213th Annual Council
The Abundance of God's Love
January 25-26, Reston, Virginia
Abundant Love for Us
The Pastoral Address of the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, Bishop of Virginia, at the 213th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia
Hyatt Reston Hotel, January 25, 2008
One hundred years ago, in May 1908, at the 113th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia, my predecessor, the Rt. Rev. Robert Atkinson Gibson, the sixth bishop of Virginia, at the beginning of his pastoral address announced that it was too long to read in one sitting. He read the second part on the second day of the Council. I am not following his example in this pastoral address, although I continue to be grateful for the leadership of Bishop Gibson’s family to this day. One great-grandson, Webster Gibson, is the rector of Christ Church, Winchester, and his brother, Kirk, is a member of the Executive Board. Their father, Churchill Gibson, retired chaplain of Virginia Seminary and Shrine Mont, is not well and he and his family are considering hospice care. He has our gratitude for his ministry and our prayers for his peace and comfort.
Virginia is blessed as a church family in continuity with the past and confident in the future, grateful all along for the evidence of God’s abundant love for us.
I welcome Bishop Victoria Matthews among us, a sign of our connection with the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has been and continues to be a vessel of God’s abundant love for us.
It continues to be a joy and blessing to work with Bishop David Colin Jones, your Bishop Suffragan. And it is a new joy -- and blessing -- to stand here and present you, the Annual Council, to the Rt. Rev. Shannon Sherwood Johnston, your Bishop Coadjutor.
Last June at Jamestowne, our Presiding Bishop, with all the bishops currently serving in Virginia and West Virginia, gathered with a thousand faithful people on Jamestown Island to celebrate the Holy Eucharist in thanksgiving for God’s abundant love, expressed through 400 years of the life of the Church in Virginia and in America. We are the recipients of that love as well as the bearers of that love for the future.
Highlights of our life in 2007 include:
--the 400th anniversary celebrations,
--consecration of our bishop coadjutor,
--expansion of overseas mission,
--largest number of priests ordained in my episcopate,
--election of a new Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary,
--the loyalty and love evident in our churches and our people,
--continuing litigation required to secure churches occupied by individuals who have abandoned the Episcopal Church.
The shadow of that litigation is a present reality and I want to address it first so that we can move on to the more important matters of the mission and ministry required by God’s abundant love.
This litigation became necessary when 11 diocesan congregations chose to leave the Episcopal Church but continue to use the Church’s property to the exclusion of those members who chose to remain loyal to the Episcopal Church.
We have at this Council, for the second year, delegates from three of those continuing Episcopal congregations: St. Margaret’s, Woodbridge; St. Stephen’s, Heathsville; and The Falls Church, Falls Church. They are joined this year by delegates from Church of the Epiphany, Herndon, which at this time last year had not yet fully reorganized.
Defending our heritage and securing our future is expensive. We have spent so far nearly two million dollars on litigation costs as a defendant. We are blessed with dedicated and very effective lawyers, a number of whom are either working pro bono or at discounted rates as a gift to the church. Mike Kerr, our chief financial officer, with the authorization of the Executive Board has obtained a line of credit for the legal fees so we are current in paying them. The interest on the line of credit is being paid by endowment income so that no pledge money from churches or individuals is used for legal fees. At the conclusion of this litigation, we expect to pay off the line of credit by selling undeveloped and unconsecrated property, a process that is already under way. No one likes lawsuits but at the same time, our generation has a stewardship responsibility to protect the property of our churches for Episcopalians in the next 400 years.
This case involves Virginia’s historic tradition of religious liberty. Virginia is the home of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, adopted by the General Assembly in 1786. The recent motion of Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell to intervene in the case represents an intrusion by the state into the freedom of the church. The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia, as well as other faith communities from across the Commonwealth, oppose this intrusion. Whether the Attorney General will be permitted to intervene is the subject of a hearing today in Fairfax Circuit Court. If the Attorney General’s view of the law prevails, it will mean that the Commonwealth of Virginia gives preference to churches with congregational governance, discriminates against churches that are hierarchical or connectional in their governance and intrudes into the doctrine and discipline of communities of faith. We are involved in a legal case that has serious consequences for religious liberty.
