Episcopal Communicators 2001
Episcopal News Service. April 27, 2001 [2001-91]
Keynote Speech
The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston
Dean and President, Episcopal Divinity School
April 19, 2001
Last night we had our barbecue dinner, and they asked how many of you were new to this meeting. And I went, 'I'm new! I'm a newcomer!' I'm not really in the same ministry in a way as you all are, but I'm just excited to be here. I hope some of those of you who are new and this is your first meeting catch some of that excitement here too. I think it's a unique opportunity for men and women who are engaged in the mission and the ministry of communicating with other people about the life of the church, about the mission of the church--it's a unique chance for us to come together. So I want to thank you for letting me be a part of it...
This morning, I want to offer you food for thought.
It was really kind of intriguing--I like being challenged, and it was intriguing to be asked to come to a meeting of communicators throughout the church, and come to that meeting and in a very relatively short amount of time--half an hour or more, or less--can you summarize a theology of story to storytellers...in some ways make it applicable to their real lives?
In other words, I've not come here to try and give you some more dry theological perspective, like 'The Theology of Storytelling'--like a lecture. Interesting, perhaps, but somewhat distant from where you are in your everyday life. I'm going to try to give you food for thought about storytelling, about theology, about why that's important to us, how it relates to us as God's followers, and then also about how I think it talks about our contemporary situation in the Episcopal Church, in the jobs that many of you have in dioceses, in the national church structures, in the reality of the political, social, economic world we live in. All in thirty minutes--so buckle up your seat belt, this is going to be pretty basic and quick. But I hope you find it interesting.
Now let me first say this. When I'm talking about story, and storytelling here, I want you to read in your mind that I'm really talking about the style of storytelling that many of us do who are engaged in communicating through diocesan newspapers, through Episcopal publications or news services, through web sites, through informative informational systems that we use to communicate our information out to a broader public. I'm not talking about a storytelling ministry, or a style of storytelling that would be based in a different format--for example, we've heard sermons that are given in story form; the storyteller that relates something, like Prairie Home Companion, if you're familiar with that--that is a form of storytelling that's very evocative in its mythical figures living in a town in Minnesota, and so you learn lessons by the story form. Or 'once there was a rabbi who lived in Hungary'--that kind of story form.
I'm talking about a story form, more factual-oriented stories; that is, we're telling factual stories, we're trying to report the news, we're trying to tell people what happened, we're trying to engage them into a way of thinking about the realities that are impinging in their lives by telling them the story, for example, of what happened at the Primates' Meeting, when all the primates in the Anglican Communion came to Kanuga and we're trying to relate that story. It's a factual kind of story. That's the type of storytelling I'm talking about.
And in doing that, I'm looking at it in three ways. What I want to suggest to you is that when we--and there's many ways we can do this--but for the sake of just this brief time with you this morning, I'm talking about it in three ways--story, as I've defined it and described it for you now: story as memory, story as mission, and story as mystery.
Again, I'm going to ask you to think about this theologically. There are three theological contexts for the type of ministry that I think most of us are engaged in. And in terms of your storytelling, I would say that that involves you in the memory, the mission and the mystery, theologically, of such storytelling.
Now, there are questions to each one of these. When I say that we're engaged in memory, what I'm talking about here is simply asking--and I'm thinking now as a reporter would: What happened? What happened? What we're trying to relate when I say storytelling is memory is what actually happened.
The theological twist on this to me, the interesting part about this first one, is that in many ways that we perhaps haven't thought about, those of us or those of you who are engaged in telling the factual story to the rest of the church--you may not think of yourselves so much as being in a biblical tradition. Perhaps you think of yourselves more in a contemporary style of, 'well, I'm a journalist,' or 'I'm a media person,' or 'I'm a technical person working in Web sites.' But you don't necessarily connect in your mind that in fact you're engaged in a very biblical, theological, spiritual enterprise.
But in fact, in relationship to story as memory, you are. Basically, if you look at the essential elements of the biblical narratives, where we come from as Christians, the Bible is an effort, as it says in the Hebrew covenant, is an effort for us to tell what collectively we've seen and heard. There's a very biblical kind of context for the type of storytelling that we're doing. We want to relate essentially what we have seen and what we have heard. Why? Why?
