St. Augustine of Hippo
Galveston, Diocese of Texas
16 January 2011
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
Do you know the names of any of those West Indian sailors who asked for a church where they’d be welcome? Do you know any more about their particular histories? Did any of them settle here and leave descendants?
Even if we don’t know them as individuals, we are their heirs. Each one of them could have been called Isaiah, with a mouth like a sharp sword, hidden in the shadow of God’s hand. Every one was a polished arrow, hidden in the Lord’s quiver. When the time came, when they had tired of being shunted aside and told they weren’t welcome in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day, they went off to share words with Bishop Gregg. Bishop Gregg answered their challenge, and St. Augustine of Hippo was born, having been knit together in the crucible of struggle for justice, dignity, and equality.
The servant who is formed for God’s prophetic work labors faithfully, but often gets frustrated by the lack of progress. Isaiah says, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and for vanity.” And what does God do but expand the task? Those who labor for justice on behalf of their own people often discover that their cause is the salvation of all humanity.
Isaiah labored on behalf of a divided and besieged, enslaved and hopeless people. His words of courage and strength bore an amazing challenge – ‘you will be light to the nations, to the whole world, not just your own people. Your salvation lies in being the healer of the nations.’
That message is as urgent today as it was more than 2500 years ago. The sword and the arrow of God’s word continue to pierce unyielding hearts and unjust societies. The servant whose birth we mark this weekend began his labors on behalf of the descendants of slaves in this nation, in the same cause of justice that produced St. Augustine. He labored in order that former slaves might be truly free, that his people might be able to eat and sleep and marry and work wherever they wished. And his cause expanded. His dream speech hints at it: the dream that his own children might be able to play together with all other children, and that when they were grown they might live in a nation that valued each one for their virtues rather than their color. But he kept on moving, particularly after the dark night experience in his own kitchen that he called his mountaintop – the “fear not, for you have seen the Lord” encounter. He became far more vocal and insistent that our work is peace, not war. He climbed up that mountain and kept on shining, and his light has continued to shine in spite of the efforts of some to put it out. The light of the nations has shined in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
This congregation is a light shining in the darkness as well, and your light grows stronger as you understand your mission more widely – feeding the hungry, teaching and healing the sick at St. Vincent’s, feeding those who are hungry in body as well as soul through this garden, literally feeding the hungry volunteers who labor to rebuild Galveston. Your urgent desire to serve new communities will bring light to people from nations south of our border.
Yet the work of your art show and art lessons strikes me as perhaps the most revolutionary spotlight you’re working on right now. The Bible isn’t often seen as an art book, even though it’s prompted a significant fraction of all the art that’s been produced in the last two millennia. Visual arts are a remarkable way of reflecting the image of God, both in the creativity of the people who paint or draw, sculpt or photograph, and in the work produced. The same can be said of musicians and dancers and actors. The creator of the art shares God’s own creativity in bringing that new work to light. The urge to create something beautiful or expressive reflects a desire to share in the divine, the transcendent, the holy. The creative act shares in God’s own creativity and it leads us beyond ourselves when it’s shared.
Encouraging creativity gives people dignity by supporting those acts of co-creation. It can also foster reconciliation, for it invites us all to see the world in new ways. There is something profoundly creative about Jesus’ own ministry of reconciliation, drawing unlikely people together to be fed in body and spirit.
The people of Haiti are struggling to recover their sphere for creativity. Creativity follows very soon after food, water, and shelter in the list of human needs. The Episcopal cathedral in Haiti was famous – not just among Haitians – for the ways in which it fed the heart as well as the soul. It sheltered the major cultural institutions - music school in Haiti, and the only philharmonic orchestra. Its children’s choir, Les Petites Chanteuses – the Little Singers – they have inspired people around the world through its tours. Both the choir and the orchestra are practicing in an open air area behind the rubble of the cathedral, and they are already bringing comfort and hope to their neighbors across the nation. But it’s probably the murals in the cathedral that are most known across the world. They were painted in the early 1950s by native Haitian artists, in a naïf style that showed the great biblical stories happening in Haiti. Jesus is a Haitian, and so are the disciples. The women are Haitian market women, and you might see the children of the choir along the riverbanks in the baptismal mural. That’s one of the three remaining murals which the Smithsonian has begun to conserve. Bishop Duracin has insisted that the cathedral complex has to be the first priority for reconstruction, because it’s going to feed the soul of the nation through the arts, through its schools – primary, secondary, music, and vocational – and through the ministry of the Sisters of St. Margaret.
