Mission East

Channing Moore Williams
Missionary Bishop in China and Japan, 1910

How does a poor farmer's son grow up to be a bearer of the Gospel half-way round the world? One answer is the Holy Spirit, coupled with that young man's willingness to cast his eyes and heart into a mission of such scope. This is a word to the church: God works for the people of the world only to the extent that willing human servants offer themselves to do that work. We have a job description, and have received our marching orders. Sometimes that march will take us to our own neighborhood, at other times to the ends of the earth. Williams took his march to China and Japan, though just at the end of his life he returned to the soil of his Virginia homeland. May all of us make such circuits and accomplish such works, in larger or smaller orbits.

Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Channing Moore Williams, whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of China and Japan. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

(Inter)National House

This is not about the W.C. Fields film of that name, but the recent struggles in the Episcopal Church over possible name change for the staff at The Episcopal Church Center to become "The Missionary Society."

 There is nothing new about struggle or tension between the three (or four) entities that serve The Episcopal Church: the General Convention (GC), the Executive (formerly the "National") Council (EC), and the "staff" whether at 281 Park Avenue South ("Church Missions House") or 815 Second Ave ("The Episcopal Church Center", aka ECC). I served in the press and communications office at "815" beginning in the days of John Maury Allin. He always described it as a "service center" there to serve the needs of the church in supporting "SWEEP" — Stewardship, Worship, Education, Evangelism, and Pastoral Care; and of course national and international mission, for which a handy acronym wasn't, well, handy. There was also a finance department to keep those wheels greased, and a communication office (where I served) to support all of the rest in producing resources, print and video. The staff structure was ordered along those lines, and each week the PB would meet with the department heads of each of the "units." The notion seems a bit quaint now, but it seemed to have worked relatively well.

In addition to, and contrasting with this relative clarity, there was significant question as to "whose" staff the staff were: were they the staff of the "National/Executive" Council, or of the PB? This was and is a lively tension; exacerbated by the fact that the General Convention also had offices in the building, but were not "staff" to either the PB or the Council. On that wing of the triangle, there was always some tension between GC and EC as to who was doing what and when.

The Browning years brought a massive combined simplification and complexification to the staff structure, with both consolidation and more levels of hierarchy — including "senior" executives in a whole new — and very well remunerated — level separating the PB from the people actually in charge of the various areas of work. In spite of the evident problems to which this led, it remains more or less the same, with clusters instead of units, and changes in terminology.

Add to the existing tensions between the three structures, the now emerging tensions with DFMS (short for the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America) -- previously a more or less silent partner (due to the overreach of the 19th century urge to make everyone a missionary without asking them first -- a noble gesture but prone to fail as many a noble gesture does). In latter days DFMS primarily served as the skeleton and support for fiscal operations, with very little involvement in the actual program or mission.

The real question that rarely gets asked -- and I do believe the aptly acronym’d "revisioning" task force, TREC, is asking it -- is why a church that functions mostly at the local or regional level needs such a complex entanglement of (inter)national structures? I leave it to others to do the math, but if one looks at the Gross Episcopal Product (for example the total receipts for all parishes in 2008 was over $2 billion... and that doesn't count foundations and auxiliary bodies) and compares it with the relatively small budgets of the GC and EC and ECC (as it was) one begins to wonder if all the turmoil at the (inter)national level is really worth it, and that a radical revisioning as a network isn't the best idea.

As to ECC being known as "815" -- "branding" isn't going to change it. Trying to "create" the next meme isn't going to work. Things catch on because they are catchy, and "The Missionary Society" -- as important (and misunderstood) as mission is -- ain’t. I can recall when someone in the staff there even made a tee-shirt for the Episcopal Church Center (ECC), "815" -- emblazoned with the text of Ecc. 8:15. Look it up, it's quite amusing...

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

(Re)cognize Liturgy as Mission, Please

My friend and colleague Bosco Peters has penned An Open Letter to the ACC, soon to meet in his own New Zealand. He appeals to them to recall that liturgy and worship ought really to be expounded as one of the “marks of mission” — not just a past-time or option, nor even as the power-source for the “real” work of the church, but as an intrinsic and central part of that work.