Why are we engaged in that? Why is that important to us? Beyond just saying, 'well, the public has a right to know the facts!' Well, you can get a stenographer from a courtroom, and he or she could record the facts, right? So we're not doing it just because we're simply taking down a verbatim of human history. That's not what we're engaged in. Again, there's a biblical thing here, there's a scriptural, spiritual element to this, of our storytelling as memory.
In the scripture it says you should teach your children, you should tell them this story. Wonderful time at Passover we just came through, this story of the great Passover of God over the people--there's a reason for this.
I submit to you that one of the theological reasons that your ministry is so important, and if you haven't received a lot of affirmations recently, you have come to the right place and found the right bishop to talk to you! I don't want any of you to leave here at this conference, certainly not from my little bit of the day, without feeling a strong affirmation. If you're a little tired, come on, wake up! If you're a little tired, or you feel as though your ministry is not getting the support it needs, I really hope this will be a shot in the arm for you. Listen. I'm a bishop, listen to me! I must go through all of this for some reason.[laughter]
And here's the reason: it's a blessing to you--listen. I want you to feel affirmed. There's a spiritual reason you're doing this. It is because the collective memory that we tell, the stories that we tell about what happened, is a way in which we define ourselves, we give ourselves an identity, and we lift that identity up over and over and over and over again for our community, the people we're trying to communicate with, to take that identity, to reconsider it, to rethink it, to revalue it, and therefore to reshape it.
So in this context, theologically speaking, your ministry as a factual storyteller, being engaged in this biblical enterprise of consistently retelling the story of our collective memory of what happened, is the way in which our corporate identity as the Episcopal Church is both revealed and reshaped.
We're talking about our identity, brothers and sisters--about who we are. We know who we are by constantly and consistently answering the question, 'what happened to us?' What happened, in the beginning? What happened--how did we become a tribe? What happened--where did we come from? What happened--what happened then? Who was in charge then? What did they say? What did they do? How did people feel about it? How did they react to it? How did they vote on it? What kinds of resolutions came from there? It's the way that we identify ourselves, when we go to conventions like in Denver, as dry and maddening and exhausting as they can sometimes be, when you set through the book of all of those resolutions that reporters are trying to cover, we're asking ourselves, 'what happened? What did we say? What are we doing?'
I believe that this is an absolute critical thing for us to consider as communicators--for those of you, I'm being bold enough to presume on your hospitality to say I believe this is a critical thing for you to consider. Because this process is so vital to us, this biblical, scriptural, spiritual process of constantly being able to answer the question, 'what actually happened?', that is the root source of our identity as it is revealed and reshaped in community. That is so vital to any healthy community, that that process continue in an unimpeded way, that it continues in an open way in which people can participate in it.
The ministry--listen--the ministry that you are carrying out as communicators is very much akin to the ministry of those who wrote down the scriptures, the ministry of those who saw Jesus. What happened? Let me ask you something. If you were living in the time of Christ, and if somebody said, 'You know, Jesus was just in the next village,' don't you think somebody would say, 'Well, what happened?' Wouldn't you? I would. What happened?
One of you can imagine yourselves in that spot where you were over there and saw it, you are now reporting it, you are saying, 'well, this is what happened. There was this man, he was sitting there by the side of the road, and when Jesus walked by, I heard him, he was shouting Son of David! Son of David! Save me, help me!' You're telling a story. In remembering that story, the identity of who we are as followers of that Jesus becomes clearer. We want to know what happened.
A healthy community is engaged in this process constantly asking and answering the questions of what happened. But here's the challenge. The challenge that I place before you--this is where I take this affirmative image of who we are as factual storytellers relating to our biblical tradition, putting it in the context of theology, but then also bringing it down to the grassroots of where we are today in the life of the church.
And where we are today in the life of the church, I would suggest to you for your serious consideration as communicators, is that that process is now in serious jeopardy. That process is being interrupted and distorted. The process that I just described, of being able to answer what happened and be able to tell what happened, actually, is in many ways being changed.
