232nd Diocesan Convention - Bishop's Address

"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight….The wolf and the lamb will lie down together."

This text from the third section of the book of Isaiah that we heard on Sunday was written after the remnant population of Judah had been freed from decades of exile in Babylon. You know what people say—“it may be good for the wolf, but I’m not so sure about the lamb.”

I believe you can relate—you who have known schism, you who have been disenfranchised over our long history, you who have experienced being aliens in a strange land. You who for any reason have experienced the world as something other than the dream of God for us. This passage reflects a core truth of the Christian gospel: God is changing this world to make it as it was meant to be—a place where a wolf and a lamb can actually lie down together.

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Inaugural Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral, says this when reflecting on Dr. King’s understanding of a moral imagination rooted in today’s text from Isaiah: “A moral imagination is grounded in the absolute belief that the world can be better. A moral imagination envisions Isaiah’s “new heaven and new earth,” where the “wolf and the lamb shall feed together,” and trusts that it will be made real (Isaiah 65). What is certain, a moral imagination disrupts the notion that the world as it is reflects God’s intentions.”

As Christians, we live in-between the new heaven and the new earth Isaiah describes and the world as we know it now, too often marred by sin and pain. Our work, as people of faith, is recover a moral imagination about our world, so that we can build the world God dreams for us. To do this, we must learn to plant the dream in the center of our present reality.

National Geographic once carried a story that made quite an impression on me. The writer described the tradition of the Ama.  The Ama are women in Japan who carry on a time worn tradition of free diving for sea food and for pearls.  Diving into cold waters with limited sight of what lies beneath the surface, these women must be powerfully attuned to the ocean.

One of the most fascinating practices of the Ama was initiated by Kokichi Mikimoto, the founder of Mikimoto Pearls. He asked the women not only to search for pearls, but also to help plant the nucleus of a pearl in oysters then re-embed them in the ocean so he could cultivate pearls throughout the sea, even where there were none to be found. When the Ama resurface after replanting the oysters containing the nucleus of the pearl, they make a deep whistling sound called the Isobue.

Those who know the whistle say it is a painful sound to hear. It is a sound that reflects both the beauty and the pain of the sea. The vocation of the Ama is not so different from our own. Submerged in the waters of baptism, we are called to plant the pearl of great price, the hope of a new heaven and a new earth into the vast sea of challenge and pain in this world.

Our work this past year has included some planting of what we pray will be the nuclei of future pearls. I would like to highlight a few places where we have planted: 

