The Episcopal

Diocese of Lexington

The Focus is Mission

The Bishop’s Address to the 111^th Convention of the Diocese of Lexington

The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls

February 23, 2007

          Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was determined that for the first time in a long time this was to be a convention address that did not mention sex.  And then the Primates met last week in Tanzania, and as Primates do they seem to have spent most of that time talking about sex when it seems to me the world needed them to be talking about something else.  I do not plan for us to follow their example. I have read the communiqué from the Primates, but I cannot tell you that I have a clue as to what it means, or more importantly, what it is going to mean.  I met by conference call with the Property Task Force yesterday, and  I will be at meetings of the Executive Council and the House of Bishops next month.  I hope to have a better understanding then so I am going to defer addressing you on this subject for now.   What I can tell you with certainty at this point is this: (1) the sun will rise tomorrow (2) the sky is not falling, (3) even when everyone else in the world appears to be losing their heads, we are going to choose to keep ours, and (4) in the Diocese of Lexington the focus is mission, the focus is mission, the focus is mission.  And so, except for the story I am about to tell you, I do not expect to mention human sexuality again.

          A dear friend of mine, Gray Temple, was once asked to present a lecture on the subject of the Bible and homosexuality.  So Gray called a friend of his, Walter Bruggeman, a very well known Old Testament scholar, who teaches at a Presbyterian seminary, and asked Dr. Bruggeman if he would meet with him to talk about the Bible.  “Oh,” Bruggeman said, “you Episcopalians must be talking about sex again.” 

          “Yes, that’s right,” Temple responded.  “How did you know?” 

And then in words that were prophetic, Bruggeman said, “Because that is the only time you get interested in what the Bible says.  I wish you would want to know what it says when you talk about economics.”

          My friends, we have done gone from talking about sex to talking about economics.  There is good news and bad news in this reality.  The bad news is that economics and finances and money tend to breed fear, and fear is every bit as much distracting from the mission of the Gospel as is sex. 

          The good news is that economics has a lot more to do with mission than does sex.  Now we have gotten to a subject that Jesus actually cared enough about to speak extensively about it.  The good news is that in moving from somebody else’s sex life, which comfortably allows us to distract attention from our own indiscretions, to economics, we have gotten to a subject that is going to bear on our own salvation with an uncomfortable intensity.  Jesus never once talked about homosexuality, or if he did, no one bothered to write it down.  But he did talk about money a lot—an awful lot.

          One of those occasions when Jesus talked powerfully about money was in a parable that is told in the Gospel of Matthew.  It is the Parable of the Talents. 

For [the kingdom of heaven] is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.  Then he went away.  The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents.  In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.   But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.  After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them  Then the one who had received the five talents came forward bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.”  His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”  And the one with two talents also came forward, saying, “Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.”  His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”  Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.  Here you have what is yours.”  But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave!  You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?  Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.  So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.  For to all who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  (Mt. 25:14-30)

          The first thing to notice about money is that God’s understanding of trustworthy is the opposite of the world’s understanding of trustworthy.  God’s understanding of trustworthy is not the same as playing it safe.  Indeed, it is antithetical to that.

          And, if that weren’t troubling enough, there is another more troubling message in Jesus’ teaching about economics, finances, and trustworthiness.  It is the context in which he tells the Parable of the Talents.  It is not an accident, for Jesus did not do things by accident nor did Matthew record them by accident, that the very next parable Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  It is a parable very near and dear to me, perhaps the basis of all my theology, my understanding of God, and my feeble attempt to love God.  It is a parable very rarely repeated by biblical literalists, and strangely enough, at the very core to this biblical non-literalist.  And it ought to disturb us beyond words that Jesus tells this particular parable immediately after his teaching on what trustworthiness means.  And, because we Episcopalians ought to pay more attention to the Bible when we are talking about economics, I hope you will bear with me in also repeating it in full.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.  Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”  And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?”  Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.  (Mt. 25:31-46)

          There are at least three disturbing realties to note here.  The first is that the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats go together.  There is no separation—none—between them.  One ends and the other begins.  One is divided from the other by only the tiniest bit of white space, a verse number, and an indentation.  The message of one has something to do with the message of the other.