Now why do I say that?
I believe that we have come to an era in the life of the contemporary Episcopal Church, where people are not always as interested in what actually happened as they are in, say, what we want to have had happen. Did you get that? In the life of the contemporary church, we're not really as interested in what happened as in telling people what we want to have had happen. [applause]
I got a witness! [laughter]
By that I mean: take the Primates' Meeting. Are you really--you ask people at large in the church--interested in what really happened? Or are you more interested in having confirmed in your mind what you wanted to have happened there? Whether you wanted it to be a complete blowout, where the primates were just absolutely hysterical with one another, and 'we're teetering on the brink of disaster!' Is that what you wanted to happen? 'Yes, that's what I wanted to see! I want it to be teetering on the brink of disaster!' Why? Because it confirms what--your identity? Yes! My feeling about what I want our church to be.
Or did you want it confirmed--well, the belief that it was a love fest. They were all holding each other, dancing, 'Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya...' [laughter] What did you want to have happened? What did you imagine happened? What did you need to happen?
That's what you want to hear. Not what really happened--in all of its diversity, in all of its complexity--you with me on this?--in all the nuances, in all of the things that contradict where you were coming from, 'you' generically speaking of 'we', the Episcopal Church. To contradict where we're coming from, or confirm it.
You see, the problem with answering what really happened, what actually, factually happened is, it is that mixed bag of both, kind of confusing and frustrating us and confirming and making us feel better about ourselves, all at once.
Now, the reason I'm suggesting this is what we have seen, I believe, is that over recent history, in the tide that has been moving in this church--you all put the timeline on it--when did it start? Was it during the Vietnam War? Was it during the Civil Rights movement? When were the first seeds of contemporary phenomenon of this kind of interruption of our process of answering what actually happened? When did that first start? Was it back in Vietnam, was it with Martin Luther King Jr., did it happen at women's ordination, or was it the gay and lesbian issue that finally broke the surface and made this happen?
I'm not going to try to put a timeline on it; I'm just suggesting that during a long period of our contemporary history in the Episcopal Church, there has begun to increase a blurring between those who are reporting what actually happened and those that in fact are commentating on what they wanted to happen. There's a blurring in the mind of the public in the Episcopal Church between getting their news, getting their information, which is telling them 'this is what actually happened,' and getting information that says 'no, no, this is the spin that is put on things.'
We have a new phrase in the English language which we should pay a lot of attention to--the spin that's put on stories. We no longer live in just a factual reporting age, we live in an age in which we expect that there will be spin, and the distinction between who's spinning and who's simply reporting is getting blurred. Am I telling you the truth? Do you think this is true?
It's gotten blurred. In the popular imagination, in the average pew in the average Episcopal church, if somebody clicks on the Internet, they see something or they are on an email site where they're getting some kind of information--is this coming to them because this is what really happened? Or is this someone's special interest group? Is this a spin that's being put on it, in order to kind of persuade me that I should be more conservative? More liberal? Middle of the road? Where are we?
Our identity begins, therefore--you see what happens?--begins to get blurred. Are we in deep, serious trouble as the Episcopal Church? Yes--if you read this. Oh, no, things are just fine, we're doing really good. Actually the numbers are going up, so we're not in trouble at all--no, read this. Well, do you see what I'm saying? So what actually is happening becomes for us this very [?] thing, because we're living in a highly politicized moment in the life of the church.
Now, in this highly politicized moment in the life of the church, I believe, is a moment when our leadership, more than at any other time, needs to confront this situation, where the process of really being able to answer as a healthy spiritual community, in the scriptural, spiritual, biblical sense, 'who are we?' by answering 'what actually happened?' and allowing us to both have ourselves revealed to ourselves and allow us the freedom and the opportunity to reshape our reality in light of what's actually happening...you know, it's really difficult, if any of you, to say 'I want you to plan for your retirement, but I'm not going to tell you how much money you've got.' How would you like to try that? How can we plan about who we are going to be to reshape ourselves in the Episcopal Church if we're never sure what's really happening? How do we go about doing that?
