November 11, 2021 – Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong Center, Savannah
Important context for this address is the talk the Rev. Canon Loren Lasch gave to open the convention: Reality
Beloved in Christ,
This is my third Convention Address as your bishop. A Bishop’s Address, by the canons of our church, is to share the work undertaken since our last convention, give the state of the diocese, and name plans for the coming year. While this year was quite unusual with Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion gatherings, a familiar pattern to my work is in place here at home.
Victoria and I have found a rhythm to our lives with each week focused around a journey. This past Saturday, we traveled the 229 miles to Good Shepherd in Thomasville. The drive is a favorite, hitting Georgia 122 just west of Waycross with two-lane blacktop cutting through a beautiful section of south Georgia all the way into Thomasville. I met with the vestry for a conversation about their future and then we celebrated the Holy Eucharist together in that beautiful church and enjoyed hanging out with folks at the reception. On Sunday morning, Victoria and I were at St. Margaret of Scotland in Moultrie for the Holy Eucharist and a fun time of fellowship over food.
Since we last met in convention, I have made visitations to 52 congregations and also made my visitation to Episcopal Day School for a total of 53 of the 71 visitations that make up a full cycle of visits for the Diocese of Georgia. In order to minimize multiple visits to a church over the course of one year, we have been counting celebrations of new ministry and ordinations as a visit. In this way, I am currently getting everywhere at least once every 18 months. I often hear that congregations would like to see me and Victoria more often, and we share that desire. Victoria and I love worshiping with you and spending time together. We are open to more non-Sunday visits if congregations would like to find a way to see us a bit sooner, but we are grateful that our current pattern allowed us to get to 53 visits in a year when the General Convention and the Lambeth Conference had us outside of the Diocese more than usual.
Canon Loren Lasch already told the stark reality of the drop in attendance and the shortage of priests in the Episcopal Church. Canon Katie Easterlin and our Treasurer Beth Robinson will offer more of the current financial picture of the diocese. In this address, I want to turn to the plans for the coming year, because a reasonable question after the reality check in the opening presentation is to look at me and ask, “Well bishop, what are we going to do about this?”
I will lay out some steps we are taking, but to understand why these steps now, I have to look backward. Canon Lasch rightly directed us to the present in her opening presentation. We also know that we need to learn lessons from the past. In this year as we lead up to the Bicentennial of the founding of the Diocese of Georgia, we are sharing stories from our history in From the Field. In our past we see mirrored some common struggles which remain today, as we seek to let the light of Christ shine through us.
In 1892, Bishop Cleland Nelson, elected well into a long economic depression, charted a bold course saying, “The proper attitude of the Church in Georgia is best described by the word aggressive.” He named areas which needed “to be attacked.” From 1893–1906, the diocese, which then encompassed the entire state of Georgia, funded missionaries as we expanded from 88 missions to 108 in 13 years, going from 6,292 communicants to 9,229 and building sixty-two new church buildings.
In 1920, as we were still reeling from the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Reese, was pushing forward mission work within the Diocese saying, “Brethren, we have pulled up a peg or two; we have got a new conception of our duty and our ability, we have made a good start. Let us not drop back, go to sleep again or stop to congratulate ourselves. There is much to do yet. It would be fatal to feel that we had completed the job. Everybody’s mind must be set with a forward look. We cannot afford to grow weary and rest.”
I could share other times with different struggles met by new strategies. However, we are not serving in the same context as our predecessors. In addition to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which comes on the heels of more than a decade of churchwide decline, we face the increasing secularization and polarization endemic in our world today.
In our Diocese, we have cities that have more Episcopal Churches than they can seem to support alongside county seat towns that are doing well to continue their witness to the Gospel in the midst of a dwindling population. This is why it is helpful to see how each generation has responded to the challenges of their times, letting their light shine in their communities.
Throughout our history, we find evidence of the Diocese of Georgia having creativity and resourcefulness deep in its DNA. More importantly when I study writings from my predecessors, I see how our primary response has been to be prayerful as we seek to remain faithful to where God is leading us. This is still our call.
Moving forward in the present reality there will be new ways of being church and connecting with our communities that will be fruitful, and there are certainly some old ways we would benefit from turning back toward. While there is no silver bullet, one-size fits all way to be the church waiting to be discovered, we can respond to challenges knowing that whatever we face, we do so guided by the Holy Spirit. Rather than being led by the latest business practice the church wants to baptize, we can see the benefit of energy and leadership coming from the ground up to support creative endeavors that are life giving to each unique community.
The Rev. Melanie Lemburg recommended a book that has been helpful to me, How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going. The challenge for me is that the author, Susan Beaumont, convinced me of what I already suspected: as bishop, I have a different role in faithful experiments. As much as I love being creative, I am not the Chief Entrepreneurial Officer for the Diocese or any other kind of CEO. I am the Chief Pastor. My day-to-day life and ministry are diocesan, which is often a helpful perspective. Yet, removed from serving a particular parish in a certain city, I don’t need to be the one making every local decision. We all know that what is perfect for Augusta, may not be right for Albany, and is less likely to be what is needed in Cochran, and what is faithful for a congregation with 200 people attending each Sunday is not possible for most of our congregations. Beyond this, if the bishop initiates an idea, that is different in kind in an Episcopal Church as it could be seen as holding more weight than I intend.
I am working to further foster our existing diocesan culture of sharing ideas among congregations. The lay leaders and clergy can decide what is right for their congregation to consider. One important means of learning from others in this Diocese is Leading with Grace. This is the retooled version of Bishop Scott Benhase’s signature program, the Church Development Institute. This training has not been simply renamed but reconfigured based on the experiences of leaders and past participants. Our Director of Leadership Ministries, Carey Wooten, will share more about this later today.
