Executive Council Wrestles with the Future at Fresno Meeting
Episcopal News Service. June 21, 1990 [90151]
A deep concern for the future of the church shaped much of the agenda at the Executive Council meeting in Fresno, California, June 11-15. The council endorsed a design for a long-range planning process and took steps that commit the church to a strategy for global economic justice.
In his address from the chair, Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning said that "creating a vehicle for long-range planning and thinking about mission is crucial to our future and our credibility as a church." After the design was introduced by Canon Robert Tharp of East Tennessee, who chairs the Standing Committee on Planning and Development, Dr. Howard Anderson of Minnesota spoke enthusiastically of the design as an ongoing "organic process." He said he was excited about the design because "it helps us to act continually in a planning mode." Bishop Rustin Kimsey of Eastern Oregon, another member of the committee, said that the design is "a systematic way of honoring the stories and affirming the people."
Tharp gave council members a chart and a four-year timeline that describes a three-stage process based on story gathering all levels of church life, followed by stages that use the stories to shape the vision and goals for the church, define long-range goals and objectives, and then develop strategies and budgets in response. Helen Spector, consultant to the committee, said the design will use already existing networks to gather the stories. She said the design will help the church take a closer look at what specific challenges it faces in its mission; it will ask what inspires people to act, and then put that vision into practice. She admitted that the committee had received some criticism for the use of language taken from the corporate world, but said the committee was serious about developing a coherent theological rationale for the design.
In what was described as a merging of economics and ecology, the council accepted a resolution from the Standing Commission on World Mission that calls for a blue ribbon committee to integrate the issues of global economic justice and the environment. The committee, appointed by the presiding bishop, would recommend a strategy to the 1991 General Convention.
In a related matter, the council established criteria for grants and loans from the $3.5-million National Episcopal Fund for Community Investment and Economic Justice established by the council at its November 1989 meeting. A manual explaining the program will be sent to the dioceses this summer so that applications can begin this fall, according to Gloria Brown, who administers the program for the Advocacy, Witness, and Justice unit of the Episcopal Church Center.
The council also passed resolutions:
- calling for termination of the military bases agreement between the United States and the Philippines and economic assistance in the wake of economic dislocation that will result from the pullout of American forces from those bases;
- expressing frustration and anguish over the U.S. veto of a U.N. resolution to send observers into the Occupied Territories and Gaza Strip to monitor human rights abuses; deploring violence on both sides of the conflict; commending the presiding bishop for his letter to President Bush and Secretary of State Baker (see separate story); urging efforts toward direct negotiations;
- assuring Cambodians of support "as they seek a just solution to their national crisis"; calling for increased humanitarian aid and a peace process that ensures the will of the people;
- reaffirming its commitment to support "a generous, humane United States policy toward those fleeing oppression and injustice," such as Haitians, and condemning unlawful imprisonment of those seeking asylum;
- supporting the principles contained in the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1990 that would restore and strengthen civil rights laws that ban discrimination in employment.
The Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, an archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America and the 15th president of the National Council of Churches (NCC), was invited by the presiding bishop to share his reflections and observations on recent developments in Eastern Europe. Kishkovsky was born in Poland and lived in Germany before emigrating to the United States during World War II.
Kishkovsky began by thanking the Episcopal Church for its "creative and critical support" during the difficult period of transition at the NCC. "We have not only survived but come to a point of progress and possibility -- and the 90s will be very different," he said. In a conversation with the press, he warned that "old habits do not die easily," that it will take some time for the NCC to overcome its reputation for a "confrontative" style, based more on ideology than theology. Because the focus is clearer now, with major accountability to member churches, he said that he sees "many signs of hope."
Kishkovsky also said that he sees great signs of hope in what is happening in Eastern Europe. But there is a deeper reality behind events, missed by the press coverage -- the story of incredible changes in the religious climate. Eastern Europe is trying to overcome an "amnesia" fostered during the period of persecution -- and that is "the key element in rediscovering the truth of their history," he said.
"The churches have survived, against immense odds, and they may have a message for us," Kishkovsky said. Forbidden to do anything outside of worship in registered places, the churches became places of mission, a powerful reality immensely influential in the Russian context. "Worship was at the heart of their life and mission." Now, of course, they have new opportunities in mission, and they are looking to other Christians for some help, support, and insight "as they rediscover their own way and spirit of doing mission."
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory versus forgetting," Kishkovsky said, quoting Czech writer Milan Kundera. Memory is the key to the struggle for humane societies, and "this memory must be rooted in the Christian perspective," Kishkovsky argued. Since memory can be very selective, the church has a responsibility and the capacity to protect societies from an intensely nationalistic memory because "it can include compassion and the possibilities for reconciliation," he said.