And the political leadership, the spiritual leadership of the church at this moment, I believe, above all other moments, should be empowering an objective media within the life of the Episcopal Church as never before. We should not be cutting back on communications departments, publications and media--we should be enhancing and empowering them, because now more than ever before, the church needs to know what is happening.
But sadly, because we live in such a highly charged, politicized time in the church, our leadership, through intimidation, is now retreating--many of our leaders, through intimidation, if they are not already on the bandwagon of the far Right or the far Left, are retreating. Those middle-of-the-road kinds of leaders that we like to hope will someday see the light and save us, and move us to the direction we want to go in the church, are retreating through intimidation into the motto 'no news is good news.' No news is good news: in other words, don't rock the boat. Don't tell people the troublesome news. Let's just kind of put a happy face on this, and smile our way through it, and somehow it'll all turn out right in the end.
This happy face becomes the surrogate identity which I believe allows the extremism to continue within the life of the church and its process of communications. [applause]
And I'm being as honest and fair about this as I can. I'm not labeling any one group of people or one faction within the church, I'm simply talking to you as communicators to the best of my ability as a bishop, and trying to say this is where I see we are, and inviting your response, your thinking about it.
I believe that if we keep putting a happy face on, and not really looking at what's really happening--and that means challenging other political leadership that is supporting extremes on either end of the spectrum, by saying 'no, it's not--this isn't helping your diocese if all they ever read is the party line.' It's not really helping them to know what's really going on in the Episcopal Church. You're not doing them any favors. You've got to tell people: this is what one group said, this is what the other group says--we're like reporters, you have to give people the facts and then empower them to be able to deal with those facts honestly and intelligently. Not cheapening their intellectual capability by saying 'no, you can't handle the facts. So we just won't tell you anything, or we'll only tell you what we want you to hear.'
What we need to do is tell people the truth, the facts the best we can assemble it, and allow them to talk this out, whatever political direction they're coming from. Otherwise, our real identity as the Episcopal Church just becomes the surrogate of whatever political banner we're hoisting at the moment, in a 'ministry of the month club' that we call the Episcopal Church--this kind of 'crisis of the week' club: 'oh, my God, we're verging on that again--it's happening'--that kind of nonsense.
And we allow muckraking to continue. A lot of journalism in the Episcopal Church today, brothers and sisters, is nothing short of muckraking. It's descended to that level. And I don't care whether you're liberal or conservative, if I offend you by saying it, but as a bishop of this church I stand up and say it's the truth. There's so much glop that goes on to email systems and into print that is considered to be news--it's just shameful, we should be ashamed at the level to which it's descended.
And here's the second one: Mission. Your storytelling, your factual storytelling, is a mission, is so important. It answers the questions: 'what are we doing, and why?' The first one is memory--what happened? Second: mission--what are we doing and why? Again, it's another biblical connection to me. The biblical connection here is that we're being asked to chronicle our own history. And that's something that the whole Bible, the whole Hebrew covenant, our faith as a people, as the new Israel, as the new Zion, as the disciples of the second covenant--if I get theological with you, that's in fact the extension, we're extending that whole ability to chronicle our history. We go back, just like we did in the great Easter Vigil, we go so far back and chronicle it so much that you can kinda get a little dazed! 'In the beginning God created,' and you go through the dry bones, and Moses, and--we chronicle our history. We are in the business, brothers and sisters, as people of faith, of keeping a running chronicle on our own history.
Why do we do this--chronicle our own history? The mission of who we are, the job description of our community, the purpose of why we're here, the knowledge of what we're supposed to be doing and why we're supposed to be doing--'do this, don't do that, we ought to be doing this, we should not be doing that'--that whole mission of understanding what we should be about in the real world, as disciples of Christ Jesus, is not only discovered in our founding charters. It's not just found by reciting the Ten Commandments, or the Apostles' Creed.
