For a little longer...

Holy Cross address 2009


“Sing to the Lord a new song…” we said (sang) today.

I hope that today we will sing a new song. I don’t mean that we need to sing a song written last night, although I’d like to try that sometime. Old songs can become new songs. Old churches can become new churches.

Today’s feast shows us how. In the Holy Cross lessons and Collect we hear how God is among us and how we are empowered to live with each other. Humility is power. Service is authority. Be human if you would be divine. Follow in order to lead. What does that have to do with our life here at Saints Peter and Paul?

As the Psalm implies, we can choose to stick with old songs. We can lose hope or faith in our future or our capacity to show forth Christ to this new, post-modern age. We can stay small and hold on tight, worry and wait for “something to happen” or “somebody to do something.” But if we do that, we forget how God can renew and bring forth new life, and we forget our own history.

We are a charming aging Episcopal church first planted in Montavilla at the turn of the 20th century. We have changed, died and risen many times. Each time, people of faith and vision and courageous leadership has created new life to serve a changing world. I think the best era was the original founding of the old St. Peter’s. I am not sure how they worshipped, or dressed, what hymns they sung, or how their life looked. But I know that they planted a church at the inspiration of a priest who said, “Montavilla is a place which needs the church much.”

Montavilla still needs the church much. We are here for a reason. We are not just here for ourselves. We are here to serve. We are here to learn about the people who surround us. We are not here to ensure our own survival just as we are now. We are not here to make other people look like us and act like us. We are here to seek them, love them, invite them, and go together with them to a place that is new to both them and us. That is the Kingdom of God. That is the “new song.”

I stand before you with the authority of 14 years of service and of leadership as Rector. That has been a great privilege for which I give humble thanks. I believe that I am called to be here still. I also believe that I am called to exercise a special gift, which is to put into practice what I have learned about the church that God is everywhere calling into being. I spent six of my younger years as a Catholic missionary helping to bring forth new forms of church in the developing world. I believe I have come full circle. I do not believe that I am called to maintain business-as-usual at Saints Peter and Paul. I am of course called to love and to serve, and to uphold worship, teaching, and pastoral care of the sick and suffering. That does not change. But I believe we have a year of grace in front of us, what one leader called the “Episcopal moment”, and like all moments this one can come and then pass us by if we do not grasp it. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks urgently, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light…”

The urgency is made plain by our energy and finances.

I have felt an atmosphere of weariness in many aspects of our life. The former women’s group no longer functions, we have not been able to attract any volunteers to sustain classical Sunday morning church school, and we are not maintaining our outside grounds and physical appearance among many other former ministries. It just feels like there is no energy there.

The parish’s finances have been getting worse in the past several years. We have carried on even though we’re living beyond our means. This year our reserves were used up. And I sense that we are tired of the whole money question. We organized an ambitious fund-raiser at PGE Park and this ended by wearing out a very small group of hard-working people.

We received an estate this past year from a generous parishioner named Cynthia Brown. Cynthia had several concerns that she expressed with her bequest—she was concerned about the long-term viability of the parish, she was concerned that our deacon was receiving no compensation for her generous ministry, she was always concerned about our physical grounds, and she of course was a musician and lover of church music.

The estate totaled $209,000.00. We have already used $50,000.00 of this money to patch the big hole in our operating budget and to repay the capital funds account donated for long-term improvement. So we will have decisions to make about that money in this coming year.

As I see it, we can make a frugal decision, which is to bank the money long-term and reduce all expenses to within our means. This would probably mean dropping the rector’s compensation to less than full-time and making other staff cuts. This is the “turn out the lights and wait for something to happen” choice. In my view this violates the intention of the donor, because doing nothing new does not build a future. Mere survival is not a Gospel value, and churches either grow or slowly die. I was sponsored for ordination by a lovely old church that chose to slowly die. It died.

Or we can use up that money to patch our budget at present levels. That means we will be back having this same conversation in a year or two, with fewer choices available.

Or we can take this moment as God’s invitation and empowerment to grow. And growth does not mean to keep doing what we have been doing, only do it harder and expect different results. To grow means to welcome creativity and to try new things. To grow means to reach out beyond ourselves and to love and invite those who are really around us and among us.

The same speaker I have been quoting asked his gathering, “If you had a choice between staying the same size and getting more money, or growing so that your new size and your new identity put you in a different place, which would you choose?” He went on to say that if a church does not intend to grow, then every time it asks for money it is stealing.

I do not want to steal Cynthia’s money by using it and not intending to grow. As we begin the Fall canvass, I do not want us to steal each other’s money if we do not intend to grow.

