Team of Church Leaders Examine 'Total Ministry' in Diocese of Nevada
Episcopal News Service. March 16, 1995 [95042]
Jerry Hames, Editor of Episcopal Life
(ENS) Talk with almost any Episcopalian in Nevada and you'll hear the phrases "ministry development" and "total ministry" time and again.
It's on almost everyone's lips because this diocese continues to thrive with its particular brand of ministry -- one that depends upon clergy and laity working as a team in each of its 32 parishes. Nevada's story is of a young church struggling to keep abreast of high demands in a state whose population has grown from 650,000 seven years ago to 1.1 million people today.
"We don't spend a lot of time on issues that divide us," Bishop Stewart Zabriskie told top national church officials who visited the diocese for three days in February. "Instead, we come together to study, to see what ministry skills we need to focus on and where ministry development needs to be done."
Ministry development rests mainly with the bishop and three regional vicars responsible for the training of laity, deacons and local priests, who are ordained under a canonical provision that permits ordination after two years of study and training. The total ministry concept demands that all work as members of a team responsible for that parish's life.
"I see our role as a companion to the local clergy," said the Rev. Richard Henry, one of the three seminary-trained regional vicars. Zabriskie said that he sees his role to be the diocese's "spiritual director," not its chief executive officer.
It's a concept of ministry that is being considered by some other Episcopal dioceses, as well as dioceses in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, all of which have sent representatives to visit Nevada in recent years.
The trip to Nevada was the first of four visitations that will take the national church's leaders to the dioceses of Mississippi and Connecticut in April and Olympia (Washington) in June.
Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, who was accompanied by House of Deputies president Pamela Chinnis, senior executive for program Diane Porter and consultant Barry Menuez, told the diocesan leaders he wants the national church to reclaim its role as a partner with the dioceses and parishes that it is called to serve. "We have come to listen and hear what is [being done] in the diocese," said Browning. He later said he came away immensely encouraged and strengthened from his visit to a "vibrant, very flexible, very caring" diocese.
Throughout their visit, Browning and the other visitors became acutely aware of Nevada's need for help in the development of stewardship, Hispanic ministry, youth ministry and church growth.
"We desperately need help in starting new churches," said Zabriskie, who described both the opportunity and responsibility to minister to communities springing up along Nevada's borders at the rate of 6.000 new residents a month.
Other diocesan leaders talked about the need to communicate more effectively. "We need to be able to tell the story about what the Episcopal Church has to offer," said the Rev. Sherman Frederick, a priest who is publisher of the state's most influential newspaper. "It's not a church of bondage, it's a church of freedom."
"You won't find the name Episcopal on much of our social ministry that is being done in Nevada," said Richard Henry, the regional vicar for Las Vegas, as he led the team on a tour of social ministry projects. "We don't have an Episcopal stamp on anything."
Henry said that's because every effort is made to work ecumenically and because, as a church with limited funds, every effort is made to obtain government grants.
The diocesan social ministry interested Porter, who is exploring how the national church can better support dioceses in their ministry. "On our visits to dioceses in 1993, we heard people say that they need to be supported in ministry development in a new kind of way," she said.
The team first visited St. Luke's Episcopal Church where the first emergency shelter for women and children was opened four years ago. There were 80 guests that first night who slept in the church basement on mats taken from the city jail. Then the team toured Shade Tree, the permanent emergency shelter started a year later with government funding. The new shelter, located in a once-condemned furniture store, offers housing for single women and mothers with children up to age 17. Its program includes counseling, a weekly medical clinic and courses to improve dressing, grooming and interviewing for a job.
"What excites me about this work is getting others involved," said the Rev. Bonnie Polley, a deacon at Christ Church, as she drove the visitors to Parson's Place, the only transitional housing for women in the state. "In this diocese we go in and get something started, then we release it and take on something else," she said.
Named in memory of the Rev. Henry Hunt Parsons who, with the late bishop Wesley Frensdorf, founded the total ministry concept, Parson's Place was constructed from a burned-out motel to provide housing for women who are actively seeking work, living on social security supplement, or who are working and earning $13,000 a year or less.
The project, which received a United Thank Offering grant in its initial development, opened 57 units, 23 with kitchenettes, in 1993.
Polley said the church needs to take the lead in helping people make the leap to becoming productive citizens. "We need to commit ourselves to working with people who are on welfare so they can get beyond that," she said. "Too often people receive welfare and never get off. We -- society and the church -- need to be more responsible."
At the Culinary Training Center and Restaurant, the team talked with students enrolled in twoto six-week courses leading to entry level positions among the 40,000 union jobs in the city's casinos, hotels and restaurants. Since it opened last July, 1,580 men and women have been trained and 1,470 have been put to work, according to the program's director George Seiss.
The team also visited Christ Church in downtown Las Vegas which two years ago purchased a medical office complex adjoining its property. The parish now leases space to the diocese for its offices, and from its newly organized "Epicenter" offers ecumenical and community-based programs on adult education, a teen health care clinic -- which served 130 teenagers in its first 90 days -- a baby clinic, an adult literacy program and a referral service for physically and mentally disabled adults. It is currently seeking funding for a dental clinic for teens.
The presiding bishop and his team also met for a day with the members of the diocesan council and standing committee to discuss the diocese's long-range planning goals.
"We don't have any Hispanic ministry now," diocesan leaders admitted. "We need to be a part of the Las Vegas fabric." Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans now number more than 100,000, or 11 percent of the population.
"Stewardship lays the foundation for us," said Betsy Fretwell, a member of the long-range planning committee. "When people bring time, treasures, talents, we are unstoppable. But to get that you need to communicate well."
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