I find it helpful to point out two things: first, that Saint Benedict called the Daily Office “the Work of God”; and second, that the Episcopal Church's catechism (page 855 of our BCP), in response to the question, “How does the Church pursue it mission?” states:

“The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.” 

Note that the first two and at least part of the third have very much to do with what goes on in liturgy, the implication being that this is the starting point!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
and please sign Bosco's petition

Great Coach, What's the Game?

The Presiding Bishop has been attending the Provincial Synods of The Episcopal Church and delivering a stirring address at each of them. While I very much enjoyed the PB's address, I observed to another member of my deputation afterwards, "The PB is an excellent coach, but I'm not sure what game we are playing." This, it seems to me, is at the base of our problems with restructuring and changing how we work -- I'm not sure we are at all clear about the task.

For one thing, I think there is a good deal of confusion about the differences between mission and ministry and outreach and the corporal works of mercy. All of these things are important, all of them are interrelated, but they are different things. I tried to lay out some of these distinctions in an earlier post, by examining the Catechism's definition of mission and its implementation. I hope that some further careful thought will go into discernment and clarification prior to any effort at restructuring. Form follows function, a wise man once said. Making formal changes before we are entirely clear about the purpose for the form will accomplish little, and may damage much.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Restructuring the Church

I had the chance (and the bandwidth) late last week to view the  presentation by the Presiding Bishop and Bishop Stacy Sauls, concerning the restructuring of the church, and "becoming" a Domestic and Foreign Missiionary Society. I have a couple of thoughts on its strengths, possibilities and weaknesses.

I applaud the effort to look at changes to the structure of the church to empower mission. That includes streamlining, reallocating, and so on. I think a lot of change is needed, and have my own ideas about where that could happen.

But I think there were gaps in the presentation that need to be filled, as well as more of the clarity in distinguishing which structures we are talking about. The General Convention and its interim bodies, and the staff at 815 Second Avenue and in other satellite locations, are not the same thing; and the mission of the church is broader still. The Episcopal Church is not one monolithic, unified structure, and portraying it as a pyramid with General Convention at the top is hardly an accurate picture. It might be true in terms of governance, but clearly not in terms of mission. And I don't think that is a bad thing.

First and foremost, the idea of organizing the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was not to found a centrally based or governed mission agency, but on the contrary precisely to empower every member of the church as a missionary in person. I have never thought of General Convention as "missionary" -- any more than I would think of Congress as "military" -- General Convention is there to govern the church, and to direct and serve the mission; as is the staff at 815 (what PB John Maury Allin called and modeled as a "service center"); and all those interim bodies are there to do the same. But the mission is primarily carried out by the members of the church working as individuals and in coordination with others in their parishes and dioceses. (Just as the army carries out the policies of the government but is distinct from the government.)

Second, we need to be very clear about what we mean by mission. The BCP has a definition of mission, summed up in three questions and answers on page 855.

Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.

Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.

Q. Through whom does the Church carry out its mission?
A. The Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.

These answers do a number of things. The first places mission in a theological as well as a human context. That is, it is about people, but it is also about God. The second prevents us thinking that worship and proclamation are not just as much mission as the soup kitchen is. The third makes it clear that all of the members of the church are called and equipped to carry forward this mission.

It seems, therefore, odd to talk, as the presentation does, primarily about the national budget, while ignoring the billions of dollars raised and spent by the parishes -- only alluded to in the presentation -- when talking about the proportion of money spent on mission. The proportion of our "Gross Episcopal Product" spent on mission is substantial -- as we have to include the salaries of the missioners, the maintenance of the places in which we worship, and so on. It is deadly dangerous, and verges on a kind of missionary gnosticism, to forget that the cost of running a parish is a crucial part of its mission. Seek economies, by all means, but let us not say to the foot, I have no need of you!

One of the major problems in how people think of mission, it seems to me, is revealed in the commonly inverted understanding of Matthew 25 -- as if the mission of the church was identical with the works of mercy described there (which is not to say the church shouldn't do them, under the Golden Rule). But the text is not about the ministry or mission of the disciples, but about ministries performed (or not) to the disciples by those to whom the disciples went on mission. Matthew meant this passage as a comfort to the disciples as they were sent on their way to the "nations" -- not as a job description for the disciples' task, but as a comfort to them and a warning to those who would be on the receiving end of their mission to "baptize all nations" --- and let us remember that was the ultimate "mission of God." (It is odd in our present day that some are second guessing the importance of baptism as the essential and first sacramental mission of the church, leaping right to communion as if the radically transforming death to self in baptism were not essential in order fully to share in the communion Christ desires for us -- the accomplishment of the mission.)