• We have brought ten years of litigation necessitated by a schism we did not initiate to as much of a close as we can—excepting only those matters still in the courts. We are deeply indebted to our retired chancellor, Tom Tisdale and his legal team, for guiding this diocese through the past decade with clarity and courage. We were supported at every turn by the legal expertise of Mary Kostel, Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop and by two Presiding Bishops and their teams. 
• We are indebted to our current chancellor, Skip Utsey for his skill and wisdom in accomplishing the negotiations we have recently completed with the ACNA diocese. We are indebted to our Standing Committee, ably led by the Rev. Canon Rob Donahue, for providing wise counsel and making thoughtful, sometimes difficult decisions logging countless hours through the process. We are indebted to all of you who have so fearlessly kept the lights on and the gospel central regardless of how the schism was impacting you locally. 
• Our work in this transition was undergirded by the outstanding efforts of the Strategic Transition Team, chaired by The Rev. Denise Trogdon, Rector of All Saints Hilton Head; this team did analysis of key areas of focus providing us with invaluable data to equip us to make decisions. As we complete this transition, we are poised to follow Jesus with courage in a new season, wizened but not jaded by the struggles from which we emerge.
• We have begun a journey of reckoning with our history of racial injustice, a journey that will allow us to begin repairing the breach and building a future marked by justice and equitable access to the table for all. We are indebted to our Racial Justice and Reconciliation Commission, led by The Rev. Adam Shoemaker and Ms. Gail DeCosta for their hard work, to the leaders of our historically African American congregations, to our church-wide partners, and to our new Canon for Leadership Development for helping us in these efforts. Just last week, with the leadership of Canon Ramelle McCall, we were well represented by several of our historically black congregations at the Leadership Initiative for Black Congregations offered by the Office of Black Ministries of The Episcopal Church.
• With the able and tireless efforts of our Treasurer, Barry Ronan, our Trustees led by Bill Beak, our newly forming Investment Advisory Team led by Ron Radcliffe, our Finance Committee, our Diocesan Council and the work of Canon McKellar, we have begun the process of redeveloping the diocese—using our financial resources to support all our congregations and ministries while making catalytic investments in three priority areas over the next five years: our returning congregations, our locations where we are not re-opening historic churches but where we know we are called to have a presence and therefore need to plant something new, and our historically disenfranchised congregations—the historic African American churches of our diocese.
• We have welcomed home returning congregations and have reopened many of them with the adept, courageous, and sacrificial leadership of the clergy and lay leaders of these historic churches. We celebrated their return yesterday and will continue to support their vitally important work among us. Our Canon to the Ordinary, Canon Philip Linder has addressed the myriad of complex, detailed property issues necessary to the effective transfer of these historic properties back into our care competently and skillfully. Working closely with Chancellor Utsey, Canon Linder has deftly navigated the challenges of this transition.
• We have also begun conversations in regions of our diocese where we will plant new congregations and where we will support existing congregations to grow and explore new models of ministry to be Jesus’ presence in all the places where we are called to be. Churches like Messiah Myrtle Beach and The Episcopal Church on Edisto are forging new seasons that will involve exciting new church homes. And in our rural communities, churches like St. Augustine Wedgefield and Good Shepherd Sumter are exploring creative new models for doing ministry together while a number of our retired clergy, like Father Dan Clarke, faithfully bring word and sacrament to our strong rural churches.
• We have also have had difficult decisions to make as we have realized, in some cases, that we would be unlikely to be able to reopen churches returned to us. These decisions are cause for pain that reflects the deep love and lifeblood that many have poured into our historic, sacred churches. The loss of these churches as active, vibrant congregations is a grief that must be named and honored. It is also true that God can bring from our grief a new creation, as the prophet Isaiah describes. As has happened time and again in Christendom, we hold forth the hope that from the deep connections and spiritual mooring of former generations, new faith communities can be born. The strong leadership of clergy and lay leaders in these historic churches in previous seasons is the nucleus of the pearl we can now plant in new places. A few leaders deserve special mention here. The late Rev. Canon George Chassey, who served as Rector of Holy Trinity, Charleston, grew a vitally important ministry serving the people of Holy Trinity and building the congregation there, leading them to create a thriving church. Work we will do West of the Ashley to build our presence in a new season will bear the marks and benefits of Canon Chassey's generous and effective leadership there in an earlier era. And, at St. Matthew’s Fort Motte some thirty years ago, following in the footprints of The Rev. Thomas Tisdale in the mid 20th century, The Rev. Roy Hills built a vibrant congregation in a small community which is still remembered with love and appreciation today. People still talk about the leadership of these clergy there. As we look to plant a new congregation in that region of the diocese, we will be building on the foundation of the work Father Tisdale and Father Hills so faithfully did decades ago. And we will continue to draw upon Father Hills’ wisdom and knowledge of the region.
• We tried a new model of ministry in a successful partnership between St. Francis West Ashley and St. Mark’s Charleston in which members of St. Francis were invited to worship with the community of St. Mark’s over the past year—a partnership which strengthened everyone involved. We also celebrated St. Catherine’s Florence repurposing a place of business to become their new, beautiful church home and their call of The Rev. Eunice Dunlap as their priest. And we partnered with Good Shepherd Summerville to purchase property where they will build a new place of worship. We are grateful to The Rev. Bill Coyne for his work in training our lay leaders through his Vestry 101 Courses which were well attended to strongly positive reviews and to our Deans and Deaneries for organizing and hosting these gatherings which gave us a first taste of more formation opportunities ahead.
• Our strongest, most resourced churches continue to support the life of this diocese with generous gifts of time, talent and treasure—even loaning parishioners to help us restart returning congregations. We are particularly grateful to Dean Michael Wright and the Cathedral for their generous support of our diocese in this Convention and of our returning congregations in this season. The generosity of our resourced churches strengthens the whole body.
• With the focused work of Michael Jordan and Melinda Kelly chairing our Constitution and Canons committee, we have strengthened our leadership structures and processes, making constitutional and canonical revisions before you at this Convention and beginning to review other policies that govern our work. 
• With joy for the return of St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center to the diocese, we have begun the significant work of addressing needs on both the property and operations side of this critically important ministry of our diocese. We give thanks for the staff who have stayed with us for their strong dedication to the success of St. Christopher’s; their commitment to staying the course with grace and good will, even during trying and uncertain times for them, makes all the difference in our ability to take up our ministry there for a new season. We are indebted to The Rev. Laura Rezac for her deep investment of time and skill chairing the St. Christopher Transition Oversight Team and for The Rev. Jennie Olbrych and Mr. Brian Monroe for their service in this work. We are grateful for the leadership of our Interim Directors The Rev. Deacon Helen Hargreaves and Mr. Rick Hargreaves whose seasoned experience as camp directors has allowed us a smooth transition. We give thanks for our consultants from Episcopal Camp and Conference Center Ministries whose guidance is invaluable to us.
• We have begun to develop new models of ministry that support us best in a range of contexts—from remote, rural areas to college and university chaplaincies to new plants, returning congregations, and urban churches. We are grateful to The Rev. Courtney Davis-Shoemaker and our Commission on Ministry with Canon Ramelle McCall, for positioning our Commission to recruit and equip new leaders for a changing church. 
• We are thrilled that our Youth Commission under the leadership of Mr. George McDaniel and Mr. Nick Kohlman, now joined by Canon Ramelle McCall, are expanding the reach of youth ministry, building on traditional and proven ministries like Happening to include new areas of focus in racial justice and leadership development and in connection with the wider church. We welcome our youth pages at this Convention and thank you for your leadership. Please stand and be recognized. Let’s give them a hand!
• We were thrilled to celebrate the transition of Voorhees College to become Voorhees University, and we were honored to participate the Inauguration of Dr. Ronnie Hopkins as tenth President of Voorhees University. Working with President Hopkins and his Cabinet and with the HBCU Committee of The Episcopal Church, we were delighted to participate in the call of Dean Corey Smith as Dean of Religious Life and Chaplain for Voorhees as well as Vicar for St. Philip’s Church, Denmark, located on the campus of the University. It is our joy to hear once again the Voorhees University Choir, conducted by Mrs. Rachel Jones.
• We have called new leaders to work as part of our diocesan team. They join an existing staff who have expanded and shifted their areas of ministry to best utilize their strengths and serve the people of our diocese. Our diocesan staff has worked truly at a pace that is super human these past several months—taking on many direct service roles for our returning congregations in addition to their regular duties. Our Communications Director, Molly Hamilton has provided direct support to our returning congregations in preparing to re-open with energizing and focused communications while continuing to provide outstanding ongoing communications across our diocese. Our Executive Administrator, Cecilia Eaton has taken on key work in supporting staff at St. Christopher and across the Diocese in benefits on-boarding and has begun networking with parish administrators to provide support and connection while also completing the many duties related to supporting my ministry. And Canon McKellar has provided direct bookkeeping, finance, and administrative services to each returning parish.
• This work has taken much skill and many long hours—all of which the staff has given with the most amazing generosity of spirit. I am truly blessed by each and every member of our team.
• And finally, the work of Canon Ryan Currie to orchestrate and thoughtfully plan this Convention, with the help of our whole team and our fabulous volunteers from the West Charleston Dean and Deanery gives us a foretaste of the compelling work we can do together as The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.