It is found in the experience of living that covenant out in real life. It's one thing to tack the Apostles' Creed or the Ten Commandments on a wall and say 'this is what we are doing, because God told us to--he came down from Mount Sinai, gave us these tablets and said this is what we're supposed to do.' We chronicle our history, we are a part of that ongoing process of telling our story over and over again, of answering 'what are we doing and why?, because the experience of living out those paradigms, the experience that we actually embrace, that we actually have lived through, continues to tell us about how we are living into the mission, into the purpose that God intended for us.
We cannot really grow, as a church and as a community of faith, if we simply stand up and repeat endlessly to one another the Ten Commandments. 'That's it?' 'Yes! That's it! Believe this and only this!' How many denominations, brothers and sisters, are there? How many new ultra-orthodox groups are there in the world who simply proclaim 'believe this'? 'Should I think about it?' 'NO! Just blow off the faces of those Buddhas in Afghanistan, and believe this!' You follow me?
But instead of what's our real experience with this, what are we really doing with this, why are we doing that, why are we destroying these works of art of another faith? Why? Is that what God, Allah, would have asked us to do? Is this what Jesus wants us to do? Is this what Buddha thought for us? Any healthy community--and particularly those like ours, coming from a biblical tradition of chronicling our own history--ought to be able to have the experience. And you, men and women, who are in the business of media and communications, are there to constantly reflect that experience to us, to those of us who are living into it.
Your job, your wonderful gift, is to constantly hold up the mirror of our experience to say 'here's what we are actually doing in light of what we said we wanted to do' and 'here's what we think we are doing.' To accurately know what we are doing, to accurately know--otherwise, if we do not accurately know what we are doing, we are adrift in what Saint Paul so vividly describes to the early church as 'being caught by winds of doctrine.' Right? That you're just caught by the winds of doctrine.
Is the Episcopal Church--is there a better description for the Episcopal Church than that? Now come on. I'm asking the church--I'm speaking to the whole Episcopal Church--hello, House of Bishops? Anybody else out there within the sound of my voice? [laughter]
Saint Paul nailed us! And he did it because he's talking about how we chronicle and pay attention to what we're doing and why. And if you don't then you're just moving from one to the other.
Brothers and sisters, what passes for a lot of news today in the Episcopal Church is nothing more than propaganda. Hear me. I just named it. It's propaganda. Because propaganda invents the experience in order to manipulate the mission. I'll say it again: propaganda invents the experience in order to manipulate the mission. And you see an awful lot of manipulation going on these days, as people invent experiences for the church. 'Oh, that was a wonderful experience!' 'That was a terrible experience! It was horrible, the worst experience we've ever had!' We're always upping the ante, always escalating the level of the experience in order to manipulate people's emotional reactions to it and therefore to change the mission. The end, therefore, begins to justify the means.
I believe that the challenge for us is to release the media in our church, not to constrict it--to engage the full range of our honest experience. Because only insofar as we are able to look as the Episcopal Church into a mirror of our own behavior, and see our reflection accurately, will we be able to measure how well we are performing the mission that the gospel of Jesus Christ has called us to do, and to understand why we are doing it, and to improve on how we are doing it. Only that truth, which is the business that I believe most of you in this room are involved in--the truth, Jesus said--only the truth will set us free.
Therefore I believe that the true mission that should be described for those of you who are communicators in Episcopal Churches is, you are in the mission of liberation. You are in the mission of reconciliation. And you are in the mission of peacemaking. Because you have this mission to hold up the truth for the rest of us to see ourselves and judge how well we are doing the gospel imperative of Christ, then you give us the opportunity to be liberated, truly free as Jesus called us to be, to look at our own behavior and judge for ourselves how well we are doing. And because we can be liberated, those of us who were once far off from one another can now draw near, as Saint Paul says, the ministry of reconciliation, and be brought closer.
If we really knew--why are people honestly upset about this issue? Have any of you, have been cast up like me on one particular side of a theological point or another--think of your button right now. Think of your hottest button topic. Think of the one thing that I can stand on the other side from you on, and you can feel the hairs on the back of your head stand up and you're getting your heart, and that pulse that you were talking about starts to pump, and you're ready to fight.