In other words, the mission of the church is about much more than ministries of social service -- which is not to denigrate social service, but to see that it grows out of, but is not identical to, the unifying mission of the church. I have known congregations that become "doughnut churches" where much energy is spent on outreach, but there is no center or heart, and the energy is quickly expended and the parish is on the verge of collapse. Ultimately, the Matthew passage raises another important distinction: that between mission and ministry. They are related, but they are not the same. Much of what is done by the staff of the Episcopal Church Center is service; ministry rather than mission.

In the long run I think the PB and Bishop Sauls are onto some good things, but I fear that the focus on GC and 815 -- important as that is -- misses where the mission is most ably happening. I would like to see GC and 815 leaner and more effective in serving that mission, and to the extent that this is their aim, Amen, and again I say, Amen!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Prayer

We have been slumbering while we should have been watching; come, let us rise to go with Jesus, even to the cross and to the grave, and in him to the risen life. Amen.

based on Mark 14:41-42

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 05.25.10

Worship without mission is precious at best and scandalous at worst.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

And, btw, I disagree with those who cleverly turn the phrase around and harp on "mission without worship." We have it on good authority that a deed of kindness and love done to others, even in total ignorance that they are "Jesus in disguise" will not go without its recognition. Mission to the poor and outcast is worship, for in serving them we serve Jesus. And this from a liturgist!

Thought for 9.01.09

I was reading an interesting essay by Michael Poon today, and it led me to think about what happens when we mistake our own particular cultural models for the gospel. It seems to me that one of the singular tragedies of the missionary endeavors of the 16th through the 19th century was their "marriage" of Christianity with European Culture. For Native Americans, Africans, and South Sea Islanders to become "Christian" seems to have had less to do with Christ and more with conformity to a European dress code. Not only did European missionaries destroy much in the way of local culture and art, but they mistook starched collars and trousers, corsets and long skirts for the Gospel. The long-range effects of such cultural bondage had a deleterious effect on the real Mission of the Gospel. Clothing became an idol for the missionaries, who equated nudity with sin. (Nudity no doubt raising specific temptations in Victorian minds — but what was the locus of the sin? Who was the sinner, the unselfconscious bare-breasted islander, or the scandalized missionary?)

I suppose the question has to be, "What is today's church's idol?" What cultural artifact or folkway is being insisted upon as vital to the Christian life, to the detriment of the church's mission? Where are lines being drawn? When we place any symbol -- however venerable -- on the throne that belongs to God alone, we transform it into an idol, and that is when we become idolaters.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Whole Church

In a July 2008 Episcopal Life article, my colleague Ian Douglas quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury as saying, in reference to the upcoming Lambeth Conference:

The main focus I long to see at this conference is the better equipping of bishops to fulfill their task as agents and enablers of mission, as co-workers with God's mission in Jesus Christ.

Clearly it would be good thing for the bishops to improve the quality of their own collegial work. However, what is most important, when they leave Lambeth and return home to their dioceses, is that the work continues with a different set of co-workers: the rest of the church: laity, deacons and priests. Mission isn't just about God and the bishops. God does not appear to intend a model of trickle-down mission, but rather grass roots. Jesus, after all, came to fisherfolk, not the hierarchy, to choose his missionaries. So the bishops need to be prepared not only to work with their episcopal colleagues, domestic and foreign, but with all of the other missionary members of the church, not lording it over them, but as Christ did, working among them. To paraphrase John the Evangelist (1 John 4:20),

If you cannot work with your brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you have seen, you cannot work with God, whom you have not seen.

I understand that the work of the Apostle John is to be part of the substance of the Lambeth Bible study. May the words of the Scripture enlighten the minds of the bishops, to strengthen them in the mission they share with the whole church.