These are just a few of the areas where we are planting what we hope will become pearls for the sake of the gospel.

You have come through seasons of challenge. I believe now, we have the opportunity to turn toward the future, building on the strong foundation of the past in this historic diocese. Like the Ama, we can dive deeper and plant new treasures amid the landscape of our history. Treasures our world desperately needs.

When a Japanese girl is born into households with Ama lineage, the family celebrates by cooking a vibrant red rice.  They know that the Ama will not die with their generation.  I love this image of cooking the red rice—a celebration of such a singular calling. A modern day Ama said in an interview, “This is work without a beginning or an end.  I wish to keep working for a long time.”

Likewise, this work of being Christians, being Church here and now is work without a beginning or an end. You and I step into the waters with all the ancestors to continue that which has no beginning, no ending. Ours is the privilege of continuing the journey. 

Like the Amas, we are called to dive, attuning our Spirits not to our own fleeting impulses and desires, but to the call of God through our baptism. Trusting God is doing a new thing. Trusting that God is redeeming this world, forgiving the sinners, repairing the breaches, healing the broken hearted, restoring his justice, renewing his creation, reclaiming the lost.  Trusting not in our own strength but in the goodness of our God. Trusting that the lamb and the wolf can actually both get a good night’s sleep, side by side. This is our sacred call. 

So, boil the water, prepare the red rice.  I want to keep working for a long time.  I want to be a sea whistler, to learn my own Isobue.  And judging by your presence for so many generations, around this holy table, in this beloved community, despite every challenge you have faced—schism, rejection, exclusion, neglect, disrespect,—judging by your faithful, strong, persistent presence here, I suspect you do, too.
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Now is the time for us to dive deep into our baptismal waters. For, we are singers of the Isobue; we are the planters of the moral imagination of our God.