The Right Rev. John L. Rabb
In Samuel Becket’s play, Waiting for Godot, Vladimir asks Ponzo, “Where are you going?” And he replies, “On.” So it is with us as the Diocese of Maryland, we are going ON. When Bob Ihloff announced his retirement he noted to me, “The last thing I want to have happen is for a diocesan convention to spend all its time looking back, they need to look forward.” I shared with Bob that the greatest gift he gave Maryland was a vision of mission. The greatest thank you we can give Bob and Nancy is to lovingly continue on with mission.
The Standing Committee, with the Search and Nominating Committee and the Transition Committee, is working on the necessary steps as we move towards an election and a consecration of a new diocesan bishop. And when that process is complete and we celebrate on June 28, 2008, I want a new colleague to find a diocese on the way, on the way in mission.
I have, for over twenty years, been challenged and inspired by the work in family systems by the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman. In his recently and posthumously published book, A Failure of Nerve, he challenges leadership and vision in many profound ways. One that is especially important to us in Maryland, in the Episcopal Church, and in the Anglican Communion, is to shift the paradigm from endlessly seeking answers to old questions to seeking to ask the right, and new, question. He notes “Seeking answers can be its own treadmill. Changing the question enables one to step off.” (A Failure of Nerve, 2007, p. 38) The present challenges and tensions can, if we faithfully move on, open the door to a deeper and more faithful discipleship. I believe the question before us as a diocese, a church, and a communion, is what does it mean to be the church? What does it mean that Christ has called, and the Holy Spirit has empowered, a body to be instruments of God’s salvation?
To work at this question will take prayer, patience, a greater dependence upon the grace of God and a willingness to go deeper in our relationships. My worry is that we will be too impatient, lack the will, and be too anxious and tragically lazy about our theology and the needed work, to answer the challenges. But as a person of faith, I am hopeful. I was recently asked at a vestry meeting during a visitation, “Bishop, are you optimistic that we can stay together as a church?” My reply then as now is this. Optimism is the easy and sentimental work of looking at things through rose colored glasses. As Christians, we must be a people of hope, because it is at the heart of who we are. Yes, I am hope filled because I do believe Christ Jesus is calling us to a newer and deeper identity as a church. I am hope filled because I see, in the midst of the conflicts, the disagreements, and the distrust, what has been the case through the ages, that the church is always on the way - on the way as God’s people, as Christ’s servant community and as a community inspired by the Holy Spirit. I am hopeful.
We embrace the Millennium Development Goals because we know these are consistent with the vision and dream of God, of bringing health, healing and the abundance of life to all of God’s people. We embrace the partnerships of a larger communion, because the vision of God is for us to work as one and not separately. The partnerships we have in the larger church, across the communion and with other churches and faiths are signs of the vision our Lord gives us in two places. In Matthew 25 he tells us that what we do to the least of our sisters and brothers we do for Him. In Matthew 28 he tells us that we are to go and preach the gospel to all nations. Too often we tragically put things as “either/or” instead of seeking the deeper truths. The gospel is not multiple choice. We are called to do both – servant hood and evangelizing.
There is with the gospel a scandalous particularity. At the same time we are focused on the larger life of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, God has specific work for us to do here in Maryland. Transition times can be times of anxiety. My first goal for this next year plus is for us not to be anxious, but to be about the good work of mission. One thing of which I will assure you is that we will not tread water and just wait! To do so would be to deny that we are, in fact, 45,000 plus Christian missioners with only about 240 or so ordained persons! Chronic anxiety is born of the uncertainty, the fear and the apprehension that so abounds in our culture. But we are Christians and we know what we are called to do and to be. We as Christians know it is God and not anxiety that reigns over us. I am committed to continually call us to the deeper mission we have as the church. We as Christians know it is God and not anxiety that reigns over us.
