The Bishop's 112th Convention Address
February 22, 2008

Being Pro-Human Being

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

            One of my heroes in Faith is a Baptist preacher named L. D. Johnson.  He was the chaplain where I went to college in South Carolina.  He is one of my heroes because he introduced me to the Bible as a book that could be read intelligently and thoughtfully and rationally, not as if it were dictated directly from the mouth of God to the pen of a scribe who made no errors in transcription, but as the work of divinely inspired men and women (mostly men) within the context of their historical communities recording their understanding of their experience of God.  L. D. Johnson introduced me to the Old Testament prophets, and it was from him that I caught the vision of Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).  And the vision of Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).  And of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2:4).  And of Jeremiah: “They …do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord” (Jer. 5:28-29).  And of Hosea:  “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6).

            L. D. Johnson also introduced me to a contemporary prophet, another Baptist preacher named Will Campbell.  Some of you may recognize the name Will Campbell as the biographer, strangely enough, of an Episcopal Bishop, Duncan Gray, Jr., in a book called And Also with You in which Campbell tells the story of Bishop Gray’s role in the civil rights movement and in particular in the violent atmosphere of the entry of James Meredith as the first African American student at the University of Mississippi.  Will Campbell has an impeccable civil rights record of his own.  Campbell was the only white minister present when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded.  Fifty years ago last September, Will Campbell was present to escort nine black students into Central High School in Little Rock.  He was a confidant of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was present at sit-ins, demonstrations, and protests against our culture’s proclivity to separate human beings, one from another, based on the color of their skin. 

            But there is more to Will Campbell than that.  Will Campbell also drinks whiskey with his friends in the Ku Klux Klan, including the Grand Dragon of North Carolina.  As an Episcopalian, the drinking whiskey part is not much of a problem for me.  The Ku Klux Klan part is a bit more troublesome.  How can that be?  What Will Campbell himself says is this:  I am “pro-Klan because I’m pro-human being.”  And, to tell you the truth, that goes beyond sounding like the voice of the prophets to me and begins to sound like the voice of Jesus. 

Being pro-human being, whatever the human being does or says or believes sounds a lot like Jesus to me.  It sounds a lot like Jesus to me to go to the home of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, no matter how disgruntled it made the people of Jericho.  I could well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-tax collector because he is pro-human being. 

It sounds a lot like Jesus to me to eat at the home of a Pharisee and allow a woman of the city to wash his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.  I can well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-women of the city because he is pro-human being. 

It sounds a lot like Jesus to me to associate with lepers.  I can well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-lepers because he is pro-human being. 

It sounds a lot like Jesus to ask a drink from a woman of Samaria who was drawing water from Jacob’s well.  I can well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-women of Samaria because he is pro-human being. 

It sounds a lot like Jesus to me to stop the stoning of a woman caught in adultery.  I can well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-adulteresses because he is pro-human being.

It sounds a lot like Jesus to me to allow a woman with a flow of blood to touch him.  I can well imagine Jesus saying that he is pro-unclean women because he is pro-human being.

            And I think all these things get at the very essence of what Jesus is about.  He said to Zacchaeus, after all, “I must stay at your house today.”  I must.  The only other thing I believe Jesus ever said he must do was go to Jerusalem to be rejected and killed and raised on the third day.  Could it be that things like setting one’s sight on Jerusalem and staying in the house of a tax collector have everything to do with each other?  Could it be that leading the civil rights movement and drinking whiskey with the Grand Dragon have everything to do with each other?  Could it be that the really radical thing about Jesus that got him killed was being pro-human being?  Could it be that the really radical thing is to see faith as more about relationship than theology?  Could it be that the really radical thing is to stop distinguishing people because of anything that is external, whether that is the color of their skin or a group to which they belong or their sexual orientation or whether they’re male or female or whether they’re Palestinian or Jewish or whether they’re Iraqi or American or whether they’re Mexican or Canadian or whether they’re legal or illegal and just see them as people?  Could it be that the really radical thing is to stop separating people based on anything whatsoever because judging what is in the heart is reserved to God alone?  Could it be that the radical task of following Jesus is to be pro-human being because human beings, all of them, all of us, stand equally in need of the grace of God.  All of us.  Equally. 

What Jesus did at every turn, it seems to me, is break down the barriers that divide people, whatever the barriers were, whether the barriers were rational or irrational, whether the barriers were righteous or unrighteous, whether the barriers were popular or unpopular, whether the barriers were moral or immoral.  He broke them down, just as he did with Zacchaeus and the woman of Samaria and the lepers because all of them—all of them—are of human origin and not of divine origin.  What is of divine origin is that people are intended for relationship with each other and with God.  What is of divine origin is that human beings are created to love each other as they love themselves. 