Canon Joshua Varner will talk tomorrow about the lay ministers’ conference, which is another way we have been sharing best practices we are discovering. We brought this conference back this fall after not holding one for 12 years and plan for it to be held annually.
In meeting with our peers, Canon Lasch and I were drawn to two new initiatives paid for largely by grants from Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street. They have focused their funding with grants targeted at congregations with 70 or fewer people in worship on Sunday.
The first, LeadersCARE, is a program that has us learning alongside the Dioceses of Atlanta, West Tennessee, and East Tennessee. This is a training for lay people in just the sort of faithful experimentation I am pointing toward, as it offers not a single solution, but a prayerful approach to discern what might be right for your congregation. Canon Lasch, Carey Wooten, and Shayna Cranford, a postulant for the priesthood from Trinity, Cochran, joined leaders from the three other dioceses for a multi-day meeting in Atlanta recently. Based on what they learned, the three began working on a new vestry retreat for this February. Vestries of congregations not regularly served by a priest will be invited to take part in this retreat, shaped by the principles of LeadersCARE. No vestry has to take part, of course, but this will offer a time to be at Honey Creek to worship together, to learn alongside other vestries, and to have time for each vestry to work on its own, in planning the coming year and beyond. We are also working on a way to share what we’ve learned from LeadersCARE with the wider Diocese during Lent even as we plan to bring the formation opportunity to a larger group at Honey Creek later next year so more lay leaders can get training first hand.
We are also working with our friends in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Southeastern Synod on a ten-month long expert-led, peer-enhanced learning cohort called the Strategic Imagination Sandbox. This will have a group of our priests learning alongside peers who are Lutheran pastors. The details of this have just been solidified. Canon Lasch and I will be contacting priests for the pilot cohort in the coming weeks.
And yes, I get it. Saying there is no one-size-fits-all solution and then talking about LeadersCARE and a Strategic Imagination Sandbox sounds exactly like chasing the shiny new thing. The goal of this approach is to benefit from learning alongside other Episcopal dioceses and our Lutherans colleagues. These are gifted leaders who are working in very similar circumstances. A process for learning together is much more adaptable than any plan created for another congregation in a different setting. We selected these initiatives precisely because of this: they do not offer a set plan, but a process of discovery that will lead to varied faithful responses in differing contexts. This path is about opening ourselves up to where the Holy Spirit is leading us.
Beyond these initiatives, we are testing new ways of forming licensed lay leaders. We currently have two people in the lay preacher training offered online by Bexley-Seabury Seminary. At the same time, we are keeping in touch with the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast as they work with the Episcopal Preaching Foundation on another way of forming lay preachers. We will see if that experience could bear fruit in our diocese as well, while they learn from what we are trying out here. We will similarly test ways to form licensed lay worship leaders, building up the capacity of those who lead Morning Prayer when a priest is not available on a Sunday.
I am also working with bishops from other dioceses around the country and the world on sharing what we are trying as we learn together, rather than going it alone. The relationships I continue to form among colleagues in the House of Bishops and others that began at the Lambeth Conference are also bearing fruit in our corner of the vineyard.
In a very different way, I see how the work of RacialJusticeGA is also part of our faithful response to our times. After lunch, we will hear how their interracial fellowship pilot program is already having an impact on those who have taken part. In addition to this, the pilgrimage they have put together for the weekend of the Feast Day of Saint Anna Alexander has been successfully tested for two years. They will open the pilgrimage up to others next fall. I have added this important new event to my calendar to take part as a pilgrim. There is much in their work that offers us critical ways we need to learn and grow.
Tomorrow, I will share ideas and resources from around the Diocese of Georgia as I see this season as one of possibility, rather than decline. I will say more about this then, but know that the answer is not simply to work harder and do more. Looking at new possibilities will also mean discerning what we need to stop doing, in order to let new possibilities flourish. The perfect idea that was just right for a congregation in the 1970s, 1990s or even 2019, may have seen its season. We do not need to do more and more. God has already done everything that needs to be done in Jesus. We are not looking for a program to save us. Jesus already did that on a Friday more than 2,000 years ago.
What I am hoping for in this season is to cross-pollinate simple ideas that bring Christ’s light into our midst and I want you to bring your creativity to the party. The Diocese will benefit as others come to know what is bringing your congregation life and giving your parishioners and community hope.
This is an intentionally messier strategy than a single plan for everyone. It needs to be so. As we seek to honor the unique needs and gifts of each of our churches, I trust that we will see what Jesus is up to in our communities. Because God is already active.
As your bishop, I have come to see how dispersed experimentation, learning, and decision making fits us so well, as the Episcopal Church is less hierarchical and more democratic than it first appears. For the oversight that a bishop in the Episcopal Church is charged with is shared oversight. I don’t serve alone. I am blessed to work with a dedicated staff, the deans and archdeacon, the Standing Committee, Diocesan Council, and the other commissions and committees of the diocese, as well as the wardens and vestries of each congregation, and all of the deacons and priests of the diocese. Shared oversight is also the work of this body. Each one of you is participating in our shared responsibility for this Diocese that we steward for future generations.
I am so very grateful for the Diocese of Georgia, where I see how your varied gifts come together to let your lights shine as you serve your communities. I look forward to seeing how the Holy Spirit will bless our faithfulness as we keep Jesus at the center of our common life for the year to come. As your chief priest and pastor, I find myself, as always, extremely grateful to be with you on this team.
The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop of Georgia
