Newsmakers; Asian Ministries Missioner Profile
Episcopal News Service. July 15, 2004 [071504-1-A]
NEWSMAKERS IN BRIEF: Michael Barwell, Barbara Borsch, Annette Buchanan, John Harris, Stephen Need, Nelson Pinder, Diane Smith, Fred Vegara, and the late John Walker.
JERUSALEM: DR. STEPHEN NEED APPOINTED DEAN OF ST. GEORGE'S COLLEGE
(From the Anglican Communion News Service) -- St. George's College, Jerusalem -- one of the Anglican Communion's principal center's for continuing education -- has appointed Dr. Stephen Need, formerly the college's director of studies, as new dean effective July 1.
Early in Need's association with St. George's, he brought students to the campus from England's Chichester Theological College. In the 1980s, Need became a senior lecturer and worked on developing the college's curricula. He served as director of studies from 1999 to 2001.
On accepting the position, Need said that his main aim would be to consolidate and enhance St. George's existing courses while also encouraging new enrollment.
"Numbers have dwindled in the last few years as a result of the deteriorating political situation," he said, emphasizing that he remains convinced students will return. "The distinctive nature of the St. George's courses -- the balance between 'study trip' and pilgrimage elements -- is as powerful as ever. I believe the college has a great deal to offer.
St. George's College has since 1962 offered courses for clergy and laity from more than 92 countries. Information: www.stgeorgescollegejerusalem.org
NEW HAMPSHIRE'S MICHAEL BARWELL WAS NAMED 2004 COMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR July 12 by the New York Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (NY/IABC). The chapter honored Barwell, former communications director of St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., for "his deft handling of communications and media relations during the controversial election and confirmation of Gene Robinson as Episcopal Bishop for New Hampshire in June 2003." Barwell served as a volunteer media relations consultant to Robinson and the Diocese of New Hampshire. A former communications director of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, Barwell is also a former deputy director of the Episcopal News Service. He is now an independent media relations consultant who recently founded his own firm, Barwell Communications LLC. He was selected NY/IABC honoree from a competitive field of nominees consisting of corporate and community leaders and professional communicators from Washington, D.C. to Boston. The COY prize will be presented at a reception scheduled for September 22 in New York City. Information: www.nyiabc.com.
ORLANDO PRIEST NELSON PINDER is new president of the Union of Black Episcopalians (UBE) following his election during the organization's annual conference held July 5-9 in Cincinnati. Pinder is retired after serving from 1974 to 1995 as rector of St. John the Baptist Church in the Orlando-based Diocese of Central Florida. Also newly elected as UBE officers are vice president DIANE SMITH of the Diocese of Ohio, treasurer JOHN HARRIS of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, and secretary ANNETTE BUCHANAN of the Diocese of New Jersey. Information: www.ube.org
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA: BARBARA BORSCH NAMED HONORARY CANON OF L.A. CATHEDRAL CENTER
Barbara S. Borsch, advocate for Middle East peace and strategist for clergy development and deployment, was named an honorary canon of the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, Los Angeles, on June 27 by Bishop J. Jon Bruno. The honor was bestowed at St. Augustine by-the-Sea Church, Santa Monica, where Borsch is a lay leader and former vestry member.
Highlights of Borsch's ministry include her volunteer support and advocacy for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and for the work of St. George's College, Jerusalem. In years past, she has enjoyed careers as a diocesan staff officer for clergy deployment and development in the Diocese of New Jersey, and as a high school English teacher. She is also an active volunteer and former board president of the Friends of the Neighborhood Youth Association, an institution of the Diocese of Los Angeles.
A Chicago native, Borsch is the wife of retired Los Angeles Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, who is currently professor of Anglican studies at Philadelphia's Lutheran Theological Seminary.
WASHINGTON, D.C.'S LATE BISHOP JOHN WALKER and his ministry will be celebrated with a service of Evensong at 4 p.m. on Sept. 26 at Washington National Cathedral. The service, which will be followed by a reception, will also celebrate the publication of his biography.
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CHURCH PLANTING IS PASSION FOR ASIAN MINISTRIES MISSIONER
Former journalist Fred Vergara sees growth as vital for Episcopal Church
By Pat McCaughan
(ENS, Los Angeles, July 15, 2004) -- The Rev. Dr. Winfred Vergara says one of his goals as the Episcopal Church's new national missioner for Asian ministries is also his passion: planting churches.
The only way to make an impact in the Episcopal Church is for us to grow in numbers and financial giving to the work of the church and to dedicate ourselves to planting more churches in all Asian communities," said Vergara, who joined the Episcopal Church Center staff in New York May 1.
Vergara has planted churches from Singapore to Las Vegas and knows what it takes: going into the streets and reaching out to people, because that's how he was evangelized.
As a 16-year-old he ran away from his rural village Pili, hiding aboard a Manila-bound steamer. He spent the next three months begging on Manila streets. There, the Rev. Porfirio de la Cruz of the Philippine Independent Church (PIC) reached out to him and changed his life and shaped his style of ministry forever.
"He helped me get a job as janitor at his office," recalls Vergara, whose eyes still tears up at mention of his friend and mentor de la Cruz, now a retired PIC Bishop living in New Zealand. De la Cruz attended the recent Episcopal Asiamerica Convocation in San Francisco where Vergara was interviewed.
"He's how I first learned about church. He brought me into his home and introduced me to church and school."
Vergara calls himself "the lay person who grew up to be a priest." Eventually, he won a scholarship to Trinity College in Manila. While pursuing a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism, he became a student activist and leader. He served prison time for organizing sugar cane workers under the regime of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. After graduating, he became a cub reporter for the Manila Times until the newspaper was closed under martial law in 1972.