Our overseas mission initiatives, always in full partnership with the church in the areas we serve, continue to thrive, especially because of the leadership of Buck Blanchard, our full time missioner for world mission. Buck’s position has been funded by an anonymous donor who lives out of state, but that funding is on a decreasing basis and will eventually run out. Buck returned from the Sudan just last Saturday, where the Diocese of Virginia sponsored a training session on peace and reconciliation for leaders of the Church in the Sudan. I spent a week in Spain in July with some 23 American bishops and 30 African bishops at a consultation on mission and found my African colleagues very open to continuing to work with us for the spread of God’s abundant love through the church that we share. Buck has helped a number of churches assemble and send mission teams for overseas ministry. I hope to go to the Sudan myself in late March and early April to help dedicate a school people from our diocese helped build. Many of you have visited the Sudan on mission trips, and our diocesan partnership with this devastated part of the world is so strong through the Episcopal Church in Sudan, I want to witness, first-hand, to the reality of their lives, and share with them the joy of the Gospel message of love and hope.
Buck’s ministry in overseas mission aims to help local churches expand their own outreach and mission and that is the deliberate pattern echoed across the diocesan staff. The Diocese of Virginia is not an isolated institution headquartered in Richmond and independent of you. You are the Diocese of Virginia--you and the people you represent. The bishops and staff are here to serve you in your ministries and to assist you in the development and exercise of those ministries.
I am particularly thankful for our small but dedicated staff. Of the five largest dioceses, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Los Angeles and Virginia, Virginia has the smallest staff. Our 24 staff members, some of whom are part-time, are dedicated, effective and responsive but you may have of them expectations that exceed the hours of their day. For over a decade, the maximum increase in compensation for your diocesan staff has been the minimum suggested increase for diocesan clergy. I believe we risk unwanted turnover in the staff if we cannot do better.
Currently, the only full-time ordained persons on the diocesan staff are the three bishops. This is the first time that has happened in my 24-year episcopate and it lessens our capacity to respond to your requests when we cannot send an ordained person into a parish to represent the bishops, to celebrate the Eucharist with you, and to help a local parish address its needs.
The limitations on staff are a direct result of the churches’ in the Diocese of Virginia continuing inability or unwillingness to meet the suggested guidelines for proportionate giving of parish income to what we do together as a diocese. Mike Kerr does a wonderful job of putting together imaginative ways of stretching resources but the lack of funds limits what we can do in every area of diocesan services from parish development to summer camps.
I spoke earlier of the strong work in global mission led and coordinated by Buck Blanchard. His work this year is expanding out into local outreach. We are working to move the cost of his very effective work into the diocesan budget over the next three years. Our capacity to do that, however, is at risk, and therefore our work in global mission is at risk, because of the pattern of giving from parishes.
Another diocesan initiative to support local mission is the Mustard Seed Fund. Since 2002, the Mustard Seed Fund has provided $1.2 million in grants to nearly half the churches of the Diocese for new outreach, educational programs, expanded facilities and increased mission at home and overseas. Patsy Bjorling, the diocesan director of stewardship, administers this fund in addition to her making herself fully available to the churches and institutions of the Diocese to offer support on stewardship. Recently she rolled the odometer on her car nearly to 200,000 miles in traveling this Diocese and consulting with churches and vestries and stewardship committees on the annual canvass and capital campaigns. In just the first two months of this year she will have visited 30 churches in service to this Diocese. She is but one member of this staff and her work is emblematic of what this staff seeks to do in ministering to this Diocese. And it costs money: salaries have to get paid, gas has to go in the car, and the car needs insurance and, occasionally, new tires.
