Episcopal Diocese of Iowa [ Sermon Convention Address 2007 ]

BISHOP’S ADDRESS

TO THE 155TH ANNUAL CONVENTION

Alan Scarfe, Ninth Bishop of Iowa

November 2-3, 2007

Shared Resources and Strengthening Congregations

In April 2008, we will celebrate five years together as bishop and Diocese. The anniversary falls on a Saturday, and will be part of the Christian Formation Forum. I hope we will be able to gather in good numbers to give thanks, and to find strength from God for the next five years. What we intend to do in terms of ministry direction for those five years are before us today in the Strategic Plan, and I have built my address around each of the four focus areas of the Plan: Shared Resources for Ministry, Strengthening Congregations, Preparing the next generations of faith, and exploring and asserting our Anglican Episcopal identity.

The call to ministry and mission is always God’s initiative. It comes as part of every person’s baptism. The apostle Paul speaks of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” by which he sees the Church as carrying the living presence of Christ into each generation. When Andrew told Jesus that the Greeks were looking for him, he prompted the usual non-sequitur from Jesus that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone.” In other words, He would reach the Greeks, but not in his physical person. Others would bring Him there. Those who would be baptized into His death and raised to a new life in Him would bear His Gospel and His presence to Greece and to the uttermost ends of the earth through the urging of the Holy Spirit in them.

This year’s Convention theme is The Great Turning. It is a phrase which comes from the concerns for the sustainability and renewal of the earth. It speaks of turning over the soil and preparing it for seeding. In ecological terms it means re-turning the planet to its fertile self, and turning the people of the earth to one another and to our Creator. Stewardship stands at its center: stewardship of God’s creation and of God’s people, but also the stewardship of a penitent heart turned from darkness toward the Light of the World, Jesus our Lord.

Part of modern humanity’s efforts at repentance is found in the Millennium Development Goals. These eight noble purposes for humanity, yet not so noble because of their absolute urgency and necessity, have been a part of our ministry for several years now. I remember how the work of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation was just being envisioned at my first House of Bishops in March 2003 by Jeffrey Rowthorne. As foci for mission, they have gripped the imagination of our Church and this Diocese as I believe we shall discover in our sharing over these two days. We are assisted in this by our strong partnership with Swaziland, through which God provides us with human faces for our sense of commitment and global awareness. I will speak further of this relationship as we consider our Episcopal-Anglican identity.

Last year I wondered out loud whether we found it easier to share resources with people beyond the Diocese than we did inside the Diocese. Jesus said that when we give alms, we are not to let our right hand know what our left hand is doing. He also commended the widow’s mite over the calculated donation of the wealthy Pharisee. The 2006 Convention accepted the new formula for diocesan giving presented by the Task Force on Strategic Planning called the “Stewardship Share.” It was based on the common priorities presented in the multi-level surveys carried out throughout the Diocese. Those priorities showed your desire to be worshipping communities, preferably led by stipended clergy. Stipended clergy were seen not only as sacramentalists, but also chief evangelists in your communities. I hope we can shift that emphasis in the coming years for the job of evangelist falls on each one of us. It is what Jesus does.

With the new formula, we shrunk the gap between what we were asking for in the Diocesan budget and what we might pledge to the budget. In that sense it is a truer reflection of our budget reality. It reveals the risk to which we are all exposed as a Diocese when our congregations are unable or unwilling to meet their fair share. I understand the unable. Every congregation has its cycle of ups and downs and sometimes has to reflect that financially. I have increasing difficulty, however, with the unwilling—especially if that unwillingness relates to General Convention 2003. It is time for us to say that the protests have been heard, and that the withholding of funds has hurt our potential for mission as a diocese. I also believe that the Communion as a whole has begun moving toward a much more positive way for reconciliation and allowance for our differences. I also remind us all that we have never in all of this time pulled back from our common mission in Jesus Christ. This is true of the Episcopal Church as it is of us as a Diocese.