In a conversation with the press, Kishkovsky said the Eastern churches were going through "a very powerful transition, from repression to revitalization." They are trying to take "healthy paths into the future, shedding the fear that has been imposed on them for many years.
In his address from the chair (full text in Newsfeatures section), the Presiding Bishop reflected on the future "by recalling our past," examining the choices we make that "point us toward a future worthy of reverence and confidence."
"One of the great strengths of our heritage is our inclusiveness as a community," Browning said, adding that we are "in danger of reneging on our commitment to be a truly inclusive church, one in which there are no outcasts." Instead of embracing "Anglican comprehensiveness" or "the middle way," some people in the church "want very much to settle our differences, and to settle them with some vengeance," he warned. He cited several recent diocesan conventions where "attempts have been made to impose binding doctrinal prepositions -- statements unobjectionable in themselves, though incomplete -- forgetting that our only confessions as a church have been the historic creeds in their entirety." Those who want to "build impervious walls of doctrinal and ecclesiastical purity" run the risk of isolating themselves from "the rich diversity and strength" of the rest of the church.
Browning pointed to other danger signs. "Racism continues to raise its ugly head, refusing to disappear. Homophobia threatens to unleash a hysteria that makes the pastoral care of our people immeasurably more difficult," he said. Such trends "strike at the very heart and root of our identity and credibility as a community of faith in the Anglican tradition. Our strength has always been in the way we handled crises and remained inclusive, a spacious and hospitable home for all who hungered spiritually and guarded their God-given autonomy as persons blessed with memory, reason, and skill."
Browning warned of a danger of "becoming something less than a church, competing interests backing themselves into smaller and tighter circles of self-justification and self-righteousness, attempting to write their prejudices into canon law, pursuing legalisms at the expense of compassion, understanding, and mercy."
"I want to see this church get going," Browning added. "I want to see the Mission Imperatives take on flesh and blood. I want to see every single Episcopalian challenged to do great things for God."
"If we do not develop ethnic ministries, we will not have a diocese in the 21st century -- we will become a museum piece," Bishop John-David Schofield told members of the Executive Council in his welcoming address. Schofield described the ethnic and cultural diversity in the large Diocese of San Joaquin, stretching from the eastern suburbs of San Francisco to the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles. To emphasize that diversity, the council visited the Episcopal Conference Center at Oakhurst, where they were treated to brief descriptions of five different programs in the diocese:
- a bilingual, bicultural, intergenerational, and family-oriented ministry to Hispanics in Fresno that seeks to overcome misunderstandings between Hispanics and Anglos;
- an adoption agency started as an outreach program in a Modesto parish that has placed over 400 hard-to-adopt children since 1983, half of them from Third World countries;
- a mission among the 47,000 Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia who live in Fresno -- the largest Hmong concentration in the United States -- that started as a language training center and is now purchasing a church building;
- a ministry with Southeast Asian refugees in Stockton, aimed at improving their language skills and their ability to handle differences in culture.
The evening activities concluded with a dance performance by Filipino members of the Holy Cross mission in Stockton.
The Rev. Michael Ingham, ecumenical officer for Archbishop Peers of the Anglican Church of Canada, was invited to make observations on the council meeting during the closing session. He saluted the "prophetic voice of the church in this society," pointing to the resolutions passed by the council as an example of that voice. He expressed some dismay, however, that the Pension Fund regards its investment policy as strictly fiscal and therefore won't participate in using its investments for moral purposes. "Keep pressing the issue," he said.
"You clearly have a global sense of mission," Ingham continued, based on a clear awareness of international responsibilities and partnership with other churches around the world. He expressed admiration for the trust level between the Executive Council and church staff. And he said he enjoyed the presence and participation at council sessions and small groups of people from the diocese, many of them sympathetic to the aims of the Episcopal Synod of America, formed a year ago as a "church within a church" to oppose what it views as liberal trends in the church. "Despite the theological differences, there is unity in mission," he said.
The presiding bishop also acknowledged that it had been "an exceptionally good time" for the council and its relationship to the host diocese. He said he was moved by the thoughtful, articulate presentations on the mission of the diocese. Many of those programs had direct connections with the national church, "and that says a lot about partnership. You are an integral, meaningful part of the national church -- and we hope our being here has given you a deeper sense of being part of that church," Browning concluded to enthusiastic applause.
Browning also announced the theme for the 70th General Convention in Phoenix: "By Water and the Holy Spirit: Seeking and Serving Christ in All Creation."
![[thumbnail: Executive Council Meets i...]](/e-archives/ENS/photographs/thumbnails/90151_thb.jpg) |