            Here, I think, is the Gospel.  God is pro-human being.  There is really not much more to it than that.  My vision of this Diocese is a Diocese that is pro-human being, period; pro-human being because God is pro-human being.  And there is no more eloquent and ferocious and definitive a statement of that reality than Christ crucified, crucified that all the world might be saved.  I see no exceptions mentioned, as hard as it is to accept.  All the world means, I think, all the world.  “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:22-25).

            We live in a time, not unlike many other times, when the forces of alienation, separation, and division are strong.  We need not look beyond our own Church to see that reality.  Every ten years the Archbishop of Canterbury invites all the Anglican Bishops of the world to gather for consultation in Canterbury at the Lambeth Conference.  Last week, the Primates of five Anglican Provinces, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda in Africa and the Southern Cone, which represents six countries in South America, announced that they will boycott the Lambeth Conference because they do not want to associate with the Bishops of The Episcopal Church.  I cannot do much about the forces of alienation beyond my control, but I can do something closer to home.  As you know, we have our own experience with Uganda and Rwanda in this Diocese.  The former has one parish in Versailles and one in Lexington; the latter, one in Lexington.  Perhaps there are others.  I confess to you that I have found this annoying, to say the least.  I repent of it.  From this moment forward, I am pro-Ugandan Anglicans because I am pro-human being.  I am pro-Rwandan Anglicans because I am pro-human being.  I refuse to let divisions and barriers that are created by men (and I use the gender-exclusive term intentionally) be instruments of separation.  From this point on, let it be known that The Episcopal Diocese of Lexington wishes our Ugandan brothers and sisters well and our Rwandan brothers and sisters well and their Bishops well and their Archbishops well, and that this Bishop would be happy to sit down and drink whiskey with them. (applause)   

            From this Convention forward, let there be no doubt that this Diocese is pro-youth because we are pro-human being.  That is reason enough.  For the first time in four years, we have been able to include a full-time position in our Mission and Ministry Budget for a youth missioner.  I use the term “missioner” rather than “minister” intentionally because “minister” has too often been understood as synonymous with “entertainer” in youth ministry circles.  What I am much more interested in doing is turning youth into Christians who are radically pro-human being, who refuse to be governed by the divisions and barriers we adults have created for them to live by, and who are commited to God‘s mission of bringing good news to the poor, the recovery of sight to the blind, release to captives and those who are oppressed, and the announcement of the acceptable year of the Lord. 

            I am pleased beyond words that we have gotten to a point where a full-time position to work with our young people is part of our budget because it represents an expansion of our work to do these very things.  Jesus said, “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Lk. 10:2).  The purpose of youth ministry is not to prop up the institution for another generation.  It is to produce laborers for the mission.  The purpose of youth missioners is to produce young missionaries.  It is, therefore, my intention that we use this opportunity for the breaking down of barriers and reaching out to young people to engage them in God’s mission to the world, and not only our own young people, but those who are not our own, because all are God’s own. 

            Perhaps our most important resource for this work is the Cathedral Domain.  It is important enough that we must face the reality that it is in danger, serious danger.  Over the last five years, it has cost $254,000 more to operate the Domain than we have been willing to pay for it, even after a subsidy of $248,000 from the Mission and Ministry Budget over the same period.  That deficit has been made up from unrestricted funds in the Domain’s endowment.  That means the Cathedral Domain’s endowment is $208,000 less, even after market gains, than it was five years ago.  We now have $427,000 in that endowment.  At the rate of the last five years, what that means is,  that unless we do something differently, in less than 10 years we will no longer be able to afford to keep the Cathedral Domain open—unless we do something differently.

            As promised at last year’s Convention, I formed a Task Force to consider the Cathedral Domain and its ministry and to make suggestions because, and I want to be absolutely clear about this, unless we do something differently, unless we think differently, we are going to lose something that is very important to us.  We cannot let this happen.  But we are going to have to change something to keep it from happening.  The question is:  Are we willing to do that?  Are we?

            There are two ways to do something differently.  One is to increase the subsidy to the Domain from the Mission and Ministry Budget which would necessarily be at the expense of something else, most likely one or more existing staff positions or the new youth missioner position, which I don’t think we want to do, or our obligations to the rest of God’s Church, which poses a moral issue much more important than the canonical issue it also raises, and which I also doubt we want to do.  The alternative is to increase the success of our fundraising and our revenues from use. 