Now imagine how wonderful it would be if you'd be able to truly understand why the other person on the opposite side of the room feels just as passionately on their side. Truly understand it--not cartoon caricatures and cardboard cutouts of demonized people from the other side of the spectrum, but real live human beings that you can talk to and engage and understand why do they really think this? We would be able then to build bridges to true understanding, not by slapping a happy face on the subject but by being able to honestly talk to each other about where we're coming from, about what we are doing.
I believe that this business is so important. I come from a community, Episcopal Divinity School, which I've learned over the last few years of traveling around--most people have a picture of us from 1983. It's frozen. It's like an ant in amber. There's the Episcopal Divinity School in some peoples' minds, stuck like an ant in amber--'Oh yes, I know all about your school. I know what you people are up to.' 'Oh, what are we up to?'--and then they tell me. They don't have a clue. They're talking ten, fifteen years behind. Ever find that phenomenon? That that's stuck. Why is that stuck? Because they don't know what we're doing. Why don't they know what we're doing? Because there's no way we're communicating with each other. Why are we not communicating with each other? Why is it we are not being able to find that what we're doing at Episcopal Divinity School, which is a spiritual renewal, it's one of the brightest, best stories in the whole Episcopal church--I mean it's just absolutely phenomenal what's happening at Episcopal Divinity School, in its energy, its life, its commitment to Christ--I mean it is incredible news, is what's happening. And I often find myself in situations with people who are quoting me to me things that happened when I was a student there twenty years ago.
Brothers and sisters, the third one is this. If the question of our mission, what we're doing and why is important, here's the third one: mystery. When I say that theologically you're participating in mystery, what does this mean, is the question. You're asking the questions: what happened? What are we doing and why? And now we're asking the question--theologically, spiritually speaking, as a communicators--what does this mean?
Now this one's a little harder to pin down than the other two. It really summarizes the way the whole of the scripture, the whole of our tradition of faith--it's a very deeply difficult thing, but it's a story that is not only about identity, which is our past. And it's not only talking about our current experience, what are we doing right now, which is our present.
This one, that you're participating, perhaps without even being conscious of it as communicators, in story as mystery, you're participating in terms of the vision, the future. Not just our identity, not just our experience, but something that's harder to define theologically, scripturally speaking, because it's pointing to the future.
I love the part where they said to Jesus, 'Jesus, when will the end of time come?' And Jesus said, 'Huh! I don't know!' You remember that? He said 'I don't know.' It's what? A mystery. When he was on the Mount of the Transfiguration, and Peter wanted to nail it down, build a booth and 'let's get this right, let's create the right church organization that's going to nail this sucker down once and for all'--you with me on this?--'and we'll never have another controversy, we're all going to believe exactly alike here in a little booth with Peter and Jesus and it's going to be grand, just grand.'
And what did God do? Did God say, 'You're absolutely right. The rest of 'em are going to hell!'? [laughter]
No. He covered the whole thing with a cloud, a mystery of not knowing--of not knowing. You, ladies and gentlemen of the media, are pointing us toward a mystery. You're participating in the vision, because you show us our past, because you engage us in our present, you reveal to us some of the mystery of where we are going.
The kind of factual storytelling that you do impacts the body of Christ on many levels: intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Some of the stories that you tell upset us. And some of them inspire us. Some of the things you tell us offend us, and some of them affirm us. Some of them depress us, and some of them revitalize us.
What I'm suggesting to you here is a little bit difficult to describe, but what I'm going to suggest to you is that there is a rhythm to what you are doing. If you allow a free press, if you allow the media to do its job, if you do not shackle or muzzle the media into toeing a party line or simply avoiding any controversy at all costs, you allow them to begin that rhythm.
Sometimes, any of you who are editors of newspapers, you know, or in any other media, you get letters from people and reactions from people that you will get--one day, they will ask [ ] 'why the heck are you putting that in the paper? I can't believe you're letting people read that kind of stuff!' And the next week you get a call from the same person, 'Well, by God, you're on the right track now! Thank God that you're printing that! It's about time we heard that kind of stuff in our media!' Am I right? It bounces back and forth, back and forth. Any of you walked the tightrope of being media specialists know what I'm talking about. It is an amazing juggling act. And the responses you get come from all directions, and people can either be wildly outraged by what you're doing, or completely uplifted and think you're just the greatest thing since sliced bread. Am I right?