My second focus is on resources. We live in a diocese which has significant areas of need, urban, small town and rural. But, we also live in one of the most prosperous and growing parts of the United States. Our bimetropolitanism only increases the population and resource growth we are experiencing. (Do you like that word? I stayed up two nights just thinking of it!) The Baltimore and Washington areas are growing and are slated for even more growth; now areas once rural and small town are solidly suburban. This is much the case in the counties of Frederick, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Howard, Carroll, Harford Washington, and Baltimore. Yet our stewardship remains weak. I am concerned that we are not growing in resources. I want to see us move from a stance of scarcity to one of abundance. It is not about what we do not have! It is about what we have, and have in greater abundance. I challenge each congregation to seek to be more generous and to begin to work from abundance, not scarcity.
Resources also involve how we live in the larger community. Our hospitality and our evangelism cannot grow if we live as though we have too little. Then we simply tell the larger world, there is not much happening here! Good stewardship does beget good evangelism because it changes the focus from maintenance to mission, from inward looking to outward looking, from what we cannot do to what we can do and, finally, from worrying about ourselves to seeking new ways to serve Christ’s kingdom and people.
Third, I want to complete the first phase of the wonderful new facilities we have at the Bishop Claggett Center. The new facilities are magnificent! They give new life and meaning to our formation, to our mission, to serving all of God’s people and to our hospitality. With the good work of many of you, and in particular our Development Commission and development staff, we want to pay off the first phase and lay the ground work to the next phase, the adult lodge. We can do this! We have the resources, and out of our abundance, I am hopeful we will meet the challenge.
Fourth I want to see the Mutual Ministry Program in western Maryland reach the point where it is in full bloom. Under the clergy leadership of Richard Morley, Western Maryland missioner, Elizabeth Webster, assistant missioner and William “Chip” Lee, Garrett County missioner we now have four mutual ministry teams: St. James, Westernport, St. Peter’s, Lonaconing, St. John’s Frostburg and in Garrett County at St. Matthew’s, Oakland, St. John’s, Deer Park and Our Father’s House, Altamont. I look forward to ordaining and commissioning the first team at St. James. This new idea of a locally discerned, formed and functioning team has brought new life, energy and mission to these congregations. And, might I say they are growing! We participated in the Living Stones Coalition earlier this year. This is a coalition of American and Canadian dioceses doing mutual ministry. Throughout the Episcopal Church this new model is giving life and vitality to small churches. Remember that our Presiding Bishop not only was bishop of a mutual ministry diocese, but when elected in Nevada, was the coordinator of mutual ministry for the Diocese of Oregon.
One of the greatest challenges we face is in Baltimore city. So my fifth goal is to build on work already underway to strengthen our city congregations. While we have some large, resourceful and prosperous city churches, we have many with few resources. And yet these churches are so often doing incredible ministries, far beyond what they really have! Look at Guardian Angel in Remington, the Spirit of the Child at St. James in Irvington, Holy Nativity in Pimlico, St. Luke’s on Carey Street, and St. Andrew’s on Loch Raven, our most multi-cultural church. And there is much, much more that I could say and more churches I could name. I serve as President of Episcopal Urban Caucus. More and more I am convinced that our ability to bring the needed economic, educational, health care and safety reforms we need is directly related to having strong and vital communities of faith. It means being the church, being the church in the city! Many of these churches have great opportunities, but have costly facilities, people with few resources and more and more demands. We must direct both greater resources and greater mission to our urban churches.
The Mission Strategy Group, under the leadership of the Rev. Mark Stanley, chair, and the Rev. David Showers, chair of the urban task force, are beginning a process to work with the thirty-two churches in the city and in its closest suburbs to survey needs and opportunities. I am asking that we set up in January of 2008 a summit on the city. I do not want to presume the outcome of a resolution that will come later to this convention. But if it is passed then it will be coordinated with this event. We will have a full day with a speaker and workshops to energize and excite us about urban ministry.
So where are we going? We are going on. We are seeking in active mission to ask and seek what it is Christ is calling us to do and to be as the church. We do so as we work to serve God and God’s people as God’s church. Amen.