This Fragile Earth, our Island Home

GUEST BLOGGER!

This week I have invited The Rev. Linda K. Watkins to share an essay that  she wrote in response to the decision last week for our country to withdraw from the Parish Climate Agreement.

Linda's work in Environmental Justice is fueled by a passion born of the Holy Spirit and I am glad to share her words in this space. 

As Christians, I believe that it is our responsibility to care for our planet as good stewards of God's Creation and to bring all that we have to bear-  scientific and technical knowledge, skills of communication and collaboration, and the wisdom of the ages- to ensure that our future is bright.  Environmental Justice is critical Christian work, as we work to preserve and protect our world.

Colossians 1:16-17 “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”   

The Rt. Rev. Audrey C. Scanlan

 Here’s Linda's essay:

I am deeply saddened by our country’s decision to abandon the Paris Climate Agreement; a commitment to protect this “fragile earth, our island home” signed in 2015 by 195 of the 197 United Nations member countries (virtually every nation on earth) who had been working on an international response to Climate Change (Nicaragua and Syria were the only two countries not signing the agreement). While there are a wide range of viewpoints on this action and on the whole issue of Climate Change in general, that doesn’t change the moral and spiritual compass given to us by our Christian faith regarding our relationship to God’s Creation.

As Christians, we believe in “One God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth”. We can argue about what this process of Creation looked like, but Scripture is clear that one way or another, the entire Cosmos and absolutely everything in it was created by God.

Moreover, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).  Although later on, evil (separation from God and God’s goodness) came into the world, something of this inherent goodness remains. Therefore Psalm 19 can proclaim, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament^* proclaims his handiwork.” God created flowers and trees, wind, rain and snow, plants and herbs, birds, insects and animals to shout out the glory, power and majesty of the One who created them.

Front and center in this ministry of proclamation, are human beings; lovingly created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). God blesses them and commissions them to care for the earth as they join in proclaiming God’s glory. The English translation of Genesis 1:26 and 1:28 uses the words “dominion” and “subdue”. Certainly, human beings have learned to control things like fire and water and various plants and animals – we wouldn’t be able to exist very well without doing that.

But there is a difference from the dominion of love and service that Jesus taught us and violent destruction. That’s what Jesus Christ came into the world to teach us. He came into the world as a flesh and blood human being, ate and drank and rejoiced and suffered and died like all of us. By doing this he taught us in the clearest possible way that our God is a God who is present and involved in Creation. God doesn’t merely exist on a separate, spiritual plane, but is part and parcel of all that there is “seen and unseen”.

Jesus showed us that true dominion is a dominion that puts the needs of others first, that controls by loving service. The night before he died, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet – a powerful demonstration of the dominion God would have us exercise. And Jesus commanded us to love as God loves. He also clearly “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,^* you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus calls us to care for and consider the needs of all Creation and especially, all people.

Rising sea levels, drought, famine and pollution, which many agree are being caused by Climate Change, are already adversely affecting numerous people – primarily people who are living in deep poverty throughout the world. Island peoples who rely on subsistence fishing are being displaced, causing what some social scientists believe will become a major refugee crisis. As Christians, we cannot ignore their voices, no matter what we believe is the root cause of their circumstances.

Neither can we ignore the voices of the rainforests and that being destroyed, animal species on the verge of extinction, coral reefs that are dying. We cannot ignore the voices of those who have lost their jobs and communities that have lost t heir reason for existing due to a changing economy. Just as our nation’s shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy a hundred and fifty years ago was painful and required major changes in the way we all lived, so must we honor the very real pain and grief we all experience as we once again make the colossal shift to the post-industrial age.

As Christians, we are always called in the power of the Holy Spirit, to self-examination and confession. We have not treated each other or God’s gift of Creation as we should. We have not stood up to powerful voices of waste, greed and carelessness.