          The second is the reason why the righteous and the accursed are so surprised by the Son of Man’s judgment.  There is a subtle difference of language in how the righteous respond and how the accursed respond that is difficult to get in English but a little easier to pick up in Greek, and the meaning of the parable can be lost without it.  The righteous simply ask in surprise when it was that they did all these things, feed and clothe and visit. The accursed ask the same about their failure to do so, but they express their surprise in religious language.  They ask when did they see the king and not “care for him,” a Greek word that means to do their religious duty, in other words “minister to” someone in a religious sense.  The righteous ask a very earthy, nitty-gritty question—when did we do it?  The accursed dress up their question in religious language.  When did we not minister to you?  One surprise of the Parable of the Sheep and the goats is that the goats in the story are the religious people.

          And the final thing to note is how both parables end, on a similar note of condemnation.  Jesus intends us to note the parallel between those who are not trustworthy in the Gospel sense of being afraid to use the resources they have been given and those who failed to recognize Jesus in the person of the poor.  When you put the two parables together, the alarming warning is to those who fail to use their resources, no, not their resources—God’s resources, for the care of the poor, not because it is a religious duty to do so, but because that is where God is to be found.  The parable is not at all about our religious duty to do good deeds.  It is about our religious joy in meeting Jesus our Savior in the person of the poor.

The vision of fear is that strength is in accumulating financial resources.  The vision of fear is that our salvation is in guarding what we have.  The vision of fear is that the answer to our anxiety is in acquiring more.  The vision of fear is that safety is the highest standard of trust, but that is not the Gospel vision. 

The Gospel vision, like it or not, financially sound or not, good business or not, is that strength is in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9)  The Gospel vision is that our joy is in giving away what we have. (Acts 20:35)  The Gospel vision is that the only real answer to our anxiety is in the love of God. (Lk. 12:7)  The Gospel vision is that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.  For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” (Mt. 16:25-26) It is fear that tells us that the Gospel vision is not to be trust. 

What I think ought to be first on our minds is being a community of disciples.  And this is what Jesus told his disciples.  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mk. 8:34)  And what does that mean—to take up our cross and follow Jesus?  It does not mean to sacrifice ourselves, for Jesus has already done that for us.  It does not mean even to put ourselves out for someone else’s sake, for a lot of very confused thinking about discipleship as being nice comes out of that.  I do think it means this, to go so far as to identify with those who are the least, the most harshly judged, those who have nothing, those who are subject to the cross, the gallows, the chair, or the gurney; those who are crucified by poverty; those who suffer on the cross of hunger; those struggling to carry the cross of illiteracy and ignorance; those who are crushed under the weight of oppression and injustice.  Identifying with those people—just as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats said—is what Jesus meant.  And I am quite sure that whatever taking up our cross may mean, what it does not mean is shielding our resources from the very people God intended them to benefit—the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the judged, and the weak.  If taking up our cross means anything, it means using our resources to combat ungodly suffering, to defeat anything that stands in the way of the children of God receiving and reflecting even a little of the enormity of God’s love for them, to promote the coming of the reign of God. 

The year just ended is one in which we moved as a Diocese from being distracted from doing that by sex to being distracted from doing that by money.  The real issue, of course, is not about money.  It is about the soul.  The real issue is not financial at all.  It is spiritual.  The only real danger we face is fear, the fear that there will not be enough.  Our salvation is counter-intuitive.  It is not in keeping more of what we have.  It is in replacing caution with courage.  The danger we face is not that we will avoid the financial issues that confront us.  The danger is that we will use the financial issues that confront us to avoid the Gospel. 

