend to do when we say we are engaged in stewardship is of the most radical transformative work before the church.

Christian stewardship, which is Anglican and uniquely Episcopalian, recognizes the radical work of creature-li-ness: to glorify God and co-create a virtuous community in mission.

And, when we speak of being stewards we are speaking of a radical faith in God who is Trinity, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is at work in the world as creator, redeemer, and prophetic missioner. We are saying that “we believe in God,” a particular kind of God -- a God who has brought into being creation for the purpose of his glory and his beauty.

We are saying that we care about the earth and its health in reflecting God’s glory.

We are saying we care about our farms, and communities, and towns, and cities and neighbors and how we are relating and care taking of the land, resources, and our relationships.

We are saying that we believe and so we act in our lives, private and public, for the good and in a way revealing and reflecting the goodness of the one who gives us form and breath.

We are saying we believe and as a community we give in accordance with our thanksgivings. We give not 10%, because we know God has given us all that we have, all that we are, our friends, our family, our neighbors, our gifts for ministry, our vocations, our work, our lives, our very lives God has given. We give out of the abundance of what we receive – God in Jesus yes, but moreover, out of the glorious generosity of beauty which is God’s creation all around us. We give, we make a difference, we restore, we co-create, and we design.

As Christian stewards, we understand that we are artists who are intimately engaged in the beautiful things, the beatitudes, in the blessings of neighbors and creatures and creation.

To be a Christian steward at work within the economy of God is a most life changing, and mission altering notion. To glorify God as our primary witness and concern in our lives, with one another, in our relationships, and in our affiliation to God and God’s community is life’s work of stewardship.  So we pray:

O God, most glorious,

Make our life the vision of thee

To the praise of thy glory;

that we all as a mirror may reflect it,

and be transformed into the same image

from glory to glory,

world without end. Amen.

Stewardship: The Divine Economy

Stewardship Conference
Episcopal Diocese of Texas 2010
by the Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle

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