The Bishop's Address to the 103rd Annual Council
of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta
The Cathedral of St. Philip
November 6, 2009
Grace to you and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord!
What a delight it is to be together for the 103rd Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta! We have looked forward to our Presiding Bishop’s presence among us with great anticipation, and it is a particular joy and delight to have her among us during these days. This afternoon, while we’re doing Council business, she is on an urban ministry tour visiting several of the centers of outreach that we share in common – Emmaus House, Holy Comforter, the Church of the Common Ground, and the local refugee resettlement ministries office that is heavily supported by Episcopal Migration Ministries. I wish that her stay in the diocese was long enough for her to see the ministries of the Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry, the Appleton work in Macon, the Good Samaritan Clinic and the other ministries run out of Holy Family in Jasper, the new clinic spearheaded by St. Elizabeth’s in Dahlonega, and on and on and on. But at least she will have a taste of the historic commitments of this diocese to the needs of the least of those God has given into our care. And tomorrow morning, while we are in legislative session, Bishop Katharine will be enjoying what we’re calling “a progressive brunch” through several rooms here at St. Philip’s so that she can meet with the youth, young adults, the Creation Keepers, clergy spouses and partners, and others. Her presence among us means a great deal to me, and I know it does to you. I look forward to raising our voices in praise to God with our Presiding Bishop at the liturgy in the Cathedral later this afternoon.
I also delight in the progress we have noted in calling together more Christians into our fellowship. Welcoming Christ the King as a parish of the diocese — and admitting the Church of the Common Ground as a worshiping community for its first year — are truly wonderful moments. Both of these congregations have set for themselves somewhat nontraditional paths that emphasize welcome to those who might not easily have found us otherwise. They are strong and vital in their worship and community life and joyful in their service. My two visits to Christ the King have been among the highlights of my visitation schedule, and I look forward with great delight to celebrating Christmas on the streets of the city with the Church of the Common Ground. It also warms my heart that St. James’ Parish in Cedartown is no longer an aided parish. St. James’ is, in fact, one of the older parishes in the diocese whose ministry over many decades has been rich and vital. We rejoice in the renewal of their strength and vigor! And while we’re rejoicing, what a delight it was to gather last evening for a pre-council reception at St. Benedict’s. What a great opportunity walk through the renovated facilities and see what God and God’s partners have done there in so short a time. There are so many reasons for great rejoicing!
Last summer the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church met in the Diocese of Los Angeles for what I believe was a positive and mission-driven gathering of the church. In that convention we expressed with clarity our commitment to full participation in the Anglican Communion while maintaining a clear sense of our own ecclesial identity. We committed to continued consideration of an Anglican Covenant while being clear that we will make decisions in this church on the basis of our own Constitution and Canons and not be tantalized by external impositions that are inherently in conflict with the principles of governance that run deep in our history as Episcopalians. We celebrated again the fact that The Episcopal Church in the United States hasn’t been that for a very long time, but that we are an international church with dioceses and their bishops ministering under no less than 16 national flags. That alone, dear friends, is yet another reason for great rejoicing!
Several actions of Convention will have immediate and lasting impact upon the Diocese of Atlanta. I want to note those here and give you some indication about how I anticipate we will move forward on them. The first is the DHP – the Denominational Health Plan. After several years of detailed study and careful consideration, the Convention – by decisive majorities in both houses – adopted a new denominational health plan that goes into effect on January 1, 2013. At that time the plan will become mandatory for all dioceses and parishes of the church. There are some opt-out provisions for church schools and some church-related agencies, but the decisions about those provisions belong not to those institutions but to the dioceses of which they are a part. In making the plan mandatory, we join most of our sister denominations by creating a large pool that creates access to still larger pools that should make health insurance rates more competitive due to economies of scale.
The phase-in period for the new plan takes us to the beginning of 2013. Because nearly every parish in the Diocese of Atlanta is already in the Medical Trust system, as a diocese we will not experience drastic changes in health care delivery, but we do believe we will see some substantial relief in costs over time. We will, however, need to use the phase-in time to make some decisions about coverage and access that the plan expects to be made at the diocesan level. In other words, we have some control over certain aspects of the plan, but those decisions must be made together as a diocese; a variety of differing applications across the diocese is not possible. Ultimately, we must all give and take and arrive at a workable set of decisions for access and coverage that can be applied diocesan wide.
