Transcript
East Tennessee Episcopal Friends, I would like to begin my remarks to you today with a prayer. Let us pray.
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
Help us be honest, humble, and hopeful.
This year’s Convention theme is a result of conversations that a small group of Bishop & Council members had this past year as they began to prepare for this Convention. Along with considering how we would gather, whether in-person, virtually or in hybrid form, Bishop & Council also gave real attention to what would be the tone and spirit of this gathering.
Help us be honest, humble, and hopeful.
For me, our theme speaks to this moment. As I have mentioned often, our help comes from God. When we seek salvation elsewhere, we forget that those “saviors” do not last. God is our salvation and our strength. God is our help.
From a place grounded in God as our true source, honesty and humility and hopefulness are all able to grow together, each necessary for the other to flourish.
Honesty does not grow with arrogance. Humility does not flourish with deceit and duplicity. And honesty, humility, and hopefulness also all require time and trust to take real and lasting root.
So, I would suggest our Bishop & Council has given us more than a theme for a weekend Convention. I believe they have given us a theological framework, a right posture, and a Gospel way to proceed with our common work ahead.
While I do believe our help begins with God, I am also aware that God gives us to each other as helpers. So, along with calling out to God for help, it is right to seek help from each other, laity, clergy, parish leaders and diocesan staff, as we serve in God’s church now.
In my own discernment about whether I was called to enter the bishop search for this diocese five years ago, I recall one line from the diocesan profile that really stood out for me. The line was, “many people say that they have something to give the Diocese but do not know how to give it.”
In other words, people wanted to help, but did not seem to know how to start. As your bishop, that line from the profile has guided so much of my work. So much of my work begins and ends with helping people in our diocese share ministry gifts for which they are equipped and yearn to offer to others.
One significant way I am able to help comes from the members of your Diocesan House staff. This past year some new faces have joined our staff and I want to make sure you know about these new helpers.
For nearly a year, Caroline Wood has served as Missioner for Youth and Young Adults. Along with responsibilities to support youth and young adult ministries across our diocese, Caroline also oversees our Safe Church policies and procedures. Along with Jody Davis before her, Caroline developed significant leadership skills while on Grace Point Summer Staff.
This past summer, Laura Nichols retired as Executive Assistant to the Bishop, after serving with three bishops over many years. In seeking to fill the position, it became clear that a new kind of help was needed. So, Jon Humber joined our staff in a new position as the Episcopal Engagement Specialist. Jon’s work involves giving significant staff support to Canon Michelle Bolt as she guides parish churches in clergy transitions and searches, as well as continuing to assist me.
Beginning in January 2022, Alvin Blount has joined us as Diocesan Archivist. This appointment, which is funded from designated reserve gifts, grows out of our work on Becoming Beloved Community. The work of addressing the Church’s complicity in racism and white supremacy begins with telling and hearing stories. Alvin’s work, while focused on Becoming Beloved Community, is intended to help all East Tennessee Episcopalians become better at hearing and telling and collecting our stories. Along with the Becoming Beloved Community project, please know Alvin stands ready to assist and give recommendations as parish churches also tend to their histories and archives.
The Venerable Jerry Askew has been serving as Diocesan Archdeacon for some time now. Beginning in January 2022, Jerry has taken on an additional role for us.
Jerry has recently retired as the President of the Alliance for Better Nonprofits. Along with that work, Jerry has a long history in leadership development, both in higher education and hospital administration. Along with his Archdeacon duties, Jerry will serve as a Missioner for Diocesan Vitality, giving particular attention to small parishes in our diocese. Jerry will listen and learn from small parishes and help them face honestly and humbly the challenges of this time with creative and intentional pastoral imagination. This part-time work is funded by a special gift to the diocese.
Caroline, Jon, Alvin, and Jerry join the Rev. Brad Jones, Canon Beverly Hurley Hill, Canon Michelle Bolt, Mary Embler, and Brother Andrew Morehead as your Diocesan House staff. We are also blessed by two office dogs—Auggie, who belongs to Caroline and Bug, who belongs to Mary. Also, each afternoon, Jon Humber shares his office with Lucas, the seven-year-old son of Jon and Kathryn, after Lucas has put in a full day at the Episcopal School of Knoxville.
What is a diocese? It’s a community of helpers. It’s a community of disciples willing to listen, both to each other and to the Holy Spirit which guides us. It’s a community of disciples willing to learn, through creative experimentation and innovation. It’s a community of disciples willing to lead, honestly and humbly.
Let me also say a word about Grace Point Camp and Retreat Center. Since 2012, the Rev. Brad Jones has served as Executive Director, with Gayle, his wife, as a strong partner in this work. During those nearly 10 years, the camping ministry at Grace Point has flourished and the campus has also grown to support the ministry.