This year our Diocesan budget is unusual because it is being presented with a $52,000 deficit. As such it may actually be non-canonical. The Ways and Means Committee and the Board of Directors want to know what we all intend to do about this as a community. If we were to agree to make our national asking fully, then we are looking at a $92,000 deficit budget. For while our national giving has increased for 2008 by 5%, the asking increased by 25% because of assessing unrestricted endowment monies which we have used for mission purposes to jump start ministry development and to offset monies lost by withholdings. Assessing endowment monies used for mission initiatives and not just general programming is a policy which you may know I have opposed in our own diocesan affairs, and with the new diocesan formula we only impose a potential 10% increase annually from 2008 onwards. While supporting our fullest possible contribution to the Episcopal Church budget, I am applying that same approach to the national asking.

It is clear that without the national increase, and without the continued practice of withholding income, we would have a balanced budget. It is time to reconcile and move on together. I do not know what else there is to prove. When we have no real means of disciplining each other as a Convention, how do we address the situation? When the majority of the powers that be in the Communion tell us that they believe we have heard their concerns and acknowledge how much we have heeded their requests, it is time for reconciliation.

This is not about losing members. The Diocese of Iowa has made a modest increase in membership this year after twenty plus years of straight losses. I hear reports of congregations growing in our cities and towns, including those at both ends of the theological spectrum. God is using this Church for God’s mission, just as God uses any faithful, committed and devoted people who say “here I am, Lord, send me.”

Nor is it about losing and winning. In fact we are trying to move into a place beyond winning through the reconciliation conversations of the Windsor Group. I am grateful to those brave members who have been willing to place their vulnerability as people of faith into the hands of others with differing opinion on where the Church is today. It has not been easy for them to do this, but they have tried, and all for the sake of talking to each other as mutually respected members of the Body of Christ.

Shared resources are as much about all working together as members of Christ in God’s common mission. How do we affirm each and all in that assurance of mutual respect?

A common budget is one such statement of mission. The Great Turning includes our relationship to one another expressed through our finances, and I am grateful that more than 75% have stepped up to meet your Stewardship share. I also believe we can work towards fuller compliance.

Shared resources mean more than money. It leads into the goal of strengthening congregations. The Strategic Plan describes many options: developing a balance between centralized ministry and ministry stemming out regionally from various centers. Growth plans that work in one congregation can be shared or adapted for another. St Timothy’s, West Des Moines took the Diocesan BAGS process and applied it with adaptation to their setting. Christ Church, Cedar Rapids is taking the ministry team concept and is reworking it for a large congregation applying it for the creation of ministry teams for specific ministry service areas such as seniors and young families.

The Ministry Development process for congregations is now in place in ten congregations, and more clergy have stepped forward to become coaches for the teams leaving us with less need of regional missioners as part of diocesan staff. Willa Goodfellow continues to oversee all of this, and will include theological education in her portfolio midway through 2008 when Tom Gehlsen increases his parochial ministry. He will continue his good work as Deployment officer.

I still see commissions and task forces of the Diocese becoming the natural vehicles for the spreading out of the load of ministry across the whole community. For example, the Multicultural Commission, newly organized only last year, is already developing anti-racism trainers, and the presence in our congregations of new clergy members such as Roman Roldan of Trinity Cathedral, Davenport, Vincent Bete of St Anne’s, Ankeny, and Anne Scissons, the new vicar at St. Paul’s Indian Mission will, I hope, prepare us for broader multicultural ministry as in their own persons they represent Hispanic, Filipino and Native American peoples respectively It is only a matter of time before we see this Convention reflect the increasing diversity of our Church and our state. I would also like to encourage an increasing development of mission work together as multiples of congregations through the Chapters.

A committee and commission that have combined resources and sprung to life this year has been the two groups that deal with property and architecture. Members have been proactive in visiting congregations with building needs or innovation plans. St Mark’s, Maquoketa moved ahead thanks to their UTO grant, demolished their parish house and are erecting a parish hall which will double as a community center. Church of the Savior, Clermont, another UTO recipient, also received help from their big sister in California and has begun renovations. Look for their invitation to join a work party next summer, as they work on creating some indoor plumbing.