The Task Force believes, as do the Budget Committee, the Executive Council, and I, that we can close the gap by fundraising and increasing usage.  A new environmental camp is planned for this summer.  Other ideas are being considered to increase usage, particularly in the summer.  I believe our new youth missioner will help increase usage, especially in the summer.  It is my request that our congregations give serious thought to using the Domain for congregational events, including especially vestry retreats and congregational retreats, to increase usage.  Might I suggest that using the less expensive venue of the Domain rather than some fancy hotel might even free up money to be used for God’s mission in the world, which might make some trade off in creature comforts palatable?  You might think of it as “roughing it for Jesus” (laughter) or for the youth of the Diocese of Lexington.

Fundraising also holds promise for us.  In 2007, the Domain had donations of $43,000, which included a rather hastily conducted direct mail campaign.  To make up the difference we need to raise $22,000 more than we did last year.  Here is the first one of those 22. [check presented]   It is given because Ginger and I believe in the Domain and in Andy and Cindy Sigmon.  I have no doubt that raising the money we need is possible.  It must begin with the Camps and Conferences Board, not all of whose members have always taken their responsibility seriously, sometimes not attending a single meeting after being elected, to say nothing of doing the actual work that needs to be done, and from there it must include all of us.  The only question is: Are we willing?  The effort is not something that can be done by me alone or by Andy Sigmon alone, who has done more alone than any of us can imagine.  The question is:  “Are we willing?”  Are we willing to use the Domain for our own church functions so that we can increase our own usage revenue rather that the revenue of more expensive commercial sites?  Are we willing to give our resources to sustain this important ministry?  We need to know. 

 [One] day Moses sat as judge for the people, while the people stood around him from morning until evening.  When Moses' father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, "What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, while all the people stand around you from morning until evening?"  Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me to inquire of God.  When they have a dispute, they come to me and I decide between one person and another, and I make known to them the statutes and instructions of God."  Moses' father-in-law said to him, "What you are doing is not good.  You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you.  For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone….  So Moses listened to his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. (Ex. 18:13-18, 24)

Moses had his father-in-law.  I have had the Special Commission, about which I informed you in last year’s convention address, and the Standing Committee.  I am grateful to both.  One of the most important things I have learned for my own ministry in the last year is the necessity to delegate more and to collaborate better. 

The Budget Committee has set the standard.  I, and all of us, owe them a great deal. (applause)   They have led the way to a better way of working together.  Perhaps the most significant thing about the budget that has been presented to you is not the budget itself but the process by which it was prepared.  The Budget Committee was chaired by Mary T. Yeiser (Emmanuel, Winchester) and included Steve Gabbard (St. Andrew’s, Ft. Thomas), and Dave Sevigny (St. Raphael’s, Lexington).  Molly Lovelock provided staff assistance and I served on the committee in an ex officio capacity.  I did not chair the committee.  I did not even attend all of its meetings.  The committee was always respectful of my schedule in planning its meetings and kept me fully informed of its work.  It solicited my input and my opinions and took those seriously, but it was not necessarily governed by them.  It made its own decisions. 

It conducted four hearings across the Diocese.  Approximately 100 people attended and 75 people identified with 19 congregations turned in written comments.  The Budget was constructed accordingly and presented to the Executive Council at its January meeting, as the process adopted by Executive Council called for. 

We can learn an immense amount from the Budget Committee.  One of the ways we can emulate the Budget Committee is the open and transparent way it went about its charge.  Our challenge is to duplicate its work and the example it has set for successfully assigning what is spiritual to the Bishop and what is the administration of material resources to others.  I am pledging myself as Bishop to this work, and I am asking you, the leaders of the Diocese, to do likewise.  The Executive Council has taken steps to institute certain reforms.  There will be no more secret meetings of the Finance Committee.  There will be no more attempts to manipulate the audit process to reverse the Executive Council’s chosen missional directions.  There will be no more undercutting of the properly authorized decisions of the leadership of this Diocese, whether Executive Council or Bishop, once those decisions have been made.   There will be no more secrets.  The reason is that those behaviors divide and alienate and separate, (applause) which means that they are not pro-human being.  The Diocese is going to be pro-transparency because transparency facilitates community and community is inherently pro-human being. (applause)

            In order to make good on our pledge, one of the most important tasks before us must be to develop and support new leadership, lay and ordained.  There are two things I want to mention in this regard.