Now. Why is that important? It describes a rhythm. It's a rhythm. It moves back and forth. That rhythm, I say, is actually the rhythm of life. You are actually participating in this mystery--again, I can't nail this down for you as neatly, but it's the mystery of the rhythm of life.
Ultimately the kind of storytelling that you are doing is a call to other men and women to participate in life. You're asking other men and women through your storytelling, through your truth-telling, through your telling of the experience and of the memory, through your holding up a mirror, you're inviting people to participate in the mystery of life. To get engaged, to get involved, to stop being Christian couch potatoes. Or just armchair generals sitting there second-guessing what everyone has been doing over the last hundred years. But getting up and getting involved in the rhythm of life.
It not only tell us what happened but invites us to ponder 'what does this mean?' What does this mean? What does this mean to me, what does this mean to you, what does this mean to the world, what does this mean to God?
Now, get ready--hold on to your seats.
Reporters--I'll just blanket that for all of you, whatever form you may take–reporters are evangelists. What the church has failed to appreciate, to honor, and to respect, is that reporters are evangelists. Those of you who work in any form of communications work in the Episcopal Church, I'll proudly call you the evangelists, among the best evangelists of our church.
Not because you preach the party line. But because you call others to join you in the mystery of living through faith, of standing in that mysterious real world where sometimes I'm up and sometimes I'm down. Where sometimes I'm in community with people who I just think are just exactly like me, just having a love fest over here at Steve's house. And sometimes there are other Episcopalians that make me just roll my eyes and wonder what is going on in your brain? That's the mystery of life, isn't it? Any of you got families, any of you married, any of you got kids? Hello? That's reality. It's not the Brady Bunch. The Episcopal Church is not the Brady Bunch! [laughter]
That's not reality, folks. Reality is this mysterious life where sometimes you feel wonderful and sometimes you don't and sometimes people agree with you and sometimes they do not. The tragedy of a stunted media is that when the media is subdued or suppressed, the partisan passes for the prophetic--and that's a tragedy. That's what begins to happen.
And here's my last little comment, which you can quote me on. The invitation is not really an open invitation, if we simply allow the media to continue in this church of ours to simply be undercut, if we allow our leadership to never stand up and support the media, if we don't expand the work that we're doing in media and see it as the evangelism it is, an invitation to people to fullness of life in the Episcopal Church. We're in the Episcopal Church, we proudly face reality and live in and invite all people of all walks of life to join us in this great mix of the human family and to seek God's care and God's wisdom.
If we don't do that we're not really inviting people to life in all of its diversity, but instead only inviting them to a flat-line of conformity, where there are no mysteries, but only the sterile certainties of a pre-ordained theological correctness. (I thought that was a great quote.) [laughter] Let me say it again.
The invitation that we're giving people, if we just continue to toe the party line and let our media drift, the invitation is not to life in all of its diversity, but only to a flat-line of conformity where there are no mysteries, but only the sterile certainties of a pre-ordained theological correctness.
That's not what the Anglican Communion--my memory, in my memory--was meant to be. That is not what it has been, in my experience. When I found the Episcopal Church, I came from a community that was a flat-line community. I came from a community that did not embrace mystery and diversity at all, that wanted no ambiguities or gray areas, and wanted us all to behave exactly alike, like little 'Jesus robots.'
And when I ran into the Episcopal Church, I found in this messy, organic, confusing, complaining, wonderfully loving mix of human beings in all of its diversity the freedom to speak my mind and to be who I was. And the freedom to learn this from others. And when I stepped into that community I never wanted to turn back.
And I will not be silent and allow that to be stolen from my future by a church that muzzles its media, that does not pay the respect to it that it deserves, and empower it to do the job that it is called to be, which is to serve the mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ through an evangelism of the truth that invites others to participate fully into the life which God intended for us all.
That's my opening keynote. Thank you for letting me be here.