We’ve already had several focus-group-type conversations earlier this fall simply to get a sense of where the questions will be and where the difficult choices might be anticipated. Let me hasten to say, this is only the very beginning of a long and important conversation. In order to facilitate as broad a conversation as possible, I will be appointing a working group of lay leaders and clergy representing the length and breadth of the diocese – particularly with reference to congregations of different sizes and needs – to consider all angles of the decisions that are ours to make. I am hopeful that they can accomplish their work in the winter months upcoming and offer options and recommendations that can be examined by convocation meetings in the spring. This will allow further refinement of the proposals over the summer and further vetting of the recommendations at the regular fall meetings of the convocations. Additionally, I will ask the working group to meet with the clergy and full-time lay employees of parishes and diocesan entities to receive their input, as well as the leaders of our church schools and agencies that also have a stake in the outcome of these conversations. This will all lead, I hope, to a clear set of recommendations –widely reviewed and refined by all interested parties – that will be taken up for adoption by the 104th Annual Council next year. I think that’s an achievable goal, but we must approach these important decisions with all due care and deliberateness. If we are not yet ready to make the decisions at next year’s Council, we will still have some grace period as the full plan does not go into effect until January 2013. Because this is perhaps the most important set of decisions related to clergy and lay-employee benefits we have been called upon to make in decades, and because our decisions are likely to set the standard for many years to come, it is not appropriate that these decisions be made administratively or by one of the interim bodies that we often look to for decisions between meetings of Annual Council. I believe we must spend the year collecting and disseminating the best information we can find, create the most thoughtful and well-reviewed set of options we can put together, and place the results before Annual Council – our highest governing body at the diocesan level – for a decision that we can all share in together.
In a similar decision, the General Convention also mandated pension coverage for full-time lay employees. While some of our lay employees are part-time and would fall beneath the threshold of mandatory pension support, in the judgment of the General Convention it was a simple matter of justice. For nearly a century, The Episcopal Church has mandated pension support for the clergy, and in recent years lay pensions have been available through the Church Pension Fund. Once again I am pleased to report that the Diocese of Atlanta is already out in front on this matter. The majority of our full-time lay employees across the diocese are already receiving pension benefits and of those the majority are with the Church Pension Fund of The Episcopal Church.
Another major decision of the General Convention that we will feel locally is the wholesale revision of Title IV of the canons of the church. Now, before you go completely to sleep, let me say something about what that is. Title IV of the church-wide Canons contains the disciplinary canons that have to do primarily, but not exclusively, with clergy discipline. These are the canons that are brought to bear when a complaint is made against a member of the clergy. Our present canons have needed revision for some time and efforts toward revision at recent General Conventions were judged to be unsatisfactory. This time around a major revision of Title IV passed the Convention by near unanimous consent in both Houses. Because the new canons require a good bit of re-tooling of procedures at the diocesan level, they do not go into effect until 2011. So, once again, I will call together a working group, including the legal expertise of our chancellors, to set up and train us on new procedures as required by the new canons. This will, of necessity, require the clergy to be updated and the necessary structures be established so that we will be ready to respond as outlined by the new canons should the need arise.
While there are many other actions of the General Convention that will have impact upon us, there are just two others I want to highlight this afternoon. The first is a new strategic vision for Hispanic-Latino ministry in the church. In recent years the number of Latino members of our church has increased significantly, but what you may not realize is that the United States is the second largest Hispanic-Latino nation in the world, second only to Mexico. That fact alone means we can no longer be casual and informal in our approach. What we now have is a churchwide strategic vision for Latino ministry with some real targets for growth, leadership development, and new ministry initiatives. We can be justifiably proud of the great leadership of Canon Isaías (Rodríguez). His influence on and support of our church-wide efforts are without equal, and his faithful labor among us is the sort of stuff out of which legends are made. Our efforts here in the Diocese of Atlanta are strong and compare well to most other dioceses of our church – the great exceptions being the ministries in border dioceses to the south – but Canon Isaías would be the first to tell you that there is much work – very much work indeed – still to be accomplished. The churchwide strategic vision gives us a framework for cooperation and development in Hispanic-Latino ministry. I believe we can expect greater clarity and new energy in this area during the next triennium.