Tobias Haller BSG

Thought for 06.18.08

Just as the Son, the living Word of God, does nothing on his own (John 5:19,30; 8:28), so too the Scripture, the written Word of God, can not and does not stand or work alone, but is interpreted and put into effect under the caring stewardship of the church by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in its many members. The Word is meant to be productive as seed, and is thus inseparable from the mission of the church. The truth of the interpretation will be found in the fruit and harvest it bears. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

Tobias Haller BSG

AKMA on Seabury

Has anyone else noticed how much James Lloyd Breck, instrumental in the founding of what eventually became part of Seabury-Western, resembles John Cleese. — Tobias

Added, for reference purposes, an early photograph of Breck attempting to return an item at the Nashotah General Store.

The Church’s Treasury

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Diocese of New York Warden’s Conference / April 26 2008
Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Proper 24: For Vocation in Daily Work
Eccl 3:1,9-13; 1 Pet 2:11-17; Matt 6:19-24
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.+

I could briefly summarize today’s readings as: Don’t Worry be Happy, Be a Good Citizen, and Try Not to Make too Much Money. The first is better known in its Latin version, Carpe diem; the second — Be a Good Citizen — is sound advice as long as one lives in a good city.

It is the third, Try Not to Make Too Much Money, that appears directed at those who serve the church. Church wardens are volunteers, so you never expected to “live by the church;” but even the clergy who do — because the rectory is often next-door, are only very rarely embarrassed with riches. The matchbook-cover promise, Go to School to Increase Your Earning Power, doesn’t apply to seminary. Rather, the church compensates its clergy based on the biblical command to leave the threshing ox unmuzzled — as well as on a short leash and moving in circles.

So devoting your life church work, on a stipend or as a volunteer, is a good way to follow our Lord’s advice not to lay up treasure on earth.

+ + +

If, that is, we are talking about the kind with images of politicians, in various denominations. But there is another kind of treasure more beguiling than folding green. And it exists in various denominations, too: Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Lutheran.... It is a treasure the church and its workers are tempted to store up, perhaps compensating for getting less of the kind with a politician’s image and likeness: whether Tiberius Caesar or Andrew Jackson. It is the treasure of stable security, of becoming an institution.

Saint Peter shows this at work; he counseled good citizenship so the church could survive in the Empire. But the Empire soon got so bad that good citizenship became impossible for Christians, forced to choose between Christ and Caesar.

Those who had counseled obedience found themselves re-evaluating — Peter ended up crucified head-down; and Paul must have reconsidered the wisdom of appealing to Caesar’s justice when he faced Caeser’s sword. The apostles learned they could not serve two masters — Christ and Caesar — though too late to leave epistles to that effect.

Imperial persecution clarified the church’s vision as only the hangman can — to see that survival on Caesar’s terms was not worth it, and the time had passed for playing goody two-sandals. So, strange as it may sound, thank God for Caesar, who gave the church something to stand up to, something to stand up for. Persecution reminded the church of its mission: not to survive by ceasing to be itself — but to spend itself for the life of the world, as its Lord had done.

Caesar reminded the church that those who seek to save their life will lose it. Caesar reminded the church that it was the body of Christ — Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate, who suffered death and was buried, and only then was raised from the dead. Christ set the pattern for the church: Only by losing life can life be saved; only what dies can be raised again.

+ + +

Since those fiery days, the world’s animosity towards the church has cooled to chilly toleration. And how has the church responded? How does the church expend its energy these days, now that Caesar no longer persecutes? Isn’t most of the church’s warfare these days internal? Where is the church’s treasure being spent — on outgoing mission, or ongoing questions of self-definition? Is the church laying up treasure in heaven, safe from moth and rust and thieves — or squandering its resources on ecclesiastical mothballs, Rustoleum, and burglar alarms?

It happens in parishes, national churches — it even happens in cathedrals... so I’m told! The focus shifts from mission to talk about mission, from vision to the vision statement. When this happens, the church’s vision is obstructed by the bulk of its own precious self, and the church abdicates its title as a wonderful and sacred mystery and verges on becoming an institution like any other. Preoccupied with survival rather than with mission, it resigns its role as bride of Christ and becomes more like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the wedding banquet transformed into a shuttered room whose lonely inhabitant tries to preserve a past that never was.