To support the Retreat Center aspect of Grace Point, a plan was to be launched in early 2020 for a Capital Campaign to build a Retreat Village, which would comprise several cabins and a retreat center, enabling Grace Point to better welcome adult retreatants and guests.
COVID-19 put those plans for a public Capital Campaign on hold. I am thankful to say, however, that several early lead gifts have allowed us to begin and continue construction on this project. Roy Cockrum has given and pledged a total amount of nearly $2.25 million. Other early significant lead gifts have added an additional $700,000.
So, here is what remains, and I invite you to help support. We still need to raise $600,000 to build the Retreat Center cabin which will anchor the Village and fully furnish all the cabins in the Village. The Retreat Center will be named in memory of The Right Rev. William Sanders, whose early vision for the Grace Point property began many years ago. I, along with the Sanders family, will be asking you to give in thankfulness and gratitude that we are blessed to have such a place like Grace Point.
Honesty and humility and hopefulness need to be rooted in real physical places. Along with our Cathedral, our parish churches, and our campus ministries, Grace Point Camp and Retreat Center is a place that belongs to all of us and already has a history of welcoming people throughout our diocese and region. Thank you for joining in to complete a successful campaign to fund the Retreat Village project.
Let me also say a word about a new effort to expand our support of curacies in our diocese. For some time, our diocesan budget has contributed towards ½ of the total cost of a curate, or newly ordained clergy person, who has been raised up from a discernment process in our diocese. This sharing of funding a curacy goes for two years.
At present, we are seeing an increase in the number of our seminarians, who we hope we will be able to retain as curates in East Tennessee. With the good counsel of our Diocesan Finance Committee and the approval of Bishop & Council, we will be investing one million dollars from the Opportunity Fund to generate additional dollars which will go into a separate fund for curacies.
Along with curacies funded from our operating budget, we will be able to add additional curacies from funds generated by our investment from the Opportunity Fund. The million dollars in Opportunity Fund invested for curacies will still leave us adequate resources in the Opportunity Fund to respond to parish requests to borrow from the Fund.
This year we have also joined a new initiative to train Lay Preachers. Through a generous grant from Trinity Wall Street, the Episcopal Preaching Foundation is giving significant curriculum support to six dioceses across the Episcopal Church. We are one of those six dioceses.
Beverly Hurley Hill, who serves as Canon for Mission and Lay Ministry, is co-leading this project with The Rev. Amy Morehous, Rector of Resurrection, Loudon. This year, we have begun with six students, who will study together for two years. It is our plan to welcome a second class of lay preachers next year.
The preaching of the gospel is too important of a call to leave only to clergy. We believe lay people also can recognize spiritual gifts for preaching and that pulpits where multiple voices proclaim Good News make for a stronger and more robust communal witness. Lay preachers are not raised up simply to fill a gap. Lay preachers are raised up because God has called them, and we see fit to receive the blessings of their gifts.
I mentioned earlier that our theme, Help us be Honest, Humble, and Hopeful, speaks to this moment. With the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March 2020, many of us have had to ask others for help where in times past perhaps we thought ourselves self-reliant and self-sufficient.
Remember, however, that self-reliance and self-sufficiency are not New Testament values. Mutual interdependence and the need for all parts of the Body to function together have always been what we consider to be true marks of the Church.
During the time of COVID, parish clergy and lay leaders have asked for help from their parishes and have reported back that new ministries and gifts have been offered and received in this time. We did not have the luxury of not asking.
When we have asked for help, perhaps because these times have humbled us and made us honestly face our common need, our people have responded. Remember, people wanted to offer gifts to each other but did not know how to do so.
While it is my deepest prayer that COVID will not continue to disrupt daily life in the days ahead, I do hope we continue the spiritual practice of inviting all to share the gifts God has given them, both in our parish ministries and with neighborhood need.
Here is what I want to remind you as your bishop. The hope we have in the Risen Christ is to be good news for others. If we understand hope to be a kind of spiritual commodity limited to the East Tennessee Episcopalians we already know, then we end up trading hope for self-protection.
Hope, the hope given to us in the Risen Christ is for others. The vision I see possible for us is that we will be a blessing for others in East Tennessee, when the temptation present in too many local communities is to be only for my tribe and my people.
In closing, let me share a quotation from Evelyn Underhill, the British writer and mystic, who wrote in the first half of the 20th century. It is a passage of hers that I have returned to often these past several months. Her words about the future are rather modest, grounded in the present, offering a way forward from her time that speak to our time. These are her words, which I offer to you.
“What next? The answer simply is: Begin. Begin with yourself, and if possible don’t begin alone, join with somebody, find fellowship. Draw together for mutual support, and face the imperative of prayer and work, which we have seen to be the condition of the fullest living out of our existence.”
Amen.