Council Hears Plan For Consultation
Episcopal News Service. December 9, 1976 [76381]
GREENWICH, Conn. -- The Rev. Rustin Kimsey told his former Executive Council colleagues of their opportunity to shape Church mission as he briefed them on the forthcoming Partners in Mission consultation. His report came at a two-day meeting of the Council here Dec. 8-9.
Kimsey -- whose Council term ended at the General Convention meeting in Minneapolis in September -- was the major speaker of an afternoon and evening report on the consultation planning. He was chosen over a year ago to chair a small national planning committee to coordinate the Episcopal Church's major role in the Partners in Mission consultation which the worldwide Anglican Communion has undertaken.
This task has meant coordinating plans for the nine simultaneous provincial consultations and designing the Executive Council consultation which will take place in Covington, Ky. The meeting will bring 60-80 invited Anglican and ecumenical partners from throughout the world to this country to help the Episcopal Church begin an intensive examination of mission and ministry.
The Partners will be divided up into teams which will go to each of the chosen sites in the nine provinces for the consultations scheduled for April 19-23. They will reconvene with the Executive Council and representatives of each province in Covington for the final consultation which will run from April 27-30.
Plans for the provincial consultations are well under way through provincial consultation committees and Kimsey came back before his former colleagues to help explain that progress and their role in the Executive Council consultation.
Describing the Partners in Mission concept as the experience of "joint planning, dreaming and strategy," he told Council members they must be prepared to have their and the Church's concept of mission challenged, and said of the role of the partners: "The tremendously vital component of this process is the support and challenge that they will offer."
In examining the question of why undertake the consultation at all, Kimsey pointed to the Episcopal Church's place in the worldwide Anglican Communion and its role as an invited partner to the many sister Anglican churches that have already held their consultations. He spoke then of the levels of autonomy that exist in the Episcopal Church -- on parish, diocesan and national levels -- and praised the initiative that this situation often brought about. He noted that the reverse of this was the danger of parochialism and divisiveness. He invited Council members to help the Church "stretch beyond these levels" and reach for a new sense of mission.
To do this effectively, he told them, the information fed into the consultation must be accurate and exhaustive and its implications fully understood. He pointed to the data gathering instrument that all Partners in Mission consultations have used and said: "By April, you must be prepared to own this instrument. You have to be prepared to know who you are."
Before retiring to a lengthy ovation, Kimsey noted that often parishes and groups within the Church despaired of the belief that their work meant anything and said confidently: "This is the chance to break that loser syndrome."
The Rt. Rev. John S. Spong, Bishop Coadjutor of Newark, reinforced Kimsey's hopes in remarks he made about the consultation he attended in Africa and the Indian Ocean last summer. He told the Council that the consultation would offer the Church a chance to "stand in a new place" and see mission in a new way.
Executive Council staff is already at work modifying the standard Anglican Consultative Council data instrument that will be used in the consultation. At its annual meeting in February, Council is expected to take a hard look at the information presented in the instrument and to complete the task of "owning it" before the actual Partners in Mission meeting in April.