Shared resources and strengthening congregations come together when I consider the importance in the near future of raising capital funds for new congregational ministries. Today we welcome the first new congregation in our Diocese in twelve years. The faculty and students of Northwestern College under the leadership of priest Karen Wacome have formed the Church of the Savior, Orange City. They come to us today to incorporate into the Diocese. Their witness is testimony that young people are finding Christ as He is being made known among us—even young people raised in a different Christian tradition which perhaps no longer rings as true for them as in their childhood. Yet where will they gather, once the opportunity to meet on the campus runs its course? Are we able to support their search for a more permanent center? What about our witness in Dallas County or in the Cedar Valley corridor—in those places where Iowa is seeing strong demographic growth? And, what can we say about the all important purpose of redeveloping congregations? As we enter the first year of our strategic plan, I am asking that the Congregational Life Commission re-envision itself as a consultant body choosing to work with perhaps two or three places at a time in potential redevelopment.

Capital gifts could readily fund our diocesan-wide theological education system, the E-Seminary. In September we received a bequest from a long-term Diocesan servant, Margaret Altekruse, who died earlier this year. Margaret had long been our ERD Coordinator. I asked the Board to place up to $125,000 into an endowment start for the E-Seminary in Margaret’s name. The E-Seminary continues to be an important way we share theological education, and with the advances in computer technology, we are asking how it would be to move our media bases away from the ICN, which tends to still leave us scattered in our smaller communities, to find the resources to equip every congregation with their own interactive media/computer center for education and communication. The technology might be too expensive right now, but we will give it thought. The same educational offerings will be made, but the staging areas may change, though probably not in the near future.

Vocations are another source of sharing and of congregational strengthening, as God provides the unknown and often unexpected callings for our mutual benefit. In September I ordained John Doherty to the diaconate. He was the twenty-second person I have ordained in the past four years. All but two are ministering in the Diocese. By this time next year ministry Development teams will have begun to be commissioned and ordained, and the first fruits of one answer to a shifting ministry paradigm will be before us. Other paradigm shifts will come before us as we study what it means to be a mission-shaped Church.

It is appropriate here to mention two important initiatives that are aimed at strengthening clergy in the Diocese. The Task Force on Clergy Wellness has put a lot of work in this year in an effort to rollback the inevitable increasing costs of health insurance. With solid support from Bob Joy and Anne Wagner, the Clergy Wellness Commission investigated a number of plans, and settled upon a version with a high deductible with a Health Reimbursement Account. A two-line reference in a speech cannot capture the work involved in the investigation and decision-making process, nor can it do justice to the work that is going to be involved as we live into it. We expect that General Convention 2009 will be tackling this problem nationally, and we see the present change a temporary effort to stay expenses. The second initiative begun this year is Fresh Start. Every clergy person who has undertaken a transition or change of call in the past two years was asked to participate in a mentoring and support group. It is a two-year commitment, and I appreciate the congregations for allowing their clergy time for this important program.

We are currently facing what I see as Phase One of an extensive clergy transition process, as a number of us reach retirement age. This year alone we have said farewell to David Titus, Leon Pfotenhauer, Bruce Blois, Peter Sanderson, Mel Lowe, Netha Breda and Fred Burger. Some have become ready supply, others have moved out of state, and become supply somewhere else! God has been good to us in bringing some fine replacements, but they will all be missed. At the Diocesan staff level, Warren Frelund moved to Wyoming to take on a call which expanded his congregational development ministry. We also experienced a couple of heart-breaking losses in the death of Dick Osing and of Eric Johnson. These men were pastors and teachers to all of us, and we will have an opportunity to remember them specifically in our prayers tomorrow and through resolution of Convention.