Another unfortunate but necessary result of the low level of giving to what we do together is that some of the camps at Shrine Mont this summer will have their tuition increased by as much as 9%. The diocesan budget, funded by the voluntary giving of the churches of this Diocese, annually underwrites much of the cost of our camps in an effort to keep them as affordable as possible. We cannot afford to increase that allocation this year, and continue to support all the other work we are called on to do. That said, the cost of our summer camp programs remains a high-value investment in the spiritual well-being of our young people.
I have received several letters from wardens notifying me that their parish pledge would be reduced for 2008 but that I should not take it as a sign of any unhappiness with what we are doing as a diocese. None of those letters suggested areas of diocesan mission and ministry that could be cut or services to their parishes that could be eliminated. I ask each of you at this Council to speak to your vestries and implore them to raise the percentage of your parish’s pledge to what we do together. This remains a continuing issue in Virginia. The diocesan Council has repeatedly affirmed the Virginia Plan for Proportionate Giving but people go home from Council and we do not see in many parishes any sign of a significant proportion close to the suggested guidelines.
As a diocese, Virginia has long been thankful for the shared gifts that are signs of God’s abundant love, but our failure to follow our own Council-recommended plan for proportionate giving puts us at the very bottom of the 105 American dioceses when it comes to what percentage of parochial income is shared at the diocesan level. This is not the legacy I would choose for my episcopate.
As a nation, we are hearing talk of a possible recession, and we know that some of our neighbors have trouble with their mortgages and living expenses. Thankfully, the evidence is that Virginia’s economy is strong. Economists tell us a key to economic health is consumer confidence. The Church is in the business of confidence and hope, and a time of uncertainty is a time of special opportunity for people who are confident in their hope.
Through the dedication of our staff and the hundreds of volunteers serving on committees and commissions, the mission of our diocese continues to go forward in that confidence and hope. For several years, under the direction of the Commission on Ministry, we have been studying the implementation of the vocational diaconate in Virginia. I am happy to say that we expect applicants for postulancy for the vocational diaconate this year, and when we have at least six postulants we will begin their training program for them.
You will receive at this Council a report from what is called the R-5 Commission, which was created at the request of the 212th Annual Council last year, to explore “what may be an emerging consensus regarding the place of gay and lesbian people in our common life,” taking into account the concerns of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Members of that group have listened carefully, and are open for all voices to be heard. Building on their recommendations and going one step further, I am charging that commission and renaming it the Windsor Dialogue Commission, to continue the conversation with our gay and lesbian members, to help us maintain our already expressed desire to remain in relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion, and to follow the recommendations of the Windsor Report. I believe the Diocese of Virginia can make a contribution to that global discussion especially, when we send our bishops to the Lambeth Conference this coming summer.
As a continuation of our Triangle of Hope, linking Virginia with the Diocese of Liverpool in the Church of England and the Church in West Africa, all three of our bishops have accepted an invitation from the Bishop of Liverpool to spend the weekend in his diocese before Lambeth begins.
The empowerment of the Church at a local and international level continues to engage the energy of our staff and bishops. At confirmations, we give vouchers for short-term mission trips to every young person under the age of 18, hoping that they will take a diocesan-approved mission trip before they turn 19 years old. The reports we receive from young people who have taken such trips confirm that they are often life-changing events.
Most of the early bishops of Virginia included in their annual address a diary of what they had done since the preceding Council. At the 1908 Council, Bishop Gibson reported on the 300th anniversary of the Church in Virginia at Jamestowne in the Spring of 1907. It was also interesting to read that he spent most of July and August in Orkney Springs, Virginia. Although that summer was 18 years before the founding of Shrine Mont, it was an early indication of the origin of Shrine Mont, which became a reality when the Rev. Dr. Edmund Woodward, who had married Bishop Gibson’s daughter, founded Shrine Mont in 1925, beginning with Bishop Gibson’s summer house which Dr. Woodward had acquired. Bishop Gibson also reported that he was present when the cornerstone was laid at the Washington National Cathedral on September 29, 1907. The major event of that year was the General Convention of the Episcopal Church which met in Richmond from October 2 until October 19, 1907. The Bishop of London was a special guest at the General Convention.
