Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes Quietly Celebrates 15th Anniversary
Episcopal News Service. March 9, 2000 [2000-060]
(ENS) The Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes gathered in the shadow of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral to celebrate its 15th anniversary with very little fanfare -- but a growing sense of the important role these churches play in the church.
At the core of the annual conference was a series of plenary presentations by the Rev. Herbert O'Driscoll, Irish-born but a teacher and writer in the Anglican Church of Canada for most of his career. The addresses were interwoven around a series of workshops on a wide range of practical and theological issues.
In three lectures that were well received by the 450 participants, O'Driscoll described a changing world and the challenges the church faces in a new age. In the last 30 years, the earth has moved from modernity to a post-modern age, marked by an awareness that the institutional structures of western society are losing their ability to serve us, he contended.
Among the assumptions that have been displaced are the rational management of human affairs, improvement in our quality of life through life sciences, the capacity of reason to discern and solve problems and inevitable progress. Post-modernity is marked by life lived in the present tense, the celebration of relativism and pluralism, the supremacy of individualism, reality as a shifting continuous process, and a deep suspicion that all sources of authority are suspect, alienating and repressive.
As a consequence, O'Driscoll said, we are caught in a vast, homogenizing force that uses media and the market. Secular culture pushes aside religious structures, isolating them to the private sphere. "The marriage of faith and culture is coming apart," he said. And the post-modern age denies that there is any "meta-narrative" that holds everything together, whether it is nationalism or religion.
That puts religion on a collision course since "we base everything on the meta-narrative of the Bible," he added. But instead of adopting a defensive posture in this new age, or taking refuge in Scripture, O'Driscoll urges churches to "be faithful to the story, looking at past performance, but write a new chapter that is faithful and consistent but also innovative." And the glory of the Christian meta-narrative is that it isn't based on power but servanthood.
O'Driscoll pointed to the resilience of religion in Western society, defying predictions that it would fade. "Our vocation at the beginning of the 21st century is to find what will be the viable forms of Christian life in this century," he said. While none of us can predict the future, he said that a few things seem apparent. "The Christian faith, for the firs time in a thousand years in the West, is changing from being the faith of a culture to being a faith in a multi-culture," he said.
As a consequence, "my generation is the last in western Christianity that came to faith primarily by institutional inheritance. From now on, my children and grandchildren, will come to it by personal choice." But, he quickly added, "Faith that is personally chosen is intensely and emotionally held -- it becomes an evangelical faith."
Until the middle of the last century, most people had a rather clear idea of what it meant to be a Christian, according to O'Driscoll. In a new and changing culture we are going from a question of how we know more about God to a question of how we experience God. "We are in the process of recovering all sorts of lost Christian spiritualities," he said. As we move into the unknown, "we need the companions of the past," those who have gone through similar times of transition and change, to see how they adapted and survived, to see what they can teach us.
He offered several hopeful signs, including an exciting new conversation between theology and creation spirituality, an explosion of small groups within congregations, an explosion of hymnody and Bible study, the symbolism of women at altars and all that implies -- and a resurgent fascination of interest in the person of Jesus.
"You have at your command incredible resources," Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold told participants in the conference at a luncheon. O'Driscoll was even more pointed when he talked about the kind of power represented by the economic power of all the endowments represented in the plenary session. "Nowhere else in the Anglican Communion, perhaps nowhere else in the Christian world, could you gather a number of people such as this to represent as powerful a set of resources."
Dean Charles Kiblinger of St. John's Cathedral in Denver, president of the consortium, said that the consortium began with conversations among some heavily endowed parishes like Trinity Church in New York who began asking about responsibilities and opportunities for those with considerable resources.
"The organization has evolved so that it focuses not only on managing endowments and using them responsibly but also leadership training for lay and clergy," he said. "It has always stressed leadership. The presidency of the consortium for example alternates between lay and clergy and the balance on the board is very healthy."
Kiblinger says that no one has estimated the total endowment represented by consortium's 78 members but admits it would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And he said that a survey meant to identify potential members, parishes with over a million dollars in endowment, discovered that there are about 700 churches that meet the criteria.
The consortium is more a network than an organization. "We became a network because of strong similarities with each other, finding ways to pool common knowledge and resources as a way of doing ministry with excellence," he said. The board is working on a visioning process and strategic planning that takes into account growing membership and staff. It also hopes to sponsor more regional and local workshops on common issues, he said.
A wide range of workshops addressed interests of the participants, both practical and more theological. Several dealt with stewardship in congregations, but also how to make grants and deal with planned giving, as well as mission-based investing. Others deal with issues such as globalization and human development, AIDS ministry, sexuality, inclusive leadership, models of community ministry, diversity and multiculturalism, volunteerism, and the role of the Anglican Communion.
The Rev. John Peterson, a member of the Episcopal Church who is secretary general of the Anglican Communion, spoke to a packed workshop on the challenges and opportunities the communion faces. (The theme of the conference was "The Anglican Communion: New Visions for a Global Church.")
Almost all 600 of the dioceses in the communion have been touched by the "tremendous generosity of the Episcopal Church," as represented by the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, the United Thank offering and the Episcopal Church Women. "We belong to an enormously diverse family," he said as he launched into a breathless tour of the variety of churches and cultures represented among the communion's 70 million members in 38 different provinces in 164 countries around the world.
When asked about the recent consecration of two Americans in Singapore as "missionary bishops" for the American church, Peterson said that the church in Rwanda, whose archbishop was one of the consecrators, adopted a constitution about a year ago that stipulates that bishops are consecrated only to dioceses. And the Province of South East Asia, whose primate was also a consecrator, also stipulates that its bishops are called to specific dioceses. He said that the archbishop of Canterbury would therefore not recognize the consecrations.
Griswold was also asked about the Singapore consecrations during the luncheon. He drew parallels to "somewhat similar phenomenons" in recent history that resulted in schisms. "Another schism has been created," he said. And he reminded participants that Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has made it clear that "provinces cannot be created within other provinces."
He reported that, during a conversation at a monastery in the Hudson River Valley over issues of sexuality, several African bishops pleaded, "Please do not abandon us, no matter what we say about you." He said that they acknowledged that "the issues you face are ones we know we must face." Griswold said that it was clear that they were looking for a relationship that went "beyond the transfer of money.
"One of our tasks is to enter into a much more deliberate relationship with other provinces of the Anglican Communion so that our experiences can interact at a level of deeper exchange, so that we can discover together what it means to be a communion," he said.
Griswold encouraged consortium members to develop relationships of "authentic mutuality that involves listening and learning." That should include asking others, "Where is Jesus for you," and then listening to their responses.
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