          Now, let me be more specific.  Instead of advancing the mission priorities with which we left our convention last year with a great deal of excitement, the vast majority of my time—and energy—as Bishop, the Finance Committee’s time, the Standing Committee’s time, and the Executive Council’s time have been consumed with worrying about our financial condition, despite the fact that it turned out that the operating budget ended up the year with a significant surplus of around $100,000.  I suppose if the focus is financial, that would be good news.  But the focus is mission.  With a mission focus, that looks like work that should have been done but was not.  The distraction has been especially acute in the last six months after our auditors delivered a letter to us in which they made a number of recommendations—some of which were very helpful and some of which were distinctly less than helpful.    We have been blessed to have had a Treasurer, a Finance Committee, and an Executive Council who responded to the helpful suggestions by adopting policies that will strengthen our financial position in the long run, by which I mean ultimately making more resources available for mission, even if they might mean less money will be available in the short run.  They have also gone further in implementing strategies to make our diocesan finances as transparent as possible, which is reflected in the presentation of this year’s budget.  As Bishop, I have additionally have taken two other steps to make the most of the opportunities the auditors’ letter presents for improving our health as a community (both financial and otherwise).  First, I have formed a special commission to look into what led us to the point of getting the letter from our auditors.  Second, I have formed a committee of Executive Council to create bylaws and committee job descriptions so that we can respond effectively both to financial and mission challenges.

But the auditors’ letter also had some not-so-helpful aspects, and those must be looked at as well.  One was reporting that in 2005 “the Diocese spent over $497,000 more that it generated in revenue,” which is extremely misleading and manipulates the very sort of fear that is our real enemy.  Let me explain to you what spending $497,000 means.  Now to my non-accountant’s mind the word “spend” means spend, as in making a payment or charging a purchase, and to my non–accountant’s  mind, the auditors’ words  suggest an irresponsibly reckless pattern in which we paid out half a million dollars that we did not have.  Apparently, though, to accountants, “spend” means something other than spend.  I have learned that to an accountant, “spend” means the $123,294 by which the value of our endowment decreased in 2005 due to market conditions.  (The value of the endowment, by the way, has now recovered due to better market conditions.)  Also, the auditors’ decision to write off a $250,000 loan to St. James, Prestonsburg in 2005 as a bad debt counts as spending.  The auditors’ decision to do that, by the way, was made despite St. James renewed commitment to pay its debt and the Finance Committee’s decision not to write off that debt because of the pastoral importance to one of our small congregations of treating them respectfully as responsible equal peers and not as dependants. 

What my non-accountant’s mind thinks of as actual overspending is the amount by which expenses in the budget exceed income in the budget.  For 2005, that was about $11,000 which is considerably short of $495,000, and is attributable to the unplanned necessity of maintaining the 6.4 acres and 8 buildings formerly occupied by the Church of the Apostles. 

          I need to return to the subject of the St. James debt before I go on.  I am in conversation with St. James about that issue.  They have promised to respond to our request for a restructuring proposal that they would find manageable.  In addition, we are currently holding two assets—the former church building of St. David’s in Pikeville and $47,000 from the sale of the former vicarage of St. David’s.  The 2000 Executive Council designated those assets for mission in southeastern Kentucky at the discretion of the Bishop.  In accordance with that authority, I have directed that those proceeds be applied to reduce the principal of the St. James loan for these reasons.  First, St. James is our best outpost for mission in that part of the Diocese.  Second, St. James is not only a growing congregation, it is a recognized model for Appalachian ministry because it runs a food pantry serving 81,417 meals to 3,877 people last year and a daycare center serving 21 children, 13 of whom qualify for state-subsidized tuition, in the name of Christ and The Episcopal Church, and if that is not mission in southeastern Kentucky that needs and deserves to be supported by the rest of us and that perfectly fits the mission strategy we have been following for the mountains, I do not know what is.  Third, it is not in our interests to saddle an effective mission enterprise with excessive debt when we do not have to.  Fourth, the reduction in principal achieved in this way will allow St. James to structure a reasonable and achievable program to pay off the remainder of the debt.  That will be good for St. James on several levels and good for the other 38 congregations of the Diocese as well.  Fifth, replacing the assets of the loan fund in this way will allow the loan fund to meet other crucial needs in the other 38 congregations that make up the Diocese of Lexington. 