In one of the only signs of personal irritation that I have ever read in the reports of my predecessors, Bishop Gibson’s notes for Monday, October 14, 1907, read as follows: “At a very late hour at night by a call of five most inconsiderate trustees, the Board of Trustees of the Virginia Seminary was convened. It was the most unpleasant incident of the convention.”
While Bishop Gibson makes no further reference to the matter, the minutes of the Seminary board are preserved in the Seminary library and reveal that a quorum of the Seminary board consisting of five bishops, three priests and two lay members assembled at 10 o’clock at night on October 14 at the State Capitol in Richmond and dealt with the removal and demotion of the professor of Greek at the Seminary and the changes in salary such a demotion might require. Several resolutions were considered, but agreement was reached only on the demotion of a professor. Bishop Gibson and the Bishop of West Virginia were constituted as a committee of two to notify the professor.
No wonder the bishop thought the event was unpleasant! The event ends with grace, however. John Booty’s history of the seminary reports that the professor took gracefully his removal from teaching Greek and remained on the faculty in other capacities another 13 years.
At that 1908 Council, the Bishop expressed his need for help. He asked for an archdeacon to serve in the Diocese and asked a Council committee to explore the possible election of a bishop coadjutor. Some things occur again and again in the Diocese of Virginia.
He received his bishop coadjutor the next year, when Arthur Selden Lloyd was consecrated. Bishop Lloyd served for only a year before he accepted a full-time ministry at the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York City and it was four years before another coadjutor was consecrated in Virginia. History records that Bishop Lloyd wanted to remain as bishop coadjutor of Virginia, working part-time, while he held his New York position in mission for the general Church but Bishop Gibson, the diocesan bishop, would have none of that proposal. Family life is often intertwined with church life in Virginia and one can imagine the conversations between Bishop Lloyd and Bishop Gibson, especially when one remembers that Bishop Lloyd’s daughter married Bishop Gibson’s son.
Your three bishops have developed an excellent and effective working relationship. Bishop Jones continues his good work with missions. Bishop Johnston has jurisdiction over the deployment process and he and Lindsay Ryland are working together in helping churches navigate the transition between rectors. A transition affecting me comes from the requirement of the canon law of the Church that bishops and other clergy resign when they turn 72. The 2003 General Convention enacted a new canon that requires diocesan bishops to resign three years after the consecration of the bishop coadjutor in their dioceses. Those dates coincide for me so I will retire no later than May 2010.
Last Sunday, at an evensong at St. James’s Church, Richmond, celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the celebrated Norfolk State University Concert Choir sang that beautiful old spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead.” It speaks of what I have experienced in this last year.
“Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. If you cannot sing like angels, if you cannot preach like Paul, You can tell the love of Jesus, and say, ‘He died for all.’
It is the abundance of God’s love for all that we proclaim. You and I may not have the gifts either of the angels or of Paul, but all of us can tell the abundant love of Jesus and demonstrate by our lives and our words that he died for all.
As I move around the Diocese, I rejoice in the signs of that abundant love. Congregations are nourishing their young, caring for the disabled, celebrating the sacraments, and in all things, preaching the Gospel, all out of a love for the Lord Jesus Christ and devotion to his coming kingdom. It is an encouraging time to be serving the Church in Virginia, especially when we focus on the positive rather than on the shadows that may accompany us. My prayer for the Diocese in this coming year is that we can navigate our differences with grace, support those Episcopalians who have been abandoned by the majorities in their congregations, increase our support for the ministries we share, and emphasize the mission of God’s abundance that unites us more than any effort of darkness that seeks to overcome us. May God continue to bless and prosper the Diocese of Virginia.