The ability of Haitians to speak truth through the particular beauty of their own culture will be the peace-building sword and arrow. The art that emerges will help to heal not only Haiti, but the divisions between our own two nations. If you study the history between us, you will discover much for which the US needs to repent. The prophets who emerge in that place will serve a larger healing and salvation.
When John proclaims, “Here is the lamb of God,” what comes to your mind? His disciples have to recognize Jesus before they can follow. Those very words, ‘lamb of God,’ only make sense in a particular context – we only today know what they mean because they’ve been explained over and over, often in pictures. John says that he recognized Jesus because he saw the spirit descend on him. What picture do you have of that? Jesus himself invites the disciples to “come and see.” There is a whole lot of seeing and recognizing going on – and it continues here when you say to the world, “come and see.” Come and see the hope that’s given in new murals at St. Vincent’s, come and see the hope in the creative work of carving dead tree stumps. Come and see God at work in the restoration and resurrection of Galveston. Come and see the love of God right here, gathering and feeding and healing.
You are the light to the nations, and go, tell others to come and see.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Presiding Bishop Sermon at St Andrews 100th Anniversary
St. Andrew’s, Houston, TX
14 Jan 2011
Centennial celebration
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
Greetings from around the church.
Our churchwide staff serves all those Episcopalians, and we had our annual staff gathering on Tuesday and Wednesday, with people gathered from all over – one who works from Panama, another from Scotland, and from offices in Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Miami, Washington, DC, as well as New York, and individuals who work from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico. It’s the primary time during the year when everyone gathers for learning and team-building. On Tuesday morning we sent everyone out to visit community ministries sponsored by Episcopal churches around the New York metro area – programs that feed and shelter people, chaplaincy in a correctional facility, after-school tutoring, senior lunches – each of them ways of healing the brokenness in the world around us. All are examples of what Isaiah talks about – giving sight to the blind and delivering prisoners, literally and figuratively. These various outposts of care and healing are light to the nations, giving glory to God.
People came back absolutely transformed – several people wanted to get personally involved, give money, volunteer, figure out how to do something similar at the Church Center or in their own offices. We saw what Isaiah and John both speak of – human beings loving one another and giving glory to God. One of the early church theologians, Irenaeus, said that the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and as people returned we saw a room filled with that kind of glory.
These staff members spend their working lives supporting others who do similarly transformative ministry, but not all of them get to see it in the flesh – particularly the people who work in the finance department, or the mail room, or in information systems or building maintenance. Even the mission department staff usually only get to see ministries that have to do with their own particular area. But it takes the whole team to help support the work of sending missionaries, linking new Latino congregations with Christian ed resources in Spanish, resettling refugees, or helping congregations find new clergy. All of us, working together, become the beacon spreading light to those who live in darkness.
St. Andrew’s is the same kind of beacon and light to the nations. What you do here in this place gives glory to God. How many of you have participated in feeding hungry people, or the Seafarers’ Center, or Brigid’s Hope? Light to the nations – all of you!
It’s striking to read the history of this area, and to learn that Oscar Martin Carter envisioned this part of Houston as something like the “city on a hill” that Jesus later talks about: “you are the light of the world; a city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt 5:14). The founder of Houston Heights believed that business owners and their employees could live together at peace, in a community that included green space, schools, churches like St. Andrew’s, and civic institutions that bring people together for leisure and community improvement. That’s not so different from other great prophetic images of the city of peace – the banquet on a hill, the lion lying down with the lamb, or a city where children can play in the streets while their elders watch from park benches (Zechariah 8:4-5). The work of the people of St. Andrew’s in the last hundred years has given flesh to those dreams. You have much to celebrate.
Building that city on a hill to be a light to the nations mostly happens by doing what Jesus asks of his friends: “love one other as I have loved you.” This is a week of sobering reminders of the world’s desperate need for that kind of love. The people of southern Sudan are seeking a nation where they no longer struggle with their neighbors over oil and borders, where they can send their children to school and expect them to grow and play and thrive. Thus far, that referendum has been remarkably peaceful, and the religious leaders in southern Sudan, including Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, have helped to keep it so.
