Episcopal Press and News
Diocese of Los Angeles Plans for Its Future
Episcopal News Service. May 31, 1984 [84118]
LOS ANGELES (DPS, May 31) -- Nearly 1000 members of the Diocese of Los Angeles gathered at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel May 18-19 to talk about their future life together.
It was an unusual conference in that it had no confining agenda and no legislative authority or expectation. Participants came to hear presentations by two prominent Episcopalians -- undersecretary of commerce D. Bruce Merrifield, and dean of the Princeton University Chapel the Rev. Frederick H. Borsch -- and then to engage in three lengthy small group discussions. The task in these groups was to respond to the speakers and grapple with plans for the administration of the huge diocese.
"Structuring to manage change" was what Merrifield called it. "Thinking through the expectations" was how Borsch phrased it, adding "The glory is that you are not here to make decisions, so you can go beyond that to see the larger vision."
The conference provided an opportunity for a large and representative segment of the diocese to study the report, submitted to diocesan convention last December, of an ad hoc committee on the diocese's future. After nearly four years of study by two successive groups, the committee had recommended a metropolitical plan for the diocese, with one diocesan bishop and four assisting bishops, each of whom would have more or less total charge of a specific geographical area. The convention voted to engage in a year-long study of the report before making any decisions.
Borsch set the stage the first evening by outlining the history of the office of bishop as it has evolved from the early church to the present.
Next morning Merrifield gave a fast rundown on some of the ways sophisticated technology is having an impact on every facet of life and emphasized that it will continue to do so at dizzyingly accelerated pace. The only constant in the future will be change, he said.
That afternoon it fell to Borsch to tie together both speeches and the tabulated data from the small group discussions.
Sensing frustration on the part of many in the audience to "get on with a new structure, now," the dean cautioned tnat it would be a mistake to think only in terms of contemporary needs, becoming thereby locked into a present which is constantly changing. We need the past... to go to the future as an endless line. The Church has to give to the world, and we mustn't lose it ourselves."
The dean urged the group not to be afraid tc risk changing in order to find the way "which may be better for you here in this time." A mistake can be rectified; the important thing is to use creatively and with "purifying motives" the energy of the dynamic membership of the Church.
"God can work through any structure," he said, "if that structure is offered to God."
The process is far from finished. Every conference participant is expected to engage his or her congregation in similar discussion. All data from the conference will be collated and submitted to the Committee on the Future, which is charged to bring in a new, revised or updated version of its report to the next diocesan convention on Nov. 30.