Finally under this heading, I want to mention the importance of communications and youth ministry. This year, our two part-time Youth Missioners, Diane Bjorklund and Sue Genereux, surprised each other and all of us by resigning in one week unbeknownst to each other! In their two years working together they have expanded the geographical scope of the youth network through their leadership, bringing consistent training through Godly Play and J2A to a greater number of congregations. Through focusing on a few Diocesan-wide events they have helped gather young people including taking parochial trips such as the February ski trip in Dubuque and the Pine Ridge reservation camp program of Ankeny and offering them to a wider number of youth. Happening weekends have become part of the Diocesan program, and we hosted the National Happening Committee this past spring. At the February Happening which I attended in Mason City, we were all snowed in, and so parents who couldn’t get home followed the program, slept on the floors or couches and received graduation crosses at the end!

Children from every corner of the Diocese, especially those with only one or two peers in their own congregation, have found a youth program that has worked for them. New initiatives such as the Bishop’s Day at the Cathedral in the middle of August brought 150 people together. Together with the YMDT chairmanship of Wanda Stahl and Sue Frelund, the Missioners have been able to place increasing organizing responsibilities on the Youth Ministry Development Team.

Diocesan coordination remains an important role in youth ministry, and we give thanks to God for the grace to see God’s gift to us when Lydia Kelsey interviewed and was hired for the new position. Lydia also brings the perspective of campus ministry to her role, as well as a passion for summer camps. I believe that she will build on the sharing role of ministry with the YMDT and will help tie in the resources of our larger populated congregational youth ministries to the broader and more scattered constituency of the Diocese as a whole. While still thinking about young people, I want to acknowledge the new ministry of Raisin Horn as University of Iowa Chaplain, as well as that of Maureen Doherty who is reaching out to students at UNI. This year also saw the retirement of Julia Easley as University of Iowa Chaplain after 17 years. Jim Tener continues at ISU.

I am also asking Lydia to assume new duties in communication next year, as Nancy Morton retires at the end of this year. Nancy has been our newspaper person for twenty years and has decided that it is an appropriate milestone at which to retire. She will remain as recording secretary for the Board and is available to us for advice and writing assignments. If anyone exemplifies thinking outside the box, it is Nancy. We will miss her ability to prompt us to consider the unexpected. Her editorial wisdom has prevented many a public outcry as she has taken my statements and asked gently, “Do you really want to say this that way?”

As much of a devotee I may be of Bonheoffer’s idea of an institution-less church, we will always need to balance Church visible and Church invisible. I know where ministry mostly happens—at the local level. But at the same time we are not Presbyterian. As Episcopalians we know that we do not minister as isolated units, and as Bishop it is my calling to remind you all of one another, and especially of the greatest among you to serve the least. Our blessings on the local level are to be shared, just as our needs are to be shared. This way Jesus in all of us is honored. It is He that makes us interdependent in our mission because we function as His body. So we must continue to strengthen each other as we share with each other. This continues to take funding and personnel. It will continue to assume shared resourcing, where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, and the widow’s mite outshines wealth’s largesse, and where we are all in the last day mere servants who have done what is expected of the redeemed to do in gratitude for God’s grace. Amen.

Next Generations of Faith and Anglican Episcopal Identity.

The most exciting section of the Strategic Plan for me is that which covers “The Next Generations of Faith.” These past few months Ellen Bruckner has led the Diocesan staff in a study of a manual entitled “The Mission Shaped Church.” It is the product of the Church of England’s efforts to re-imagine its mission. Central to its theology of mission is the statement that, “the Church does not have a mission which we ask God to bless, but God has a mission for which God uses the Church.” It is one of a number of church growth tools we have been looking at as a staff.