The people of Haiti have marked a year since their nation suffered enormous death and devastation in a massive earthquake. They have a long way to go in recovery and rebuilding, but their brothers and sisters around the world stand ready to help. The Episcopal Church has just begun a formal campaign to help rebuild the cathedral center, which included schools for children, a trade school, a music school, as well as Catedral Sainte Trinité, that it, too, may once again be a light of God’s love to the people of that land. The art in that cathedral was revolutionary when it was painted nearly 60 years ago. Most of those murals, which showed the great stories of the Bible in a Haitian context, were destroyed, but the three remaining ones are being removed and restored by the Smithsonian, so that they can be returned when the cathedral is rebuilt. Light to the nation in that context also looks like pride in a nation’s culture, a way to say that God loves us enough to show up right here – and Jesus looks like a Haitian! It is the eternal good news of God-with-us. Each one of us can share in that work of rebuilding the city on a hill, in stone and art and human dignity. Go take a look: www.episcopalchurch.org/haitiappeal Hear the stories, see the murals, and send a contribution.
Love one another as I have loved you. That love is urgently needed in the aftermath of the violence in Arizona, particularly as children, adults, and communities seek some shred of solace and healing. Each and every city and community on this planet is meant to be a source of God’s healing love. There have been abundant signs of loving others as God loves us, even to giving one’s life for another, or going into the valley of the shadow of death for the sake of one in desperate need – the man who sheltered his wife and died in the process; the aide who quenched the bleeding of Congresswoman Gifford, the two who stopped the gunman from further killing. Yet it is the work of rebuilding the city that will require a longer and more intense and sacrificial focus in the days and years to come. How will each one of us love both the wounded and the wounder in Arizona? How will we shine light in the aftermath of war in Sudan, or the poverty and devastation in Haiti? How will we make peace with our neighbors right here?
The city of light to the nations is built day by day, as we love as Jesus loved, answering the hungers and hurts of the world: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, restoring the lost, freeing the prisoners of poverty and mental illness, and loving the unloved – which is what forgiveness is all about. St. Andrew’s will celebrate a second hundred years if you continue to do that kind of holy work. The light to the nations flames forth, one loving act at a time. May you burn brightly on these heights – for years and years and years.
14 Jan 2011
Centennial celebration
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
Greetings from around the church.
Our churchwide staff serves all those Episcopalians, and we had our annual staff gathering on Tuesday and Wednesday, with people gathered from all over – one who works from Panama, another from Scotland, and from offices in Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Miami, Washington, DC, as well as New York, and individuals who work from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico. It’s the primary time during the year when everyone gathers for learning and team-building. On Tuesday morning we sent everyone out to visit community ministries sponsored by Episcopal churches around the New York metro area – programs that feed and shelter people, chaplaincy in a correctional facility, after-school tutoring, senior lunches – each of them ways of healing the brokenness in the world around us. All are examples of what Isaiah talks about – giving sight to the blind and delivering prisoners, literally and figuratively. These various outposts of care and healing are light to the nations, giving glory to God.
People came back absolutely transformed – several people wanted to get personally involved, give money, volunteer, figure out how to do something similar at the Church Center or in their own offices. We saw what Isaiah and John both speak of – human beings loving one another and giving glory to God. One of the early church theologians, Irenaeus, said that the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and as people returned we saw a room filled with that kind of glory.
These staff members spend their working lives supporting others who do similarly transformative ministry, but not all of them get to see it in the flesh – particularly the people who work in the finance department, or the mail room, or in information systems or building maintenance. Even the mission department staff usually only get to see ministries that have to do with their own particular area. But it takes the whole team to help support the work of sending missionaries, linking new Latino congregations with Christian ed resources in Spanish, resettling refugees, or helping congregations find new clergy. All of us, working together, become the beacon spreading light to those who live in darkness.
St. Andrew’s is the same kind of beacon and light to the nations. What you do here in this place gives glory to God. How many of you have participated in feeding hungry people, or the Seafarers’ Center, or Brigid’s Hope? Light to the nations – all of you!
It’s striking to read the history of this area, and to learn that Oscar Martin Carter envisioned this part of Houston as something like the “city on a hill” that Jesus later talks about: “you are the light of the world; a city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt 5:14). The founder of Houston Heights believed that business owners and their employees could live together at peace, in a community that included green space, schools, churches like St. Andrew’s, and civic institutions that bring people together for leisure and community improvement. That’s not so different from other great prophetic images of the city of peace – the banquet on a hill, the lion lying down with the lamb, or a city where children can play in the streets while their elders watch from park benches (Zechariah 8:4-5). The work of the people of St. Andrew’s in the last hundred years has given flesh to those dreams. You have much to celebrate.