+ + +

Am I exaggerating? Think of the resources spent on the present Anglican Communion disagreements. The Episcopal Church treasures the Communion, and rightly so — but here is an opportunity to reform and revive the very thing we treasure if we are willing to set aside preoccupation with its structure for a time to focus on its purpose: to develop a Covenant not based on who’s in and who’s out — but upon the mission we share to a suffering world, with the Communion as a vessel well-suited to bear the good news to the ends of the earth — because it’s already there!

We are called and commissioned to risk what we treasure, to spend ourselves for the sake of the gospel, in a gospel fashion. It is not that we don’t need structures and vessels, but that they are means to an end, not ends in themselves. We are meant to use them, and sometimes lose them. Indeed, we are called to lose our very lives and thus to save them; for only what dies can be raised; only what is spent can be redeemed. True wealth, after all, is revealed in what you spend, not in what you possess. The church is most truly itself when it spends itself with an abandon that matches the liberality of the spendthrift Christ — Christ who gave himself up on the cross, who spent himself completely, and all for the love of his bride, the church.

What a perfectly mad young couple, who store up no treasure, spend all they have on each other — but having each other need nothing else. You know the story: she cut off her hair to buy him a watch-fob; he pawned his watch to buy her a comb — gifts, in their purchase, rendered useless — yet infinitely precious.

What, then, is the church’s true wealth? Only Christ, and him crucified. And what is his treasure? He has told us how much he values each of us poor fragile creatures as chosen and precious. As Solomon’s old love song tells it, sung in a Christian key: Christ is our treasure, and we are his.

+ + +

Long ago, a good deacon faced Caesar, who demanded the church’s treasures. Expecting gold and silver, how angered he was when the deacon assembled the poor and said, This is the church’s treasure.

We members of Christ’s body are the church’s treasure still, because treasured by Christ, because we are where his heart is. And no moth, no rust, no thief can touch us. We are Christ’s treasure, and this holy place — and all of the parishes from which we come to gather here — are God’s treasuries. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you they are just institutions. And don’t you ever let anyone make them so. You who teach and you who learn, you who worship and you who proclaim, you who administer and steward and care for the fabric of these vessels, keep your vision clear, always turned to the needs of the world that the church is called to serve. Carpe diem: Seize the day — the time is now. Christ is risen and has given us the greatest treasure — given himself into our hands, fragile treasures of bread and wine that feed and strengthen us to spend ourselves in Christ’s service.

May we now and ever spend ourselves freely, all of us, who bought by Christ, are free to serve — Christ’s treasure on earth as he is ours in heaven.+

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An Informal Poll

The Church Times is taking an informal poll on whether the proposed Anglican Covenant is the best way to achieve unity. I invite you to go to the article, and then to cast your vote by clicking on the tiny "here" towards the bottom of the article.

I make no secret of being opposed to the specifics of the proposed Anglican Covenant; though not opposed in principle to a covenant based on ministry and mission and with no "pre-nuptial" provision for dissolution of communion. The current proposal is still light on the former and heavy on the latter.

If what is really wanted is simply a mechanism for dealing with conflicts and disagreements when they arise, I think it would be easier simply to codify the already existing powers that the autonomous provinces possess. That is, for example in the present conflict,

• No other province (indeed, no other individual diocese) need permit Bishop Robinson (or any other Bishop) the exercise of Episcopal function within its borders.
• Provinces are not forced to have any more to do with each other than they choose to do.
• Individual parishes within dioceses, and dioceses within their provinces ought to respect the legitimate authority of their superior synods, and not seek to become independent from them.
• Nor should bishops from outside a province interfere in the internal affairs of that province. (The response from the C of E noted that as far as England was concerned this was not only illegal, but probably immoral and fattening as well.)

So, as I see it, the long and the short of it is this. Cut the high-falutin' language (the C of E already saw the wisdom in dispensing with the decorative scriptural citations at the head of each section) and focus on the concepts that

• Communion in Christ based on baptism is irrevocable;
• Our call is to mission (unity of all people in Christ) and ministry (you know: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting and healing the sick, comforting those who mourn; in short, loving our neighbors as ourselves and doing unto others as we would be done by.) and
• Affirm the fact that a covenant is not something to be broken when tensions arise, but the means by which we remain together "for better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health" -- and that these principles apply first and foremost to the church, that holy and sacred mystery.

Tobias Haller BSG