At this time I would like to invite the staff to stand. Over these past few years we have grown beyond our individual functions so that everyone, in some way or another, shares in direct ministry with congregations or in a pastoral capacity. You know about Tom, Willa, Ellen and the Youth Missioners’ ministries among you, but you need also to know that among the core administrative staff, no one just stays behind a desk. Everyone travels as part of their ministry: Bob with the BAGS presentation and planned giving, Julianne with clergy care and ordinations, Nancy to keep pace with the exciting projects which we all need to read about, Elizabeth as a key person and colleague to Catherine Quehl-Engel at the greatly expanded Ministries Retreat, and Anne as Diocesan Convention Coordinator, Property Manager and BAGS presenter in the Southwest and South Central regions. What we have sought to draw out of one another is the Christ-passion for the Gospel community which we serve as a Diocese. Each one also serves as a liaison or convener for a Chapter.

Like many of you I am a convert to Christianity. Jesus Christ entered into my life and redirected my future. I am convinced that He seeks to do that with all of us and with all of humanity around us. Jesus said that the fields were white for harvest and that we should pray to the Lord of the harvest to send the laborers. Our mission field is multi-generational. It is not just the next generation of younger people, though by God’s grace we need to work very hard there, creating opportunities not only for them to own the faith for themselves, but also for the exploration of opportunities to serve and lead. Yet we also keep in mind the older generations of baby boomers coming off their active lives to embrace retirement. Furthermore we are becoming a state of greater diversity. New workers fill our factories, fields and our hospitals from other lands, and a new wave of Diaspora from Africa and Asia is upon us. Iowa is receiving its share. It is estimated that 71% of the population live with no religious affiliation. The same number stays away from church, especially as they catch us fighting between ourselves. We must not think Lutheran Church of Hope captures them all!

While we have breath we are called to share the Good News. And as Episcopalians, we have our own market share waiting to hear our invitation. How is that invitation to be couched? This Convention is filled with one of our methods of engaging people with Christ’s good news to the poor, what our Presiding Bishop calls deed-evangelism. Our baptismal covenant asks us if we will engage in evangelism through words and actions. We seek to combine both and by the compassion expressed through our willingness to provide the basic needs of human survival as far away as Southern Africa, and as immediately close by as our own community’s shelters and food banks, we speak volumes about a Christ who so loves this world that He has given His very life for us. The ministry of food sharing which came out of St Alban’s, Davenport which is now picked up in a number of other places, exemplifies this combination. The people of St Albans have been very conscious of the importance of inviting people who come for food to find that which can also satisfy their inner hunger. Nor are we alone in learning how to give our faith away or tell our stories of faith.

That the people of Swaziland will be teaching us evangelism this coming year, and have entrusted to us one of their finest priests in Charles Kunene, hopefully for the next two years to share in our ministry development work, underscores the major characteristic of the Episcopal Church working in communion with other Anglican churches. Next year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Diocese of Swaziland and we are invited to engage in evangelism there next October, with the expectation that a visiting team share in a similar event in Iowa in the future.

At this point I recognize Melody Rockwell, our Global Missioner, David Oakland of One World One Church, Terry Shiveley, the Diocesan-wide Swazi Companions Ministry, and Ron and Toni Noah, our ERD Diocesan Coordinators. Add Judith Jones, Helen Keefe and Willa Goodfellow with their Central American connections, Peggy Harris and her Sudanese ministry, and the two young women who are ministering in the Ukraine and in the Congo from St Anne’s, Ankeny, you get a sense of the outreach of this wonderful Diocese. Our combination of word and deed evangelism, through global relationships is a mark of our identity as Episcopal Anglicans.

Nothing that might be determined formally at the highest levels of the Anglican Communion is going to stop this mutual ministry across the oceans. My time in Spain for the Walk to Emmaeus Consultation between African Bishops and Bishops of The Episcopal Church further strengthened this conviction. What I did learn there was that on the whole, we American Bishops have a long way to go before we can match the incredibly brave statesmanship of our African counterparts. And that the Gospel demands that of us.

