Significant Challenges Confront Indian Leaders at Winter Talk IV
Episcopal News Service. February 7, 1992 [92028]
A new spirit of self-determination emerged as 70 Native American Episcopalians from across the nation gathered for the fourth annual Winter Talk, January 18-23, in the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.
Despite a budgetary crisis in the Episcopal Church, on which a vast majority of Indian missions rely, participants from 22 Indian tribes and 19 dioceses articulated new zest and zeal for ministry in their communities.
Participants explored new paradigms to affirm youth ministry and lay ministry -- but they agreed that important questions remain on suitable and effective ways to train Native Americans for the ordained ministry.
At the closing Eucharist, Alaska Bishop Steven Charleston challenged the participants to act boldly. "Don't go home silent.... We [Native Americans] have been silent far too long. If ever there was a moment in time...when [we] must speak out with a clear voice, and with authority, that time is now."
Participants devoted an entire day to the challenges facing young people in their communities. Tolly Estes, a Sioux from South Dakota, confronted the assembly with a string of sharp questions. "Whose responsibility is it in our community that our baptized young members have Christian education...that our young people have knowledge of the structure of the Church? Whose responsibility is it in our community that our young people are committing suicide...and using drugs?" he asked.
Many leaders affirmed that Indian youth must be included in decision-making capacities at diocesan conventions and all other structures of the church. "In many areas of South Dakota, our youth never leave our area," said Estes. "Groups come in from other places and minister to our youth, but our youth don't go out and see other ways of youth ministry," he added. "If we don't take our youth to diocesan, province, national, native youth events, we'll never allow our youth to develop."
"What do Indian youth need most?" asked Bob Beetus, an Athabascan Indian from Alaska. "They need role models," he said.
"We're making a call for youth ministers," Estes said. "Years ago, the diocese put out a call for lay ministers.... We need to [call] people to do youth ministry."
Throughout the meeting, participants called for more attention to be paid to the varieties of ministries available in the church -- particularly a new emphasis on the ministry of the laity.
Vernon Cloud, a Sioux Indian from the Niobrara Deanery of South Dakota, insisted that lay people need to exercise more leadership. "We just make excuses and leave all that work up to our old overworked Indian clergy," he said, with a note of irony, "because they were chosen by God -- and they alone can do this."
The Rev. Quentin Kolb, an Ute Indian from Utah, reminded the meeting that "acting out of love is ministry," and that "ordained ministers are [merely] the people who wear the uniform."
The Ven. Philip Allen, a Sioux Indian from Minneapolis, led a session on clergy and education for ordination. Allen alerted participants that only one Indian is currently in seminary study for ordination. He added that it is increasingly difficult to recruit Indians for ordination because, once ordained, the Indian clergy are expected to do more work than humanly possible.
"What are we recruiting clergy for?" Allen asked. "Are we recruiting them to be eaten up by a system that isn't working? We are locked into an old way of doing things, and in many cases, it's just not working anymore."
Vernon Cloud agreed, and described aging Indian priests as "living martyrs." He said that some priests serve as many as seven congregations and travel 2,000 miles a month. "We need more Indian clergy," he said.
Bishop Charleston pointed to a new program of training for ordination in Alaska as one model to support ministry of laity and clergy. According to Charleston, the model recognizes the responsibility of the whole community or village for developing new leaders. "We believe in Alaska that the whole community rises up together... not only priests and deacons," he said.
Charleston urged participants to return home with a renewed vigor to devise and design solutions to the problems they face. "You have the power to call other men and women into ministry and into service of the church in the name of Christ," he said. "You have the power to stand before anyone who would deny the will of God...to hold at bay the darkness of alcoholism, of despair, of suicide, of unemployment, of hopelessness.... Do not go home silent."