Excerpts from the Presiding Bishop's Address from the Chair, Executive Council meeting, Portland, Maine, April 23, 1991
Episcopal News Service. April 29, 1991 [91111]
Thanksgiving should really be the theme of my remarks today, for I have much to be thankful for as we meet for the final time this triennium as an Executive Council. There will be several chances during the week to celebrate and give thanks for the life and ministry of this Council, and particularly for Dean Collins and other outgoing members. I am tremendously grateful to all of you, and easily make my own the words of Saint Paul in speaking of the Thessalonians: "[I] always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in [my] prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
I am thankful, too, for the significant and altogether impressive work we have accomplished this triennium as an Executive Council. I could call to mind several particular accomplishments. We have engaged the Mission Imperatives in consistent and innovative ways. The Decade of Evangelism goes forward from a base of strength -- and in a way that serves as a model for some other churches in the Anglican Communion. The Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women continues to inspire and motivate a wide range of programmatic activity both domestically and internationally.
Building on the groundbreaking initiative in economic justice of the 69th General Convention, we are beginning to gear our programmatic response to the environmental crisis in a way consistent with the overall World Council of Churches' theme of Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation. I believe General Convention itself will have much to say about this. As a result, the environment, economic justice, and sustainable development will be a more focused, higher profile theme in the coming triennium.
As with evangelism and economic justice, our response to the AIDS crisis has been consistently creative and effective, providing a model for many other faith communities in AIDS-afflicted areas around the world.
Partly as a result of the Arizona rejection of a paid, statewide holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., racism will be on the agenda of the 70th General Convention in a way it might not otherwise have been. The importance of our program priority on racism during this past triennium will become apparent in Phoenix and will lead this church into a more honest scrutiny and accounting for its own sins.
The creation of Episcopal Life was the foundation of a more unified approach to a national church communications strategy. Do you remember the early debates and struggles on this issue? We've come a long way! Episcopal Life has been published for more than a year now, and becomes better with each issue. We have much to be thankful for in this anchor of our emerging new communications network.
I could go on. We have sought in a more intentional way to be faithful to our many partners -- here at home through solid program thrusts in congregational development and leadership training, and abroad, with "partners in crisis" in Southern Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and elsewhere. We are laying the groundwork for a second Partners-in-Mission consultation, which in turn will strengthen the mission discernment process we are embarked on in the exciting work of the Planning and Development Committee of this Executive Council.
A long-sought partnership with the Anglican Church of Canada has been given concrete impetus by our exchange of partners for meetings of the two national executive councils. What a gift it has been, as Michael Ingham once put it, "to see ourselves as others see us." We owe a great debt of gratitude to both Michael Ingham and Duncan Wallace for their contributions to our life together as an Executive Council and to the growing partnership between our two churches.
Institutionally, at the Episcopal Church Center, we have simplified and unified our budget in an unprecedented way. Last year we managed the remarkable feat of reallocating $2.5 million to emerging mission priorities -- a wonderful example of what an intentional mission discernment process can produce. Now that we are -- along with everyone else, it seems -- facing real limits to our financial resources, the importance of these institutional adjustments and innovations will become even more obvious.
All of this gives me great hope for the 70th General Convention of this church. Looking at our life and work together this triennium, we realize we can make a difference. To paraphrase a famous line: As Maine goes, so goes Phoenix! As this Executive Council has become engaged successfully in carrying out the mission of the church, so we have every reason to expect the same of the church gathered in convention in Phoenix.
Many people have asked about my hopes and expectations of the General Convention. I think our hopes inevitably flow from our experience in getting ready for Phoenix. Based on that experience, I have three hopes.
First, I hope we as a church will leave Phoenix with a much better grasp of our own internal racism. I hope we will leave Phoenix with a serious commitment to dealing with our institutional racism, and with a stronger commitment to the minority members of this church -- expressed concretely in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Fund. I hope and expect that we will joyfully affirm once again the marvelous diversity of this church, from which so much of its strength and attractiveness derive. Meeting in Arizona, with the Navajo Area Mission as one of our hosts, I am particularly eager to see this church give the recognition so deserved by our Native American members. Furthermore, I think my hopes are realistic. We will come out of Phoenix with a racism audit and a developmental agenda for the whole church -- an offering back to the church at large of our struggle with America's most besetting sin.
Second, I hope for a serious attempt to simplify our convention lifestyle. I hope we are given the grace to see that an outward sign of simplicity has very much to do with holiness of life and with the mission of the church. If racism is America's most serious flaw, then surely consumerism and a scandalous waste of material goods must rank next.
Finally, I hope that, however the tough issues are played out, whatever the vote totals may be, we will see ourselves post-Phoenix as a community whose members truly have listened to one another, who truly have respected one another. We will come to convention with many different experiences, many different agendas, many different expectations. It is my hope and my prayer that we will honor those differences, as God does, and that we will, with integrity, accommodate those same differences in a way that strengthens our fellowship and affirms each member of this church. The essence of unity is the acceptance of diversity, as our brother in Northern Ireland said. We are characterized by our diversity. Will we also be known for our unity?
Each of us will carry away a different experience of the General Convention, but I hope that we will all experience something of the reality of the Body of Christ. Perhaps some will have the experience a woman from India had at the recent Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra. She said that she came from a small village in India, that she had no previous exposure to the larger ecumenical church. She said she had been deeply moved and strengthened in Canberra simply by being there, by seeing and experiencing something of the church universal in all its many forms. I hope that Canberra experience can be our Phoenix experience.
Speaking now of Canberra, the Executive Council will receive a report this week from some of its delegates to the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches. I will not preempt that report, but will simply flag the importance of Canberra for our own mission discernment process. Much happened during those two weeks under the Southern Cross -- some of it, as you may have gathered from news reports, of pivotal significance for the future of the ecumenical movement. Like the woman from India, I was blessed and strengthened simply by being in Canberra. How I wish all of you could have had this truly unique Christian experience!
The Executive Council Task Force on the Environment and Sustainable Development, which we formed in November, has brought forth its report. I am happy to say that the report has produced two immediate, tangible results. To begin with, the three senior executives and I are constituting an in-house environmental council, whose mandate will be to build on aspects of the work Executive Council did in Savannah and ensure that Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society properties become models of sound environmental stewardship.
Second, an in-house group will be formed to bring together and integrate programs and issues in the areas of social and economic justice and the environment. Environmental and justice initiatives coming from Executive Council, the General Convention, and the World Council of Churches' JPIC covenanting process will be received by this inter-unit group. The group will, in turn, become a resource for dioceses and parishes. A new environmental desk at the Episcopal Church Center may not be in our financial cards, but the issues raised by the task force and others are of such urgent importance that the Senior Executives and I have agreed to take on this charge.