Locally however, work on the orphan school at Mpaka, shared further with the Diocese of Brechin, our plans for the Waters of Hope project, and the expansion of relationships which might take us to the Sudan, Mt. Kilimanjaro, or to Central America, help us live into the incarnated mission of God with us. These projects are moving ahead full steam, and assistance with medical needs—AIDS and dental supplies—advances. You can add to this list the incredible work of Katie Mears of Trinity, Iowa City who went on a trip to New Orleans from Grinnell College and really never returned as she is now the head of the housing rebuilding program of the Diocese of Louisiana. Or consider that more than fifteen work parties have gone from Iowa to assist there. A special mention goes to St Timothy’s, West Des Moines, who has involved me in their post-Katrina work parties by asking me to pray them off at 5:00 A.M. on their semi-annual trips. And when I sleep in they wake me up and then wait for me to get there!!

This is how preparing the next generations of faith joins up with our particular identity focus as Episcopal Anglicans with our strong sense of incarnated mission. And I know I have not captured half of what we are all doing.

Through partnerships, we are being encouraged to think and plan beyond ourselves. This spring we heard of the impact of the draught in Swaziland, and within three weeks responded by raising $40,000 to present in connection with the Presiding Bishop’s memorable visit. We know how to share ministry and resources when called upon.

We also know how to conserve when challenged to do so. This year Sarah Webb and members of St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls introduced us to the concept of becoming “Cool Congregations.” They have raised our consciousness to the imprint of our carbon footprints as a people. The Scarfe family was evaluated recently by the Webbs, and I must say that we do quite well as long as we stay in our home. Once we step out of the house, we wreak havoc on our environment by our traveling. Sarah has enrolled ninety congregations of various denominations into programs to ameliorate their carbon footprint.

As ecumenical partners, we have enjoyed common mission relationships with the Lutherans. A couple of our congregations are very dependent on the opportunities afforded by the “Call to Common Mission.” It is our hope in 2008 to bring clergy and congregations together with local Methodist Churches, as our two Churches enter more deeply into a time of interim Eucharistic sharing. This is a process which we hope will advance to mutual recognition of ministry and what we call full communion, perhaps by 2012.

Elizabeth O’Connor wrote a great book entitled “Journey Inward, Journey Outward.” She addresses the balance of our spiritual lives as people who are always sent by God outward, but are also invited by the same God to a journey of ever-deepening inner spirituality. The trick is that we are called to do both at the same time. The conversations that we enjoyed this year with our Presiding Bishop, whether at the public forum or more intimately among clergy at the Clergy Conference, presented to us a person seeking to follow that balanced path. Our talks among ourselves around the issues of the Anglican Communion, which we called “Communion Matters,” also indicated a community of people seeking to embrace balance in a time of cultural and political polarization. I know that we all take our faith with immense seriousness. I know also that we take our role in society seriously. Why else would we work so hard at learning how to spot signs of racism, domestic violence, or ways to keep our children safe? As the Archbishop of Canterbury said in his sermon in New Orleans during the House of Bishops, and I paraphrase, “the sign of a righteous city is where the children play safely in the streets and the old men and women can sit around and talk.”

If we gain a vision of what manner of people God seeks us all to be, then we will be able to proclaim the Gospel so that the next generations of faith, including those who had already given up on any hope that God could make room for them, would hear and see themselves included among us. Let us not limit ourselves only to the religious who play musical churches, but go after the ones who always catch Jesus’ eye—the woman at the well, the leper, Zacchaeus up the tree, the woman taken in adultery, Levi the tax collector, the fishermen and mourning widow, the one who needed his sins forgiven before he could get up and walk, the girl as good as dead, the woman shuffling forward for God’s crumbs—and who are all probably to be found online at any time of day or night and would find us online if they could!! If we could train our eye to look as He looks, and our heart to love as He loves, I am sure that there is no telling what marvels God’s Spirit can do through us as One of God’s myriad “Churches in Many locations.” And I pray to be a bishop who accompanies you on that journey and begins to see the fruit of such a harvest.

God bless you. As always, to use the words of St Augustine, it is an honor to be “a bishop for you,” and “a child of God with you.”