November 10, 2023
Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal Day School
Augusta, GA

Beloved in Christ,

I am so grateful to be together here in Augusta where our three founding congregations gathered 200 years ago for the first convention of the Diocese of Georgia. This year is the 290th that Anglicans have worshipped in Georgia, as a priest of the Church of England, the Rev. Dr. Henry Herbert, stepped ashore with the first colonists and led them in prayer. Those forbears entrusted to us a faith rooted in Jesus, growing out of the soil of the early church as the first followers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).

At no time in the history of Christianity has living into that faith seemed easy or the next generation of followers been certain. But the Living God is faithful and the Church continues in spite of our efforts more than because of them. The Holy Spirit has kindled hearts and awakened hope again and again, in catacombs as well as in cathedrals. We gather today in that sure and certain hope that God has not brought us this far to leave us. If we, like the generations before us, do not trust in our own wisdom or strength, but lean on the everlasting arms of Jesus, we will see God showing up in our lives and in our communities in ways that give us the courage to step boldly forward in faith.

Since we last met in convention, Victoria and I have criss-crossed the Diocese, finding joy in being with the people of our congregations. I made visitations to 52 churches as well as our campus ministry at Georgia Southern and here to Episcopal Day School. These 54 visits are most of the 71 visitations that made up a full cycle of visits for the Diocese of Georgia since our last convention adjourned. The current pattern has me visiting everywhere at least once every 18 months.

Sadly, the number of visitations needed has decreased this year. The vestries of St. Michael and All Angels in Savannah and St. Richard of Chichester on Jekyll Island each voted to close their congregations. I should not have been caught off guard. All of the candidates for the 11th Bishop of Georgia knew that the coming decade would likely mean some churches deciding to close. That was not a surprise, yet I was not prepared for the loss I would feel as Chief Pastor. I was also not prepared for visits to congregations who had gone a year without the presence of a priest offering the Holy Eucharist. At Holy Spirit in Dawson and Holy Trinity in Blakely my visits came after months with no supply priest, their last Eucharists had been for funerals. Yet, the parishioners were grateful for the visit, having remained grounded in the Word even as they awaited the Sacrament. I find their faithfulness in gathering inspiring even as I look to meeting the challenge of providing priests for our parishes.

In convention last year, I talked of our entering a time of holy experimentation, trying old things anew, even as we try some new ideas. I named two initiatives we were undertaking that were largely paid for by grants from Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street. Trinity’s grants program was seeking to support efforts targeted for congregations with fewer than 70 people present on a typical Sunday. As the median Episcopal congregation is 35 in attendance on a Sunday across the church and 50 here in the Diocese of Georgia, these programs would assist most congregations.

We worked with our partners in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America’s Southeastern Synod on a ten-month long expert-led learning cohort with Episcopal priests and Lutheran pastors meeting together in what was called a Strategic Imagination Sandbox. Unfortunately, the feedback was consistently bad from those taking part. The weakest link had been what we hoped would be most helpful as we were sure that no matter the quality of the training, getting priests and pastors together to share candidly with one another would be worth the effort. But the leaders fulfilling the grants failed to facilitate those groups and despite trying to offer feedback along the way, this effort failed to deliver as we anticipated. Though this offering did not end up working out, we are so grateful to those who participated for their willingness to try something new with us.

We also worked on a second effort with the LeadersCARE program together with the Dioceses of Atlanta, West Tennessee, and East Tennessee. LeadersCARE is not a set plan, but a way of prayerfully discerning what is right for your congregation. This one did bear good fruit as the trainers from LeadersCARE came to Honey Creek for a retreat with lay leaders in congregations that are not served by a priest. As we hoped, offering people a time to step away and worship together, to learn alongside others, and to have time for reflecting on how to take this back to the congregation were all helpful. Just as we have seen with the Church Development Institute and Leading with Grace, it is always most helpful to bring together people facing similar issues in different parts of the Diocese. We are always stronger together and there is no substitute for getting with others face-to-face to reflect prayerfully on what God has been doing and then to act strategically based on how the Spirit is guiding you to take that next faithful step.

As always seems to be the case for me, I came to see what we need to do next by listening to leaders across the Diocese. In our Diocesan Council meetings this year, we continued as the convention in recess, taking up the challenge offered in our presenting to convention 2022 the reality the Diocese faces in the coming years.

All of our congregations are experiencing the impact of the loss of generations of parishioners who gave generously to their church. For some, this means fewer priests on a staff. For others, it means difficulty having a full-time priest or not currently having a priest who routinely serves the congregation. During the Diocesan Council meeting in March, we did a Question Burst exercise to discover the questions that get at the root issues. In four minutes, we generated twenty questions such as: Are we more concerned with parish self-interest and survival or Gospel mandate? What’s non-negotiable? What does church look like? and What do we prioritize?

The discussion that followed on that Saturday revealed how the pain points are different in varying contexts, but we are all in the same boat. I shared then how some changes are occurring as congregations find ways to thrive with lower levels of income and attendance. In Camden County, Christ Church in St. Marys and St. Mark’s in Woodbine each adjusted their worship times to be able to share a supply priest and later called the Rev. Michael Moore to serve the two congregations as Priest in Charge. Congregations that have generationally been multi-priest churches are also working with what this means for them. And as we just saw in a video, the shift from full-time to part-time clergy is not easy, requiring more from lay leaders and straining the faithful priests serving bi-vocationally.

