Come Over and Help Us!

I have just completed our online House of Bishops meeting. This included a report from our demographers about the surprising and worrisome decline in our number of members. But it also included a simultaneous reduction in the number of clergy available. Together they make up a kind of ‘perfect storm.’ In a number of provinces the congregations looking for a priest exceeds the number of clergy themselves by more than ten-fold. (The clergy shortage doesn’t relate to us).

What are we to do? 1. Learn from our fellow Anglicans. For in many places (for example sub-Saharan Africa!) most congregations are overseen by catechist/ evangelists, and this in no way precludes growth- quite the opposite. We can now learn from these provinces. A) catechists are overseen diligently by the local clergy. B) there is no expectation of the celebration of the holy eucharist everywhere and every Sunday. In fact this may make its celebration on occasion more keenly anticipated. This, more positively, involves the rediscovery of the offices of morning and evening prayer.

At this point we can readily see what the coming church needs.

  1. We as a Church need more coordinated and energetic support for the training of catechists. (We have been out-front of this with our lay orders).

  2. We cannot do without the intense formation provided residentially by seminaries. But we need more use of a flexible two-year degree (like the Master of Theological Studies). One year ought to be in residence.

  3. Dioceses need to share information and ‘best practices’ about the yoking of congregations. There lies the future! (Our own shared ministry in east Texas, APNET, is an encouraging example.)

The important thing as always is not the structural details, but rather renewal in the Gospel, for whose propagation the Book of Common Prayer remains a sterling instrument.

Peace,

+GRS

 

Posted by The Rt. Rev. George Sumner with

On the Sacrament of Penance

‘All May, None Must, Some Should” goes the adage about auricular confession, in private, to a priest. It may seem to some a vestige of the dark ages, akin to self-flagellation. Our tradition is certainly right to pair it with public confession in the context of the liturgy. We also do well to remind ourselves that the power to absolve belongs to the risen Jesus alone, who entrusts its utterance to the Church. As to those who criticize the psychological effects of guilt, we do well to recall that Freud himself understood that the name for a person with no guilt is ‘sociopath.’

My claim here is a simple one, that private confession teaches us several things about forgiveness in general. First of all, the word of absolution is spoken to you. You hear it from the mouth of another sinner, designated by God to speak it. it is more than a thought in our head, which in our anxiety we may come to distort. Absolution happens. It cannot be undone. Like the sin you confess, its absolution occurs in the world. Its point is as fixed as the crucifixion of Jesus itself. This is why one should not reconfess the same sin- it has been put away.

The penitent should have a desire not so to sin again. Given the bound nature of the human being, we may well revert to a sin, but the penitent is the one who is sorry. So Confession requires honesty. Any confessor would tell you that you are to say everything that occurs to you to say. Concealing something means one has not yet understood that it is to God that we confess.  And saying what we regret out loud makes us come to terms with who we are in a way more stark than usual. 

But the overwhelming experience of confession is freedom. The thing we most yearn for us is available to us. In Jesus we experience the Father running to His prodigal child.  This is the starting point of our faith, from which point we are given that freedom to wrestle with a thousand perplexities. As the title of a book by the New Testament scholar Ernst Kaesemann said, Jesus means freedom.

 

Peace,

+GRS

Posted by The Rt. Rev. George Sumner with

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Complete the Race (II Timothy 4:17)

At the end of our vacation we find ourselves in Chicago for its Marathon weekend (the fastest, I have read this morning, perhaps because it is cool and relatively level). Marathons offer many good things. You can see world-class athletes from places like Ethiopia and Kenya. There is a feel of fiesta with signs by family members, getups by some for-fun runners, and food for sale.

But as I looked out my hotel window at 7:30 a.m., I watched the race of competitors who have lost legs or their use. Wheeling vehicles by arm for 26 miles means serious fitness and determination.

Those competitors were to me, this morning, a symbol of the Church too. For each is wounded. The larger family cheers them on. Each by grace has risen up to run the race. Ahead is the goal, the prize, the welcome home. We find the companionship of Jesus the Lord, there, and along the route too.

Amen.

GRS

 

   

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