I should note here that St. James is not the only congregation of the Diocese of Lexington that the other congregations have come together to assist.  In fact, that is part of what the Diocese exists to do, to bring us together to support one another.  St. Michael’s and St. Raphael’s in Lexington have been assisted by reducing their obligations to the Diocesan Loan Fund by redirecting a portion of their assessments for that purpose.  I have already mentioned that St. Augustine’s has received a new boiler through the Loan Fund and Our Saviour has received property for its new church building, the completion of which was a major accomplishment of 2006.  That is a total of five congregations from different parts of the Diocese that we have supported together by creatively and generously using the resources committed to us.  There are two others, St. Martha’s in Lexington and St. Paul’s in Northern Kentucky that I will talk about more fully a little later. 

          What worries me is when we evaluate ministry decisions based on their financial effect on the Diocese instead of based of whether they result in growing ministry in the Diocese.         

That is why I was particularly disturbed by the auditors’ suggestion with respect to the St. James loan.  The auditors’ suggestion was that the congregation at St. James should be displaced from their building, the property of St. James mortgaged to repay the loan to the Diocesan Loan Fund, and the building rented to a third-party to generate income to pay off the mortgage.  We cannot allow failing to meet the needs of the people we are called to serve to be viewed as just one of the unfortunate costs of doing business. 

          Now the auditor cannot be faulted for not having a very good understanding of the business of the Church.  That, after all, is not the standard auditors are supposed to meet.  But it is the standard we are to meet, and the Parables of Matthew 25 remind us of that.  The business I believe we are called to is building up the Body of Christ and certainly not tearing it down.  The business I believe we are called to is proclaiming good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release of the oppressed, and the acceptable year of the Lord for all people, all people.  Granted, it is a business that is harder to measure than a profit and loss statement, but I know we do not advance our missionary business by closing successful churches that are answering the call of the Gospel.  Fortunately, the Finance Committee and the Executive Council agreed.

          They also agreed that the auditors’ suggestion that we sell Mission House was not a good idea.  For one thing, Mission House is actually a financially advantageous home for the Diocese because it costs us just a little more to have exceptional space with room to spare for mission in an underserved area of our see city that also says something symbolically important about who we are because it is located on the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard, as it would cost us to rent just enough of barely adequate space tucked away anonymously in an office park.   But in addition, Mission House, as the name implies, is the location of a great deal of outreach, including neighborhood events, meetings, the Church Under the Bridge for homeless persons on Sunday afternoons, All Saints mission on Saturday nights, English as a Second Language classes for Latino immigrants on two evenings each week, and of course, countless diocesan meetings that are now held in a place that is considered home by all of us.  To be sure, it has more potential to be put to use, but if we sold all the buildings in the Diocese with unused potential, I daresay we would have quite a few parish houses to say nothing of church buildings for sale in what used to be the Diocese of Lexington.    

          Finally, the auditor suggested selling the property I have already mentioned that formerly housed the Church of the Apostles because of its significant financial costs to the operating budget.  We had made an awfully good effort to put that property to use for mission, first by housing Katrina evacuees, who FEMA kept telling us were coming but who never materialized, much like portable housing in New Orleans, and then by housing our own poor.  None of those plans proved feasible.  We did, though, locate a new congregation at that property, St. Martha’s, but the truth is we could not afford to keep the property were not St. Martha’s itself so successful.  St. Martha’s has applied to this convention to be admitted as a parish and as such they have taken over the full expenses of this piece of property, thereby relieving the diocesan operating budget of this burden.  For that reason, and for several others, I have made the decision which the canons allocate to me as the Bishop to make, that this property will not be sold so long as St. Martha’s is covering its expenses.  The need to do so has simply ceased and the idea of displacing another successful congregation doing ministry in an underserved neighborhood flies in the face of what we are supposed to be about.    

          The truth is that we are a Diocese with few financial resources.  The truth is we have always been a Diocese with few financial resources.  The truth is also that we are becoming a Diocese of enormous heart and faith and courage for mission.  It is in this light that we must consider the two ways in which our financial situation has charged significantly over the last seven or eight years. 