One is a leadership initiative headed by Kay Collier McLaughlin.  Kay has assembled a lay leadership team that has already been very important in some congregations, sometimes regarding changes of clergy, sometimes regarding conflicted situations.  It has involved both lay and clergy volunteer leaders and it points us in an important direction for future work.  It is high on my priority list to encourage and support this on-going work.  The 2008 Budget does not make provision for this support, but we must not lose this initiative because of the promise it holds, and we must continue to look for other ways to support it. 

            The other area to be mentioned is the Commission on Ministry.  It is often forgotten that the Commission on Ministry’s job is developing lay leadership and not just clergy leadership.  In order to point us toward the future, both are going to have to be addressed in new ways.  For this reason, the Commission on Ministry has decided to put a temporary hold on the process of discerning vocations to ordained ministry.  Those who have already begun that process, considering either the priesthood or the diaconate, will continue under the existing process.  Those considering the episcopate will just have to be patient (laughter) as there is no present prospect of an opening.    

            Something I learned from this year’s budget hearings is the importance of communications to the people of this Diocese.  We already have what is, and is recognized as, one of the best diocesan newspapers in The Episcopal Church.  I hear repeatedly during visitations about how much it is appreciated, particularly in our smaller congregations and in our more isolated congregations and by our most isolated people, which makes it very pro-human being.  The Advocate will remain a very important piece in our communications strategy.  But what I am hearing from you, and learning, is that the Advocate is only one piece of what should be a broader strategy.  We must make more effective use of the internet to communicate with ourselves and the web to communicate with the world.  The more we communicate, the more artificial barriers we break down, and the more pro-human being we become. 

            The missional highlight in our life in the last year has been the Small Church Ministry Consortium. It is a very pro-human being initiative.  The hope of the Consortium is to provide a model that will provide stable, consistent leadership to our small churches in order to more fully engage them in mission.  We are starting to see some results.  I wish you could have all been present at the ordination of Janey Wilson to the priesthood at St. Mark’s on December 16.  The church was full beyond the capacity of its pews, and the people of the church had arranged to use the City Hall community room for a reception.  But the image that most strikes me is how proud the people of St. Mark’s were that they had painted the inside of the church.  And, indeed, the painting made a huge difference in making the worship space much, much brighter, much like the countenance of its congregation.  It was a sign of their hope, and it should be a sign of hope for all of us.

            The other three churches in the Consortium are doing similarly well.  St. James continues to do well.  St. Thomas in Beattyville is having record attendance.  Two representatives from St. Alban’s came to the budget hearing in Lexington and were telling me about their hopes to reach out to their community and were speculating about how they might need to expand their parish hall to do.  This is new and it is truly wonderful.  The challenge of the Consortium in the next year will be, now that survival is not a daily concern, to focus on the mission of serving the mountain communities of those four congregations. 

Reading Camp, of course, continues to be a major missional effort for us because breaking down the barriers of illiteracy is a very pro-human being thing to do.  Bungee Bynum is doing a wonderful job as the Director and is providing much needed leadership to this effort, which has been challenged in recent years because of how quickly it has grown.  Bungee has dealt with those challenges maturely and strongly. 

I would like to share two pieces of very good news about Reading Camp.  The first relates to our efforts to give this resource away in Africa.  We had four South African visitors last year who attended two of our camps, the day camp in Danville and the overnight camp at the Domain.  They went back to South Africa and organized their own steering committee and have been preparing for their first camp, which will take place the week of July 7 of this year.  We will send five volunteers, three youth counselors (talk about youth missioners!), one teacher, and one nurse.  I hope to attend as well.  The impact for the Gospel we are having through Reading Camp multiplies and multiplies.  In addition, I am very happy to report to you that Trinity Church—Wall Street has awarded a grant to fund the South African camp in full, for more than we actually asked for, because it saw hope for the Anglican Communion in the partnership of the African Diocese of Grahamstown and the American Diocese of Lexington, (applause) which although half way around the world from each other are alike in many ways and have something very precious to offer each other.   