So I choose to be a missionary again. I will be looking at my own gifts and talents in order to not just maintain our life, but to grow our life in Christ. Did you know that at present I am the priest in the Diocese that people come to talk to about new models of church and ministry? I intend to put this into practice right here. You can expect the same basic kindness and care and listening ear as before. But I think it’s time to re-start my ministry as Rector, and to be much more forthright about my own sense of vision and of mission.

We have so many advantages. We have a building and property free and clear, we have a rich inherited tradition of liturgy and sacrament. We have the Episcopal inheritance of the “middle way” avoiding the ideological pitfalls of liberal and conservative which suck up so much energy. We have a faithful continuing membership who have sustained our life with time, talent, and treasure, and I hope will continue to do so. Thank you all for making this moment possible.

And we have newer gifts. We have highly committed members among us who have been here five years or less, who have grown up in the emerging post-modern culture and know it well. Thank you for coming to make up a new church, thank you for exercising your gifts among us.

We have the richness of the Celtic vision, which I think we have barely begun to explore and which I will make more visible. I chose the re-imagined Celtic heritage not simply because it speaks to me but because the Celtic Christian vision has unique power to speak to post-modern people and experience.

And we have many new ideas and new ministries that have already begun.

Here is our new song. Here is how we would not steal Cynthia’s money or anyone else’s. It is time for an extreme makeover.

I want to seek a consultant, who will help me as rector and help us all in choosing new life.

We shall expand our Hispanic community and ministry. I am glad that we have invited and welcomed people who would never have come to or probably would not have been welcome here 50 years ago. It is a good start.

I believe we need a fourth service, not as a simple alternative for our present membership who might want their Sunday mornings to themselves, but as an active way to invite and make welcome people whom we will otherwise never see on Sunday morning. Our Sunday morning schedule alone does not speak to many of the de-churched and un-churched and alone will not grow us in the way that we need. A group of leaders here have already experimented with such a service. I think we need to back this with talent and energy and with any financing necessary for it to succeed.

We need to re-imagine and re-design our fellowship space so that it is welcoming and inviting and “safe” for non-members to come to. Did you know that lots of folks find churches scary? What would make our space as easy and inviting to come to as, say, the Bi-Partisan Café on Stark, or even the Lucky Lab Brewpub?

We need to love our grounds and exterior better, and if we are too few and too busy to do so ourselves than we should pay to have that done if only for awhile.

Another group of us met last week to start a financial self-sustaining project—brewing beer to support our ministries. It’s an ancient custom for monks and other religious communities to make beer, wine, and other such products for their own support, and today the best beer in the world is made by Belgian Trappist monks. I think we need to back this with whatever work, support, and financing is necessary to help it be a well-planned success.

I think we need to write a new letter of agreement with Deacon Tracy and honor Cynthia’s desire to better support Tracy in her ministry.

And as for me, in order to support my family my full-time compensation needs to be at least maintained. But I would be stealing that money if I were not working specifically for the growth of Saints Peter and Paul as I believe we need. So I wish to re-allocate my time and energy for growth and re-development. I will call on the office of the new bishop to help me do this. And I will rely upon the support of Fr. John Nesbitt and Fr. Phil to help me devote time and energy to growth. Fr. Lindsay has chosen to attend St. David’s for six months in order to support Mother Sara in her efforts to re-invent that congregation. Fr. Lindsay is a missionary soul.

We need to seek ways that work for us to better know one another and to form some authentic community among all our present membership. For that I welcome anyone’s ideas and energy. I’m not a very good social director.

I think a portion of the bequest should be put away in a long-term fund. But the majority should be invested in making a viable future. And I will ask the Vestry to choose to do so. All these choices will be put before the Vestry for their decision. Speak to any member of the Vestry with your thoughts.

We will lay our whole life before us for discernment, reflection, and choice. We will do so in a spirit of listening and of respect. We will hold periodic Town Hall meetings, the next one just next week, to help us do this. We wish to leave no one behind. But we wish to move forward. And we shall, with the Spirit’s help. That’s our new song.

We are not here primarily for ourselves. We are surrounded by beautiful gifted hurting people who may not be dying to be Episcopalian, may have no idea what the term “Anglo-Catholic” means and may never care, but who are longing for God and for healing and for community and for meaning. Can we help them find that? Do we still believe that of ourselves? As we become more fully that kind of community, we shall be richly fed as well. In a year’s time we may find that we still have hard choices to make. But at least we will have dreamed and lived and become more bonded to one another and to the One who came to serve. And we will have helped this community that we love so much live into a vibrant future, for people whom we do not yet know. But I hope we will get to know some of them very soon!