          The first involves using resources in our care for the purpose they were given to accomplish, in the amount of three-quarters of a million dollars, to expand congregational ministry.   Of that amount, $535,000 in restricted funds from the Second Century Fund were used to do what those assets were restricted to do, which is to develop a new congregation in Fayette County.  They could not have been used for anything else but that.  That was at first intended to be the Church of the Apostles.  It turned out in the end to be St. Martha’s.  We have also used or are using $238,000 in unrestricted assets to redevelop St. Paul’s in Newport, which was once the largest congregation in the Diocese and because of development in Northern Kentucky holds tremendous potential and may one day be our largest congregation again.  In both cases we have appropriately used resources to expand ministry in this Diocese and in accordance with the intention of the faithful Episcopalians who gave the money in the first place. 

          Along the same lines, I should also mention that we currently have approximately $300,000 in the Second Century Fund restricted for use in starting a new congregation in Northern Kentucky.  That resource has sat unused for far too long, while costs of land have done nothing but continue to rise.  It is fully my intention to put these to use as well, doing what they were intended to do rather than to have them sit in the bank.  To that end I have formed an exploratory committee with the help of the Northern Kentucky clergy and vestries, and at the right time, I will ask Executive Council to also authorize using that money for its intended purpose. 

          The second way in which our financial resources have changed significantly, though, is one that causes me a great deal of concern as a matter of ministry.  It holds the potential of diminishing our mission rather than expanding it unless we do something about it in the very near future.  If we do not, we are in danger of losing one of our most important ministries, which is the Cathedral Domain.  Every year that I have been here, Andy Sigmon has done everything he can to keep our costs as low as possible and to budget as tightly as possible.  If anything, Andy cuts the Domain budget in an unrealistic way trying to reduce the burden of the Domain on the diocesan operating budget because he is the epitome of someone who understands that the ministry of the Domain is not separate from the Diocese but an integral part of the Diocese.

In 1999, the operating budget’s subsidy of the Domain was $92,000.  In 2000, the year without a Bishop, it was cut to $60,000, Since then it has risen to a net of a little over $100,000 in this year’s proposed budget, a 66% increase in six years but barely back to the 1999 level.  And still maintenance is being deferred and available cash assets are having to be used to keep things going.  The available assets will not last forever.  If we do not find a solution to this problem, the Domain is going to run out of these assets in 10 years or less. We must find a solution to this problem now because the Domain is far too important an asset to ministry in the Diocese of Lexington to lose.  But if we don’t do something differently, we are going to lose it by default.  And so I will convene a Task Force next month consisting of Andy Sigmon, the Domain’s Treasurer, Gerry Yeiser, the chair of the Camp and Conference Board, Michael Ralph, and others to begin working on this problem in order to preserve these assets for the mission focus of the Diocese of Lexington.  Because it is of the very highest priority, I will chair the Task Force myself, as I will a second Task Force I will be mentioning a little later. 

          At the same time, what we cannot do is start running the Domain or for that matter any other aspect of the life of this Diocese as if it were just a business like any other business.  If the Diocese was a business, I can tell you quite unequivocally that the smart thing would be to close it.  It needs to be run soundly.  It needs to be run accountably.  But it is not a business.  It is a ministry. 

          We are not a business.  We are a community of the disciples of Jesus.    A business has a CEO, and I can tell you I am not the least bit interested in being a CEO.  I am interested in being your Bishop and chief pastor.  I am not interested in the least in being your employee.  I am very interested in being your partner in servanthood.  I am not, I confess, very interested in accounting, which means someone else will have to do that for us under the oversight of the Finance Committee, but I do find myself being extremely interested in the Gospel of Christ.  I am not much interested now or ever in asking what makes business sense.  I am, though, extremely interested in asking what makes ministry sense. 

The congregations of our Diocese are not business issues.  They are ministry issues.  The young people of our Diocese are not business issues.  They are ministry issues.  Poor people are not business issues.  Hispanic people are not business issues.  People, any people, are not business issues.  We cannot allow issues of money to overwhelm issues of ministry.  We must look at money through the lens of ministry and not the other way around.  The focus is not money.  The focus is mission. 

          What we are called to do now is to get back on track with the Gospel.  The problem we face is not financial.  It is spiritual.  The only antidote is to keep turning ourselves outward.  The more we focus on ourselves, the more we will focus on ourselves.  It is a vicious cycle.  We must turn outward instead. 