Building that city on a hill to be a light to the nations mostly happens by doing what Jesus asks of his friends: “love one other as I have loved you.” This is a week of sobering reminders of the world’s desperate need for that kind of love. The people of southern Sudan are seeking a nation where they no longer struggle with their neighbors over oil and borders, where they can send their children to school and expect them to grow and play and thrive. Thus far, that referendum has been remarkably peaceful, and the religious leaders in southern Sudan, including Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, have helped to keep it so.
The people of Haiti have marked a year since their nation suffered enormous death and devastation in a massive earthquake. They have a long way to go in recovery and rebuilding, but their brothers and sisters around the world stand ready to help. The Episcopal Church has just begun a formal campaign to help rebuild the cathedral center, which included schools for children, a trade school, a music school, as well as Catedral Sainte Trinité, that it, too, may once again be a light of God’s love to the people of that land. The art in that cathedral was revolutionary when it was painted nearly 60 years ago. Most of those murals, which showed the great stories of the Bible in a Haitian context, were destroyed, but the three remaining ones are being removed and restored by the Smithsonian, so that they can be returned when the cathedral is rebuilt. Light to the nation in that context also looks like pride in a nation’s culture, a way to say that God loves us enough to show up right here – and Jesus looks like a Haitian! It is the eternal good news of God-with-us. Each one of us can share in that work of rebuilding the city on a hill, in stone and art and human dignity. Go take a look: www.episcopalchurch.org/haitiappeal Hear the stories, see the murals, and send a contribution.
Love one another as I have loved you. That love is urgently needed in the aftermath of the violence in Arizona, particularly as children, adults, and communities seek some shred of solace and healing. Each and every city and community on this planet is meant to be a source of God’s healing love. There have been abundant signs of loving others as God loves us, even to giving one’s life for another, or going into the valley of the shadow of death for the sake of one in desperate need – the man who sheltered his wife and died in the process; the aide who quenched the bleeding of Congresswoman Gifford, the two who stopped the gunman from further killing. Yet it is the work of rebuilding the city that will require a longer and more intense and sacrificial focus in the days and years to come. How will each one of us love both the wounded and the wounder in Arizona? How will we shine light in the aftermath of war in Sudan, or the poverty and devastation in Haiti? How will we make peace with our neighbors right here?
The city of light to the nations is built day by day, as we love as Jesus loved, answering the hungers and hurts of the world: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, restoring the lost, freeing the prisoners of poverty and mental illness, and loving the unloved – which is what forgiveness is all about. St. Andrew’s will celebrate a second hundred years if you continue to do that kind of holy work. The light to the nations flames forth, one loving act at a time. May you burn brightly on these heights – for years and years and years.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Bishop's February Calendar 2011
1 2:00 p.m. Dedication of Bishops’ Portraits, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston
3 11:00 a.m. Northwest Convocation Clericus, Baylor Episcopal Student Center, Waco
5 10:00 a.m. Absalom Jones Celebration, Christ Church Cathedral, Houston
6 11:00 a.m. Iglesia Episcopal San Mateo, Houston, CF
9 2:30 p.m. St. Luke’s Health Charities Leadership meeting, Houston
11-12 162nd Diocesan Council, Marriott Waterway, The Woodlands
16 4:00 p.m. Episcopal High School Executive Committee meeting, Houston
19 Ordination and Consecration of the V Bishop of Western Kansas, Salina, Kansas
23 4:00 p.m. Episcopal High School Board meeting, Houston
27 10:00 a.m. Calvary, Bastrop, CF
3 11:00 a.m. Northwest Convocation Clericus, Baylor Episcopal Student Center, Waco
5 10:00 a.m. Absalom Jones Celebration, Christ Church Cathedral, Houston
6 11:00 a.m. Iglesia Episcopal San Mateo, Houston, CF
9 2:30 p.m. St. Luke’s Health Charities Leadership meeting, Houston
11-12 162nd Diocesan Council, Marriott Waterway, The Woodlands
16 4:00 p.m. Episcopal High School Executive Committee meeting, Houston
19 Ordination and Consecration of the V Bishop of Western Kansas, Salina, Kansas
23 4:00 p.m. Episcopal High School Board meeting, Houston
27 10:00 a.m. Calvary, Bastrop, CF
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Celebration of New Ministry at St. James, Conroe, Texas
Ninja pose after a beautiful celebration of New Ministry for
Jerald Hyche at St. James in Conroe, Texas.
Jerald Hyche at St. James in Conroe, Texas.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
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.
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)
“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:
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?
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.
__________________________________
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:
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.
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.http://www.gracemagazine.org.uk/articles/historical/raikes.htm)
“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,
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.
__________________________________
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.
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