Now I must say something difficult to you.  I am sorry to say that the South African Reading Camp has not been without controversy.  I address this issue with you because it is a spiritual concern and it raises the issue of what it means to be pro-human being.  For reasons that I do not understand, there have been some, including some who have given very generously of themselves to make Reading Camp the success it is and who I know are well-intended, who have not wanted to see this project happen.  It is difficult for me to see how one could be opposed to teaching children in Africa how to read any more than one could be opposed to teaching children in Appalachia how to read.  It is difficult for me to see how the opportunity to give of ourselves could be seen as anything other than a blessing offered by God.   It is difficult for me to see how one could be opposed to giving of our own resources to send gifts to others whose burdens we share in Christ and at the same time be willing to ask others to give of their resources to send gifts to us and share in our burdens here.  It is difficult for me to see unless one is seeing from the perspective of scarcity instead of the perspective of abundance or unless one is looking at some children as “ours” and some children as “theirs” rather than seeing all children as God’s.  As the spiritual leader of this Diocese, I cannot allow that sort of thinking to go unchallenged.  And I will not.  “Peter began to speak to them:  ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).  Peter spoke those words on the occasion of the granting of God’s grace to Cornelius, a Gentile, one who any good Jew of Peter’s day would have considered “them” and not “us.”  Peter took a pro-human being stand and as a result, a people outside the promises of God by race were included in the promises of God by grace.  We are that people, which puts us in a poor position to do anything other than show the same generosity to others that we ourselves have been shown.   

In that same spirit, I find myself reflecting a good deal these days on my ordination vows.  One of them, which has been planted on my heart from the very beginning, grows ever larger in its importance in my heart and soul.  It is my vow “for the sake of Christ Jesus” to be “merciful to all, show compassion to the poor and strangers, and defend those who have no helper.”  The Spanish-speaking people of central, northern, and eastern Kentucky “for the sake of Christ Jesus” deserve my attention as Bishop and our attention as the Church because it is the pro-human being thing to do.  It matters not, in the eyes of God, whether they are Episcopalians.  It matters not, in the eyes of God, whether they are Americans.  It matters not, in the eyes of God, whether they are here legally or illegally.  It does matter that they are children of God, human beings made in the image of God, the objects of God’s love expressed in the cross.  Hispanic ministry is an area we have not yet had success in.  We must.  I will not let us forget it.  I can accept that this is an area we have had to put aside while we turn attention to other priorities.  I cannot accept that it is an area we are going to ignore. 

Along those same lines, this year’s budget does not include the position of college missioner.  I view this as a deferral of work and not an abandonment of work.  I have a conversation coming up in April with Bishop Gulick of the Diocese of Kentucky and Bishop Stuck of the Lutheran Indiana-Kentucky Synod as to how we might cooperate in college work throughout Kentucky.  Later this year I will baptize a young woman from Eastern Kentucky who was introduced to The Episcopal Church through our college ministry at St. Alban’s in Morehead.  It challenges me and challenges all of us not to abandon young people at a moment of formative importance in faith, and indeed, what is quite often a moment of crisis in faith. 

At the diocesan level, I am happy to report that we are beginning to function better, I think, after an incredibly difficult year of a completely unworkable accounting arrangement.  There are still difficulties to be worked out and corrections to be made, but valiant efforts have been made to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date financial information available.  We are blessed to have Molly Lovelock working with our finances.  Bryant Kibler has taken over the administrative reins, which is proving to be another great help.  Johnnie Ross continues to be of immense help in dealing with situations of conflict and transition.  None of us could function without Ellen Darnall. Together, your diocesan staff are my most important collaborators in mission—and yours. (applause) 

            After seven and half years as your Bishop, I find myself in need of an opportunity to reflect.  I will take that opportunity later this year by completing the sabbatical that I have already begun.  You may remember that I began coursework toward a degree in canon law at Cardiff University in Wales in the fall of 2006.  I will complete the coursework in June and will then turn to writing my dissertation, tentatively on the subject, by the way, of the Benedictine Rule as a source of canon law in Anglicanism (I’d wait for the movie to come out, if I were you).  The course work, while wonderful, has been stressful because I have done it without taking a break from my ministry as your Bishop.  I intend to take that sabbatical break to write the dissertation this fall and to reflect, in the context of the Benedictine Rule, on my life as a Bishop, the community life that we share, and what it means at the deepest level, to be pro-human being.  I will attend the Lambeth Conference in July, be back here for August, and then take the rest of the year as sabbatical time and vacation. 

            And in the meantime, as I told you on the evening before I was consecrated to be your Bishop, my desire is that this episcopacy be characterized in two ways, that it be grounded in prayer, which is the original work of the apostles, and that it be apparent that your Bishop loves you, which, it seems to me, is the essence of what it is to serve the word of God, which is to be the primary occupation of a Bishop.  Love, after all, is the most pro-human being activity of all. 

            Thank you.

                                                            The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls

Bishop of Lexington