The second item I want to call your attention to is a major study document on interfaith conversations and relations commended by the Convention. It, I believe, is an impressive piece of work and I believe it can help us learn to engage our sisters and brothers of other faiths, particularly the other Abrahamic faiths, in thoughtful conversation and meaningful dialogue. It is not a call to enter into interfaith conversations from a position of weakness, but quite the contrary. The document imagines thoughtful, well-formed Christians who are effective apologists for their faith who can enter with integrity into conversations with equally articulate followers of other ways, in order to find common ground, build meaningful relationships, and walk together for the sake of the common good. Interfaith dialogue is not about forsaking one’s own convictions; quite the contrary. Interfaith dialogue is an exercise in building structures of understanding and mutuality for the sake of peace. I believe this initiative of General Convention is a marvelous tool to assist us in being better conversation partners. We must learn to walk peacefully with our sisters and brothers of other faith traditions. If we fail at this, we must be clear about the long-term consequences: people will die. If you look at the history of violence and war, it doesn’t take a genius to see how much of it has been intertwined with religious fervor, misplaced zeal, and misunderstanding. Even when it is covered up by the smokescreen of politics, there is most often a profoundly religious sub-structure beneath the conflict. Interfaith dialogue is about peacemaking; something near to the heart of all who understand themselves to be followers of Jesus.
There were hundreds of pieces of legislation approved by the Convention, and much more of it will come to bear on our common life in one way or another. I am sure you are glad that the matters I have highlighted represent only a very small sample of the work of the Convention. Let me express my thanks, and I hope yours as well, to our deputies and alternates who took two weeks out of their summers and worked eighteen-hour days on behalf of us all. The members of the Atlanta deputation and both of your bishops served on or chaired significant Convention committees, had major responsibilities in their respective houses, and stayed more-than-busy attending to the work before the church. Your diocese was very well represented in the councils of The General Convention, and for your prayerful support and the hard work of our deputation, I am deeply grateful.
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The short video you watched is a very brief sampling of “Around One Table,” the most comprehensive study of The Episcopal Church that has ever been done. The research was carried out over a period of three years by independent, non-Episcopal, professional academic researchers. The principal researchers were senior professors in several different universities and they were ably assisted by a corps of doctoral students. The results will, I believe, confirm much of what you already know about our church, but I suspect you’ll also find some interesting surprises. You will in particular find some of the data on Episcopal identity of great value. I wanted you to have this brief taste of the report because I hope you’ll engage the whole of “Around the Table.” I believe our vestries would profit from studying it; adult education classes, perhaps as a Lenten series, will find it an interesting source from which to learn about our church. Strategic planning efforts should pay attention to its findings, and the clergy and full-time lay professionals should get a clear sense of what’s been discovered and learned by “Around One Table.” Such independent research is helpful to our understanding of who we say we are and how we are perceived from the outside. I commend it to you strongly and hope you will find multiple and creative ways to engage the findings of “Around One Table.”
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As I was driving home from a visitation recently, I was listening to a debate about health care on the radio. Interestingly enough, it was not a debate between politicians and policy makers, nor was it a debate among activists for one position or another. It was a conversation between a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi offering perspectives from their own traditions on our national health care debate. It was an interesting exchange for a while, but then the rabbi delivered a sentence that has stuck with me ever since. In fact, after he uttered it, I was so struck by it that I turned off the radio so I could actually think about what I had heard. This is what he said, “If what I have I call “good,” then as a person of faith why wouldn’t I want everybody else to have it?”
“If what I have I call ‘good,’ then as a person of faith why wouldn’t I want everyone else to have it?” Now the rabbi was talking about health care, but what struck me is how powerfully that captures so much of what it means to be a person of faith, and quite specifically to be a follower of Jesus. There is so much that we have received that we rightfully call “good.” The gift of life itself; the creation given into our care and for our stewardship; the abundance of our resources even in times of economic challenge; a good and faithful tradition to serve us well; a life of mercy and grace, charity and love that makes it possible to start afresh in every passing moment. It’s good; it’s all good; it’s all very, very good. And, if all this and so much more that we have we call “good,” then why wouldn’t we want everybody else to have it? How can we contain it, withhold it, or keep it for ourselves alone if it really is something that we have called “good.”
Wanting everyone else to have what we have is why we’ve called together St. Benedict’s and Christ the King and the Church of the Common Ground and the ninety-four other parishes of the Diocese of Atlanta. Wanting everyone else to have what we have is why we have the poverty programs, the art programs, the camping programs, the feeding programs, the medical clinics, the food pantries, the clothes closets, the kindergartens and pre-schools, and the primary, secondary, and high schools and all the rest of it. These things do not exist for ourselves alone, but because we have called them “good” --God has blessed that “good”-ness, made it holy, and why wouldn’t we want everyone else to have it, too? We do. Friends, that is who we are. That is our commitment, not to doing any good, and certainly not to being good, but because the God we know in Jesus Christ is good, who gave it all to us so we could give it to everyone who will have it.