What faithfulness looks like now is for clergy and vestries to look honestly at the trends in giving and how the passing of generations of generous givers is posing an ever increasing challenge. We would do well to look proactively at how this will come to impact us in the coming years rather than sitting by as if we do not know of the concern.

As your bishop I spend time in every church in the Diocese. From my vantage point, I can say that we do face serious threats to business as usual. The changes we face will be demanding. I also see there is no existential threat to our church. The threat is to the church we became in the boom years following the Second World War. Bishop Scott Benhase would tell churches that Ozzie and Harriett are not coming back. But I never saw that TV family even in re-runs. But I think his point was that faithful TV families like The Simpsons, for whom church is a regular part of life for most everyone in the fictional town of Springfield, are no longer the norm in the fallen world we serve.

And while I am concerned about the institution of the Church, I am far more concerned that people come to know that God loves them, that in Jesus we can not only discover that deep love, but we can also find the grace of repentance and the strength to forgive others and ourselves. There are so many people in Central and South Georgia who need to know and experience this connection with a loving God and will never be able to follow Jesus the way they feel called to if our Episcopal Churches are not present in their community. This is about the Gospel touching the hearts of people who need it desperately and don’t yet know the joy of what we have experienced in being part of the Body of Christ.

I saw this same concern for our witness to the Good News mirrored in those present for our Fall meeting of Diocesan Council and even more so in the Clergy Retreat that followed. I also saw how, while there is no one-size fits all solution other than faithfulness to the ways in which we perceive our Triune God leading us, there is room for us to plan together on a coherent strategy for moving forward together. It is time for us to work together on a strategic plan for the Diocese of Georgia.

This is not wholly new. I keep a notes file on my phone labeled Campaign Promises, that holds what I said I would do as Bishop when doing the Question and Answer session around the Diocese. I am open to changing or letting go of strategies that no longer fit as the situation on the ground changes and we learn more by experience. But I do hold myself accountable for what I named to you in the election process.

I said that the Diocese of Georgia could afford no big ideas as we needed to spend the first three years of the 11th Bishop’s episcopacy paying off the Honey Creek Bond Debt. Even as we did so, I said we would try a new way of forging our path together with Task Groups of Diocesan Council working on some discrete issues. Then with the debt cleared and new experience in working through committees to set strategies for change, we would create a strategic plan. Since May of 2020, we’ve made great progress including:

• Passing a thorough review of the Constitution and Canons.
• Assessing the effectiveness of the Church Development Institute and retooling it from the ground up as Leading with Grace and finding new ways to connect this training with the Diocese.
• Mapping out, assessing, and making important changes to our Holy Order process.
• Evaluating how our diocesan convention is working. We will be making changes to the schedule starting with the next convention, with a Friday afternoon start with the convention finishing a few hours later on Saturday.
• Evaluating our Companion Diocese relationship and will consider a recommendation based on our Task Group’s review to continue our work with the Diocese of the Dominican Republic.
• We also have two groups that will continue their work in the next year to consider the cottage we own in Saluda, North Carolina, and with a review how our assessment process is working and whether changes are needed based on experience with appeals to the assessment.

With that new experience of smaller groups doing the homework and reporting back to the Council, who charts a course, we are ready for the next step. We will begin work immediately on selecting the right process for our Diocese, using listening sessions with an outside facilitator with the Executive Committee of Diocesan Council assisting me as we chart the way forward to crafting a plan that represents fidelity to Jesus in this moment in our common life.

Before we embark on this, I need to confess how I view plans like this. As a church planter, I learned from those who had successfully established new churches that plans fail where a process can see you through. This happens if you let your plan become scripture and refuse to adapt as you learn more along the way. Yet, plans are essential as a way of deciding what we want to achieve together.

I want to share a critical time that I thought I knew what we were going to do and I was wrong. I arrived in Kingsland in 2000 to begin founding what would become King of Peace Church and Day School with a clear goal. Victoria, our daughter Griffin, and I wanted to start a church that would do so much good in the community that if we had to close our doors in a decade, people who had never attended the church would miss it and wish it had remained. We knew about this first hand from working with the Soup Kitchen at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rome, Georgia, when I served on the vestry there. I could already see how a new church could serve the community.

The process for church planting had me chart the way forward by looking at the demographic data for Kingsland. Then I mapped out how to knock on doors and speak to 100 of my new neighbors using a plan that would have the houses where I spoke to someone would reflect the demographics of all of Kingsland. I asked the people I met what they wanted to see a new church do for the community.

Perhaps not surprising for a Navy Base community with 80% of residents then 39 or younger. Lots of people told me of the need to offer more for children and teens. I learned through this work of a pressing need for a full-day preschool for families with both parents working. I also saw that the small core group I was gathering had the skills needed to undertake the project. These conversations led to the creation of a full day preschool. I had arrived in Kingsland with a clear goal of making a difference in the community, and I was sure I knew what that would look like, but was surprised to be moved in a very different direction I had not seen until I took the time to listen.

I pledge to you that I will take the time to listen ever more in this coming year through a process that reveals our common goals. When we have a plan in place, we will know where we will head together, yet we will stay open to the Spirit’s ongoing guidance as we begin moving in that direction. In the process, I trust that we will be changed. I look forward to the journey of discovery and to the ways God will use the process of creating a strategic plan to reveal what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in this moment. As your chief priest and pastor, I find myself, as always, extremely grateful to be with you on this team.

Amen.