Presiding Bishop Extends His Conversation with the Church in Second Teleconference
Episcopal News Service. January 31, 2000 [2000-019]
(ENS) Almost exactly two years after his investiture as the 25th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank T. Griswold extended his conversation with the church during a second teleconference.
Sitting in the chapel of St. Martin's School in a suburb of New Orleans, surrounded by people who were part of a mission rally for the Diocese of Louisiana, Griswold invited Bishop Charles Jenkins and several diocesan leaders to describe the rally and some of their ministries. Jenkins noted how difficult it is to change, to move from what he described as "a maintenance-oriented culture to a mission-oriented church." After a decline over the last 19 years, he said that the diocese has set a goal of doubling the number of disciples by the year 2010.
Moving into the congregation, Griswold sat down next to Margaret Larom of the church's Office of Anglican and Global Relations to talk about the church's global mission. "For more than 200 years Episcopalians have been spreading the gospel throughout the Americas and the whole world," she said. Four of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion "are the direct result of our mission efforts over the centuries."
She told about a recent trip to the West African country of Liberia "where we have a long, long missionary history that we can be proud of." She said that the team from the Episcopal Church Center saw the results of recent civil war but they also went "to see how we can help reconnect and rebuild, especially schools." All baptized Episcopalians, she pointed out, are members of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, the corporate name of the church adopted by General Convention in 1935.
In response to a question from the audience in the chapel, Griswold described the emerging vision of the church as a Jubilee community, moving to the vision that "we are really called to be a transformed people, a people of unbounded generosity, a people who try to think and live out of the imagination of Christ."
A question received by fax from a downlink site in New York asked how a small parish could witness in a largely Catholic area. Griswold said that the parish should examine its life of prayer and worship and ask whether people find "a genuine atmosphere of hospitality and welcome" when they visit. An e-mail question from Houston asked about plans to make church facilities more accessible to the disabled. Griswold said that he was encouraged by efforts at the congregational level but admitted there was still considerable work to do to remove physical barriers.
A telephoned question from Texas raised some questions about how the General Convention would deal with controversial questions. Griswold said that the reality is that difficult or potentially divisive issues can't be put aside or ignored "if it's part of the life of the church." But he suggested that deputies and bishops should ask what is the best way forward, whether a vote or an extended conversation would be most appropriate, "not just to be held hostage to the urgencies that are introduced from the outside. The body has to act very deliberately and very prayerfully," he said.
Moving across the chapel, Griswold sat down next to Pamela Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, and the Rev. Rosemari Sullivan, executive officer of the General Convention.
Sullivan said that the Denver convention would attempt to introduce some new elements so that "legislation takes place in the context of conversation," beginning with a Jubilee time of prayer and reflection.
Addressing the issue of tension between the two houses of General Convention, Chinnis said that the tension is "more in the minds of the people looking at it than in the minds of the two persons involved." Using the perceived threat of the Y2K scare at the turn of the millennium, she said that the convention is "going to be a lot of beautiful fireworks going off that will illuminate things rather than splitting the church apart. We've been working very hard to make sure that happens," she said.
Bounding out of his chair, Griswold moved across the chapel to sit down next to his wife Phoebe, Bishop Leo Frade of Honduras, Sandra Swan, executive director of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, and Abagail Nelson, a program associate for the fund.
"A year ago we were hanging on the cross," said Frade in describing the effects of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua. "We were really crucified in a horrible situation. It was in total darkness and desperation. But I can tell you that we are now in resurrection," he quickly added. "The Easter of resurrection has taken place. The response of the church has been tremendous -- and the response through the Presiding Bishop's Fund has been more than extraordinary. And I really rejoice in that, in the reality that we have conquered destruction." The fund is helping to build 500 new homes in a village that was destroyed.
Swan said the Honduras project is a good example of disaster relief that turns into rehabilitation and sustainable development. Nelson called it "wholistic rehabilitation," not just helping to build houses but also community. Phoebe Griswold said that the fund was moving into "planting the seeds of development in its relief work."
A man from the audience asked Griswold about a potential shortage of clergy. Anticipating many retirements in the near future, Griswold said that "a number of dioceses have adopted what I would call a recruiting stance toward the ordained ministry, instead of simply waiting for someone to come knock on the door." He also pointed to the lack of clergy under the age of 35, although he is encouraged that the age level of last fall's entering seminary class has "dropped drastically, and we seem to be seeing the fruits of some of this recruitment work that's going on around the church."
Using the celebration of the birth of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. to introduce the topic of racism, Griswold moved to a chair beside the Rev. Sandra Wilson of Minneapolis, president of the Union of Black Episcopalians. "I think we have moved from a place in the church of the denial of the reality of racism into a recognition of it as sin in our midst," she said. Yet that does not remove racism and the church will always face fresh challenges, as it does in the decision whether to use the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver.
"Part of the challenge to us is that we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of our minds and spirits -- and that, as prayerful people, we recognize the need constantly to be engaged in growing ourselves, in challenging ourselves, and not being afraid of the conversation." She argued that "we do not want to be a mirror of society, rather we want to lead society to a new place of justice and mercy."
Wilson said that the King holiday should remind us, as King said in quoting Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in the face of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. And that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, that what affects one directly affects all of us indirectly. "So the challenge before us as a church is to recognize in this time of Jubilee, in this time when we are looking at ourselves as transformed people of boundless generosity in that spirit of Christ, to recognize that until every person is free, none of us is free," she said.
The teleconference, produced by the church's electronic media office, ended with excerpts of a new video which is based on an invitation "to come and see our church afresh in some of its manifestations, and in a variety of settings," as Griswold said in his introduction on the video. "What it really seeks to do is give all of us an expanded and enriched sense of what it means to be limbs of Christ's risen body, what it means to be Episcopalians not simply in our own local community or diocese, but Episcopalians broadly across this land in other places," he added.
And then came a surprise, as Griswold welcomed a Dixieland band into the chapel and joined a procession of saints as they moved out into the warm sunshine singing, "The Saints Go Marching In."