And with that in mind, I want to remind you how Reading Camp came to be.  Reading Camp has become one of our most successful mission endeavors.  It would be hard to have any experience of Reading Camp and not sense the presence of God at work.  It is important, especially now, to remember its origins. 

          Reading Camp began by asking ourselves how we might go about giving ourselves away.  We looked at the greatest gifts we had been given, and we asked ourselves how we might give them away to others.  Reading Camp, you will remember, in its origin was a way of sharing one of our greatest gifts, which in the Cathedral Domain, to share that gift with others who would not otherwise have been able to go there.  Reading Camp, even before it was ever concerned with changing the life of a single child, was intended to change our lives by directing ourselves outward, by giving us the opportunity to give to others, by sharing what God had so richly shared with us.  Reading Camp was, in truth, only a means to do that.  It all began with giving.

          And giving is the only antidote I know to the danger we face of obsessively focusing on how much money we have.  In the economy of the Gospel, the only antidote to our fear of not having enough is the Reading Camp answer.  It is to take what we do have and find a way to give it away.  Our spiritual well-being, now as much as ever, maybe now more than ever, depends on giving ourselves away.  And so I propose to do that in the coming year, if you will endorse it, by focusing on the following three goals:  (1) instituting a bold experiment in ministry with small congregations called the Small Church Ministry Consortium, (2) expanding our outreach beyond this Diocese in Haiti and South Africa, and (3) seeking a new vision for ministry with young people.    

The Small Church Ministry Consortium

          One of the constant challenges for The Episcopal Church in general and for the Diocese of Lexington in particular has been sustaining ministry in smaller congregations.  I am concerned that this challenge is only going to get greater in the years to come for two reasons.  One is that the resources necessary for full-time clergy are going to become increasingly stretched in the years ahead.  The other is that The Episcopal Church at the national level seems to be turning its attention to a growth strategy that is focused on making big churches bigger.  There is no question that the national strategy is more efficient and makes better business sense, but I do have some questions about whether it makes very good ministry sense.

          The national strategy is seriously misguided in its underestimation of the importance of our small congregations in the lives of their communities.  Our congregations in the more isolated parts of our Diocese are the only alternative religious voice in contexts where creationism is seen as both acceptable theology and a legitimate science curriculum and where Harry Potter is considered too dangerous for school libraries while the Confederate flag is a rallying cry for school spirit and where not all believers are welcome in all churches.   We are the best hope, if not the only hope, for that voice in many small communities in central, northern, and eastern Kentucky.  I think of the divorced couple I met at St. Peter’s in Paris who had been excommunicated from another denomination and the gay parents I met at St. John’s Church in Corbin who were not welcome in other churches and the developmentally challenged adults and the nursing home patients who attend St. Joseph’s, Lawrenceburg and the children who come to day camps at St. Timothy’s, Barnes Mountain.  If we were not there, where would these persons go to find a welcome in the name of Christ?

          The ministry of small churches, at least in our context, is absolutely critical to caring for the people we exist to serve.  But providing ministry in small churches has been and continues to be a considerable challenge.  As some of our priests retire in the next few years, unless we do some creative thinking now, we will not be able to provide the sustaining leadership of clergy in our smaller churches.

          What I propose is to create a consortium of independent congregations who will maintain their separate identity in all respects and be served by a team of priests, stipendiary, non-stipendiary, and diocesan staff.  The intention is that our small churches can be assured of sacramental ministry on Sunday and also receive leadership for pastoral care, lay ministry training, Christian formation, and evangelism during the week.  Canon Ross, Archdeacon Kibler, and I have already done a good deal of preliminary research, planning, and modeling.  Next week, I will issue an invitation to the leadership of several congregations who might benefit from such a consortium to join the three of us for further consultation.  My hope is that concrete steps will be taken to put the consortium in place to have it functioning by later this year.

