THE BISHOP’S PASTORAL ADDRESS

The Pastoral Address of the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, Bishop of Virginia, at the 211th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia, Friday, January 27, 2006, at the Richmond Marriott, Richmond, Virginia.

Just one year ago next week, I went through triple bypass surgery and, as a result, I missed the 210th Annual Council of this diocese. In the days and weeks following, a number of you suggested that I took a fairly extreme measure to avoid presiding at the Annual Council. I come to you this year with a deep sense of thanksgiving, both for my health and for your support. Let me say, that if you are faced with a choice of enduring the Annual Council or cardiac surgery, take the council!

2005 in our household was the year of the heart. I went through heart surgery and two months medical leave for rehabilitation. Soon afterward, we acquired a new dog who turned out to have heart disease. Kristy Lee has had more than her share of learning what it is to be a care giver in a cardiac family. And I have discovered that one of the positive legacies I might leave as bishop of this diocese, is the increase in the amount of fruit and vegetables at tempting parish buffets.

But thanksgiving is the theme of this address and the spiritual center of my life because of you.

I am grateful for the presence of my friend, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. James Jones, and for his inspiring leadership as Chaplain of this council. I am thankful for my colleagues, Bishop David Jones and Bishop Francis Gray, who are dear friends as well as deeply committed leaders. Bishop Gray retired on July 1, 2005, but has graciously agreed to work part time, visiting churches, providing pastoral care, and continuing to focus our energies as a diocese on the worldwide mission of the church. He travels to the Sudan next month in the company of others from our diocese to join the Archbishop of Canterbury in dedicating a new cathedral, built through the generosity of Virginians.

I learned afresh on my medical leave in February and March that we have a more than wonderful diocesan staff. And I’m grateful to them and for them.

I am thankful that so many of our churches this past fall have made a special effort to come closer to the Virginia Plan of Proportionate Giving in their pledging to the Diocese, reflected in the increased budget that is before this council.

Thanksgiving is also appropriate for the success of our Fifth Century Fund. December 2005 marked the conclusion of the first phase of the fund. We had a benchmark for that first phase of $12 million and exceeded it by raising $13.8 million in gifts and pledges.

Since the Day of Pentecost 2003, we have distributed 2300 vouchers for short term mission trips to young people confirmed by Virginia bishops. So far, 202 of these vouchers have been redeemed, enabling young people to participate in mission trips in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central America, native American reservations and work camps in poor communities in West Virginia, Idaho and North Carolina.

Seventy-nine grants totaling $877,000 have been made to help congregations grow in their ministries and thirteen church plants have been assisted.

In the future, our emphasis will be on strengthening the Mustard Seed Fund to help local churches. We hope to raise $450,000 by June 30 in this effort.

I am thankful for the institutions of our diocese, all of which are thriving. The Church Schools of the Diocese of Virginia, the continuing care communities at the Goodwin Houses in Alexandria and Falls Church and the Westminster-Canterbury Homes elsewhere in the Diocese. The Virginia Diocesan Center at Roslyn is thriving and so is Shrine Mont. I am thankful for Dick Moomaw, the Executive Director of Shrine Mont, and his brother John, the assistant director, who have informed me of their plans to retire at the end of December of 2006. I have asked Joe Paxton of Emmanuel Church, Harrisonburg, Vice President of the Shrine Mont Board, to chair a search committee to review how Shrine Mont is managed and to work on the succession of leadership there.

I am thankful for the Implementation Task Force on Ministry that is developing an imaginative new discernment process.

During 2006, the Diocese of Virginia will begin to see the fruits of these labors, as we seek to make personal and community spiritual discernment normative in our Diocese, especially for those who may be called to lay or ordained leadership. I have invited a cadre of people to engage in a new ministry as Diocesan Spiritual Discernment Facilitators. They will complete their training by mid-February and be available to provide group discernment training and facilitation assistance to parishes by late spring. Persons seeking to enter an intentional discernment process in their parish will be invited to attend a diocesan sponsored Discernment Retreat. These retreats will be held three times a year with the initial retreat scheduled for May.

The centerpiece of a new formation process for lay leadership and the vocational diaconate is the Episcopal Leadership Institute (ELI). ELI will be an intensive year-long program of leadership development. A leadership project implemented in each participant’s own ministry setting will serve as an on-going focus for individual learning, group reflection and parish development. Additionally, a diocesan-administered formation program for the vocational diaconate will address canonical requirements, while recognizing the different experiences and various educational backgrounds of candidates.

Informational presentations and brochures will be available during the next several months to provide more details and answer questions. A new manual on discernment and formation for leadership ministries should be distributed by late spring. This period of transition will ultimately result in some restructuring of several diocesan commissions.

As the task force has sought best practices, advice and counsel from many sources, these proposals have generated great enthusiasm, excitement and energy. Outside funding, including a Jessie Ball duPont grant and a grant from our own Mustard Seed Fund, have provided funds to underwrite many of the start-up expenses. I am thankful for those who are working on this initiative and to those who discern a call to test their vocation to leadership in community.

One of the historic strengths of our Anglican tradition is our capacity to hold together persons with different emphases, even conflicting emphases in their understanding of the gospel. That historic Anglican tradition is threatened by the differences that now capture our attention. And our differences are too often leading us to focus on our internal life, rather than on the world to which we are sent by Christ’s great commission and great commandment.

The contemporary spirituality writer and retreat leader, Parker Palmer, has this to say about life in community with differences:

"In a true community, we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define community as that place where the person you least want to live with always lives!"