While some students joined Communist and Marxist underground movements, Vergara returned to the church. He eventually entered St. Andrew's Theological Seminary in Manila and was ordained a priest in the PIC in 1978.
He moved to Singapore in 1980 to earn a master's of theology degree at the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology. He also served as priest at St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, helping to plant two extension churches.
He felt a strong call to move to the United States after attending a renewal conference in Los Angeles and a brief stopover in San Francisco.
"I wanted to know why so many Filipinos were not in church on Sunday and so I asked them," he recalled.
"While they were in the Philippines, many were active Catholics," Vergara said. "They wanted a church that could understand their culture. They wanted clergy to minister to them in a way that spoke to them."
He left Singapore in 1986 for doctoral studies at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in California. A year later, he was appointed director of Filipino Ministry for the San Jose Presbytery and was received as a priest in the Episcopal Church the following year.
Reaching out has remained the hallmark of his own ministry, says Vergara, who in 1988 became the first Asian missioner in the Diocese of El Camino Real, based in Monterey, Calif.
He and his wife Angela, the daughter of a Methodist minister, began evangelizing by talking to people at flea markets, grocery stores, parties and community gatherings. They gathered a core group of seven and the ministry eventually grew into the present Holy Child, which holds services in both San Jose and in Milpitas, and planted a congregation in Las Vegas, Nevada, in March 2003.
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada said Vergara called her up in the spring of 2003 after a number of his Holy Child parishioners moved to Las Vegas for employment opportunities.
"He asked, 'Can I help you start a congregation over there? Of course, I said no," she said with a laugh, adding that she welcomed the start-up of Holy Child. She fully expects the congregation to continue to grow, noting that, at 60,000, Filipinos comprise about 12 percent of the city's total population, and is the largest Asian American ethnic group in the city.
Later, when Vergara was named the national church's missioner for Asian ministries, Schori said she was "sorry to lose him as a resource here in Nevada, but I think he's going to be available in larger ways to the whole church. It's a great gift to the church."
Vergara presented Schori with a dogwood cross, in honor of becoming the newest EAM diocesan partner at the group's recent gathering in June in San Francisco.
Peter Ng, director of New York City's Church of Our Savior Jubilee Center, said Vergara brings high energy and valuable experience in parish ministry and church planting.
"Fred is a church planter. In the future, we will be focused on church planting and also spend energy on 20/20," Ng said.
Ng, a lay person and EAM president emeritus, said he has been involved with the group for more than twenty years. Vergara's journalism experience will be an added benefit at the grass roots level, he said.
"Fred was also a local priest, so he knows the difficulty and the tensions involved in local congregations, and he knows how to ease those tensions." Ng estimated that over 75 percent of Asian American clergy leadership is imported from overseas and that Vergara will also serve as a valuable liaison for them.
"It is absolutely a hopeful time for us. Energy is high and we are ready to move forward in new directions," he said.
Vergara agreed. As national missioner, he hopes "to help recapture the role of the Episcopal Church as avant-garde for change."
Noting that his doctoral dissertation focused on the revolutionary church, he added: "It starts with vision, a dream comes to birth and to power, but if it becomes an institution, it declines. If the revolutionary church fails to be avant-garde it starts to decline," he said.
"In a sense, that's how I perceive the Episcopal Church as it champions marginal issues like women's liberation, gay rights. The church shouldn't be a follower, we should lead. If it fails to lead it will become one of those institutions. I want to recapture the role of church as avant-garde for change.
"My vision from the beginning was that the Lord will use me for the building of Asian ministry in the United States, starting with Filipinos and moving outward. I see the national position as a progression from the Diocese of El Camino Real and my provincial work."
Such ambitious evangelism, however, may be a complicated enterprise given immigration restrictions imposed after Sept. 11, especially when evangelizing more recently arrived immigrants, he said.
"Religious visas have been abolished in some countries, which makes it more difficult to import Asian priests to serve here," he said. "My vision is to cultivate leadership," he said. "My hope is to cultivate leadership, to offer scholarships for theologians."
And some ethnic churches are becoming increasingly multicultural themselves and need to reach out to others, he said.
"Some countries have stopped emigrating here," he said. "There are not many Japanese émigrés to the U.S. anymore and what used to be Japanese churches are not reaching out to other cultures."
There are an estimated 72 predominantly Asian American Episcopal congregations throughout the nation. That includes Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, and Southeast Asian, which embraces Vietnamese, Laotian, Church of South India and Cambodian. It also includes members of the Philippine Independent Church (PIC), and the Mar Thoma Church, a faith tradition that dates from 15th-century India
Acknowledging that his goals are ambitious, he lists more: to improve communication between the national church and local congregations, to offer increased support to ethnic clergy, and to develop youth leadership.
"The Gospel calls us to partnership, evangelism, church planting, training of leaders in Episcopal Asiamerica ministries, a greater harvest," Vergara said.
"We need to reach out and develop ministry among all ethnic people. I see a vision of an intercultural Episcopal Church where all nations are represented in parishes, dioceses, and at the national level.
"I see a vision of the Episcopal Church breaking barriers of cultures, sexuality, and other boundaries. For me, that is an avant-garde church, not an old institution dying, but struggling together as new ones are lifted up and energized and are testing the limits of the boundaries—ethnic ministries, cultural ministries—it's very risky. We risk division. There are people strongly against an inclusive vision but I see the church as a diamond with many facets. Every facet of the church is expressing the context in which they find themselves. If we could keep all the facets together in the diamond, we could have peripheral divisiveness."
Acknowledging he's traveled a great distance from his rural village and the streets of Manila, he laughs, adding: "I wanted to see what was on the other side of the ocean."
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