Haiti and South Africa

          We must turn our attention to the needs of our brothers and sisters outside our geographical boundaries beyond the state lines of Kentucky because the state lines of Kentucky cannot be the boundaries for our concern for our brothers and sisters as Christ. (1 Cor. 16:1-4)  This is the only real answer to the constant temptation to divide us and them.  Our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are sacramental reminders to us that there is in truth no such thing as “them.”  There is only us.  We already have a companion diocese relationship with Haiti.  I hope that this relationship will continue to deepen and that travel to Haiti will again be possible within the next year.  But we are also undertaking work outside ourselves in South Africa.

          As I mentioned in last year’s convention address, I hope that we will soon be able to give the Diocese of Grahamstown, South Africa the gift of Reading Camp, surely one of our greatest gifts.  Bungee Bynum, Ginger, and I, in fact, were in South Africa last week meeting with their steering committee of 20 educators and community leaders as well as clergy, the members of the Order of the Holy Cross, and the local bishop.  They have tentatively scheduled their first camp for July, 2008 and are taking more steps based on our discussions to make this happen.  We will provide logistical help, assistance with fundraising, consultation, and I hope a few volunteers.  Four members of the South African committee will visit us in June to observe our Reading Camps in operation.

          While I was in South Africa, I also met with the Bishop of Table Bay, two short-term missionaries working the Masiphmilele Township, and a priest who operates a ministry serving AIDS orphans in Khayelitsha Township.  Once again, Reading Camp caught people’s imaginations.  I have great hope that our Grahamstown project might prove to be a prototype for a blossoming Reading Camp program in Africa, the little Diocese of Lexington, a diocese without vast financial resources, making a big difference by giving away the gifts it does have because of its enormous heart and its commitment to focus on mission. 

          What is important about this is that by turning our attention outward, we will be encouraged to care for our own more and more.  Our global engagement is by no means a substitute for our local engagement.  In truth, though, one is only antithetical to the other from the perspective of limitation, scarcity, and fear.  It is true as well that turning our attention to both at the same time is the only cure to those very spiritual maladies.  Eliminating the Millennium Development Goals from our proposed 2007 budget which could have been the seed money for this project, is for this reason a significant disappointment.  The mission of God begins with the giving of ourselves, and the focus must always be the mission of God.    

A New Vision for Ministry with Young People

          We cannot only be concerned with being missionaries.  We must be concerned with making missionaries, and more specifically, making missionaries of our young people.  It is for this reason that another great disappointment in the 2007 budget proposal is the failure to include funding for a youth minister.  I do not think this means, however, that we are unable to make any advances in this extremely important area of ministry.  It is an area of ministry that is of the very highest priority to me personally.   

          So funding a youth minister will be my highest priority as next year’s budget is constructed.  Youth ministry, I can already tell you, will be the focus and theme of next year’s convention.  In the meantime, I have begun forming a Task Force for the Expansion of Youth Ministry to compliment the work if the Diocesan Youth Commission.  This is of the highest importance, and like the Domain Task Force, I will consequently chair this Task Force myself.  The Task Force will consider among other things the report of consultants who have studied our youth ministry and camping program over the last year, the first part of which has just been received.  These reports will be the subject of priority attention of the Task Force and of the Executive Council in the coming year.   

          Finally, I cannot end this address to you without mentioning something very personal.  At the close of last year’s convention address, I mentioned to you that I had been asked and was considering allowing my name to be considered as a candidate for Presiding Bishop. As you know, I eventually did so.  The Holy Spirit moved otherwise, though, which has the wonderful result for me of allowing me to continue my ministry with you.  It is also what allows me to say with some relief that whatever did happen in Tanzania last week is Katherine’s problem. 

In a wonderful demonstration of affection and generosity, and to my utter surprise, you chose to celebrate our continuing ministry with a wonderful gift to Ginger and me of eight houses (now 10) in Haiti.   It was a wonderful way to celebrate our connections—after a year in which I was regrettably but unavoidably distracted from you.  I know only one way I can even remotely begin to express my appreciation.  It is this.  Now there are 11 houses in Haiti from the Diocese of Lexington.  This one, the 11th, is given by Ginger and me in honor of and in thanksgiving for you—with all our love and with deep appreciation for our journey together.  May there be many more houses and much more focus on mission to come.

          Thank you for our continuing partnership in ministry. 

The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls

Bishop of Lexington