We must pay attention to our differences in a spirit of listening to one another not so much to reach agreement but more to witness to our unity in Christ’s mission. I have appointed a Special Committee chaired by our chancellor, Russell Palmore, to work with churches that are troubled by the decisions of the 2003 General Convention and to help those churches get on with their mission in as close a unity as possible with the diocese. We can take other actions to include people with differences in our discernment of mission. We need to listen to those unhappy with the General Convention of 2003 as well as to those who believe the Diocese of Virginia should move more quickly in the directions the Convention has taken.

The theme of this council is "Gathered in the Spirit" and I believe that gathering is a mark of a healthy congregation whenever Christ’s people gather. But the purpose of gathering is fulfilled when the people who gather in Christ’s name are then sent out on mission. My prayer for the Diocese of Virginia is that we will renew our emphasis on mission beyond ourselves, an emphasis that can unite people with differences.

I think that renewal in mission is especially important as we approach the 400th anniversary of the gathering of the church in Virginia at Jamestown in 1607. We will have commemorative events in 2007 to remember that gathering, just as we did a century ago for our 300th anniversary. Part of that commemoration included the meeting of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Richmond in 1907. We welcomed the Bishop of London as part of that commemoration. We are collaborating with the Virginia Historical Society in the preparation of the history of the church in Virginia and of an exhibition of the church’s history that will begin in Richmond and then move around the Commonwealth.

But that commemoration of our history will be incomplete unless it leads to a renewal of mission. You are the contemporary representatives of the oldest Christian community in Virginia. I hope you will encourage our churches to use the commemorations of 2007 to reach out to others: to reach out to the unchurched and to lapsed Episcopalians with the story of a confident, hopeful Christian faith that embraces everyone. Even our differences point to our capacity to engage in the questions of the different generations. My prayer is that 2007 will be marked not just by commemoration but by renewal in mission.

As we look forward to the next century and beyond of our common life, it is important that we look beyond ourselves. I believe we should make every effort to help the General Convention of 2006, which meets in June in Columbus, Ohio, to reach out to our Anglican brothers and sisters worldwide and assure them that we are faithful in mission, deeply committed to our worldwide Anglican tradition and thankful for the self-governing freedom each Anglican province enjoys.

It is my custom, as you know, to read the accounts of earlier councils as I prepare for the current council. The council met at St. Paul’s, Alexandria, in May of 1906, almost 100 years ago. The major concern of that council was the decline of people presenting themselves for ordained ministry. That was a time in our national life when prosperity marked the life of many Americans and that very prosperity was cited in the Report of the Committee on the State of the Church as undermining the attractiveness of the ordained ministry since it was not then nor is it now a lucrative field. We are at a similar time of prosperity in our national life and, at such a time, the church needs to focus on those who do not share in that prosperity and on the need for leaders who are willing to look beyond their personal ambitions to lives of sacrifice and service.

My prayer is that every congregation will commit itself to identifying young men and women in high school and in college who have gifts for leadership and encourage them to consider exercising those gifts in ordained leadership in the church, helping them see that there is no more fulfilling profession than one in which service to others is the hallmark.

We are gathered in the spirit in order to be empowered for mission. And part of that mission is to persuade our brothers and sisters beyond the church to use the incredible resources of this country to help abolish hunger and poverty throughout the world. The United States is one of 189 member States of the United Nations that have adopted the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and it is appropriate for the church to adopt those goals as our own. We have done so in Resolutions of the 1998 Lambeth Conference and at both the 2000 and 2003 General Conventions.

The Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved by the year 2015. The member states of the United Nations and faith communities cooperating with them seek by that year to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

4. Reduce child mortality

5. Improve maternal health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

8. Develop a global partnership for development

These goals are attainable and the private sector, including faith communities, can help achieve them. Our worldwide Anglican Communion recommends that our churches give seven-tenths of one percent of their budgets towards development that will help reach those goals. Our Episcopal Relief and Development program has an ecumenical partnership towards that end. Seven-tenths of one percent of our diocesan budget would be about $33,000 and I hope that might be part of our budget to be expended for development by the Executive Board.

A bishop in the Episcopal Church must retire when he or she is 72. I will be 68 in May. I am committed to serving this diocese with all the gifts that I have and to continue that service until the time comes to turn the leadership of the diocese to another. This is a large and complex diocese. After my consecration as bishop coadjutor with the right of succession in 1984, I served in that office for one year and one week until Bishop Hall died in May 1985, about seven months before he had planned to retire. I wish I had had more time as bishop coadjutor. The average span of a Virginia bishop coadjutor’s tenure before becoming diocesan bishop over our history has been seven years. But under current canon law, the maximum service of a bishop coadjutor is three years because the canons require a diocesan bishop to resign three years after the consecration of the bishop coadjutor.

I ask this council to authorize the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia to appoint a nominating committee to bring before the 212th Annual Council next year several nominees for bishop coadjutor for election at that council and with plans to have the bishop coadjutor consecrated in the spring of 2007. I am not setting a date for my retirement but it will occur no later than sometime in 2010. I believe such a plan will provide the diocese an orderly transition.

I started this address with a sense of thanksgiving and that sense of thanksgiving continues to mark the ministry that God has given me in your midst. As we gather in the Spirit at this council, may that same Spirit bring us to lives of thanksgiving for the many gifts that mark our life together in the Diocese of Virginia.