I say these things not because there is so much about our common life – our mission and ministry together in this diocese – that is simply good. It’s not perfect. But it’s good; very, very good. I stand in awe every day when I think of all the things we have called “good” in this diocese of ours. I’ve been here long enough to be familiar with much of what goes on, but on nearly every day, I discover some new idea, some new program, some new ministry, some new outreach, some new advocacy, some new something that someone or some parish or some group has called “good” and put it out there for the sheer joy of sharing it.
Need some testimony? Thanks for asking. Did you know that two-thirds of the parishes in this diocese are engaged in some way or another in global mission? From financial support of Carpenter’s Kids, to hands-on medical missions, to water projects in developing countries, to the support of orphanages and schools, to literacy programs, to missionary support, to theological education in developing countries, and on and on. There’s so much we have called “good.”
Did you know that we presently have a dozen college-age folks discerning vocations to the priesthood and more young ones in the pipeline? Did you know that we have more persons of color at some stage in the ordination process of this diocese than all of the other dioceses in the region combined? That’s not to say we’re finished. There is so much we’ve called “good.”
Let’s take giving as another indicator of something we’ve called “good.” We are living through some tough sledding when it comes to the economy. Money is tight, some of our folks are unemployed, some have experienced foreclosures on their homes. Those among us who depend on investment income for a large portion of their support have been particularly hit hard. I don’t need to rehearse a litany of the challenges we’ve faced in the last year or so. We’ve lived it and we’ve lived it together. At every level of the church’s work we have tightened our belts, made hard decisions, drug our feet on replacing staff, deferred non-critical maintenance, and walked prudently through these tenuous times.
But you know what else is true? Our people have called it “good.” Our people have been enormously faithful. With very few exceptions our parishes are weathering the turbulence of these days and in many cases much better than they might ever have expected. The Diocesan Foundation has approved a list of new loans for construction, building expansion, and renovation because parishes have decided that good economy or not, some parishes must go on, must be expanded, housed, or otherwise provided for. Even in these economic times, parishes are having capital campaigns to retire debt so they can clear the books for new construction or new ministries to meet new challenges. Even in these tough times, the faithful have called it “good,” God has blessed it and made it holy, and it is very good indeed!
I could go on and on with more examples and not tell a fraction of them. And let’s be clear: it’s not about bragging on you, making you feel good, or hoping that your chest will swell with pride at our common accomplishments. In the end, little of that, if any, matters. It’s about reminding us that good is God, all the time!
I hope you will carry the question with you. Perhaps talk about it at your family table, perhaps bring it up for discussion at a vestry meeting or for some other gathering at the parish, or just sit with it in prayer: “If what I have I call “good,” then as a person of faith why wouldn’t I want everyone else to have it?”
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Recently I was going through a pile of stuff in my study at home and found my notes from the sermon I preached on Tuesday in Holy Week 2001, just three days after I was elected bishop. While it was probably insufferably dull in the moment, it did make for interesting reading nearly nine years later. Part of what I said that day to the clergy, and a few others who were eavesdropping, was that we would not always walk in perfect step together. We would disappoint one another from time to time, get angry with one another, and wish that “the other” was someone “other” than “the other” is. If we expect it to be perfect we will hurt one another, but if we walk toward each other with gentleness and grace, then there is no limit to what God can do with us.
All of that was true then, and I believe all of that is true now. If I haven’t disappointed you at one time or another, I apologize. If I haven’t made you angry from time to time, I apologize for that, too. By and large I don’t think we’ve hurt each other, at least not too much, and for that I am grateful. One member of the clergy was asked how the bishop was doing and is reported to have said, “He does no harm.” Given the realities of the church in our day, I take that as a compliment. But most of all, I am grateful on most days and in most ways the people, the clergy, and the bishops of this diocese walk toward each other with gentleness and grace, and because of that alone, there is no limit to what God can do with us! So, my dear friends, let us keep on keeping on as we walk toward each other, with gentleness, and with grace. To God be the glory!
The Right Reverend J. Neil Alexander
Bishop of Atlanta
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