Even with that, we understand our God to be a merciful God who calls us to a vast vision of hope, generosity and abundance. With the Holy Spirit working in and through us, we can move from our limited human vision to this new vision that God always lays before us. Moral leadership will not come from political ideologies or facts per se. Moral leadership will come only when people of faith acting in good conscience join together and proclaim God’s goodness and love – a love that reaches beyond family, nation, language or tribe – a love that is part and parcel of Creation itself.

The Rev. Linda King Watkins is Rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Waynesboro, PA, and is chair of the Diocesan Social Justice Umbrella Committee. Since 1994, she has been a professed member of the Third, Order, Society of St. Francis and serves as the Order’s JPIC (Justice, Peace, Integrity of Creation) Animator. In 2013, she completed the GreenFaith Fellowship Program which trains religious leaders of all faiths in Eco-Justice leadership.

If you would like to learn more about the work of Environmental Justice in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, please email Linda at rector@stmaryswaynesboro.org

The LCD

Remember the LCD from 4th grade math?

You know, it was part of learning how to work with fractions-  by finding the LCD, or lowest common denominator, the adding and subtracting of fractions was made possible by finding the smallest common number that was a multiple of all the denominators.  In much simpler terms, it simply means reducing things to the smallest common units possible in order to keep on with the desired function (adding or subtracting, eg.)

For a long time, I’ve felt this way about declining parishes, watching as they move towards the LCD of their lives as worshipping communities by reducing, reducing, reducing… in order to keep on with their desired function of worshipping God in their church.  It is a natural response (and reasonable for those with strong survival instincts)  to seek the LCD as the effects of diminishing income, shrinking endowments and smaller congregations take hold.  Here's how I've seen it work (not necessarily including all of these steps for every parish...):

Cut the budget for music. 

Cut the budget for altar flowers.

Eliminate any budgetary support for Episcopal seminaries.

Cut the payment to the diocesan assessment.

Reduce the priest to half time.

Reduce the administrator to less than half time and remove healthcare and pension benefits

Argue over cutting the outreach budget

Eliminate the parish administrator’s job.

Reduce the priest to quarter time.

Stretch the timeline on the roof replacement for 5 more years.

Turn off the heat in the big church in the winter and worship in the parish hall

Use recorded accompaniment and save on the cost of a musician

Cut the internet service at the church since the priest can work mostly from home

Read Morning Prayer once a month when the part-time priest is off.

Eliminate the Outreach budget

Read Morning Prayer twice a month when the quarter time priest is off.

Sell the Tiffany Stained Glass windows to an art dealer. Replace with clear glass.

Sell the diamond-encrusted chalice that is only used on high holy days.

Hire supply a supply priest twice a month and pay them per diem and mileage and read Morning Prayer on 2 Sundays.

Hire a supply priest once per month and read Morning Prayer for 3 Sundays.

And so on.

One wonders, as this diminishment goes on, “What is the LCD? What’s the limit?”  At what point does a congregation realize that it has reached the limits of its viability and that survival by means of the LCD is just not good enough?

It is deflating, this decline to the LCD. 

It is not like math, where arriving at the LCD allows you to do greater things, like adding and subtracting fractions and working equations.  In the Church, when we arrive at the LCD, it allows us only to chug on at the most dispirited pace and with a mindset focused on scarcity. And, while done in good faith to preserve what has been glorious, arriving at the Ecclesiastical LCD ends up to be discouraging, even if it sometimes goes unsaid.

Do not confuse arrival at the parish LCD with simplicity.

I love simplicity in worship.  The clarity of silence.  The purity of unison, acapella singing.  A wooden table, a basket of bread, a carafe of wine.  Prayers read from our prayer book with space between the words to allow the Holy Spirit to weave in and through our thoughts.   It is a holy space when we worship God in reverence and awe, no matter how fine the linen, how long the procession or how elaborate the vestments.  Simplicity is honest and good.

Arriving down a long slope to the LCD of church, though, is a call for frank conversation and a re-awakening to our purpose.

We’ve worked hard at fixing things in the church for the past 20 years or so as things have begun to change.  We’ve worked to increase stewardship, make our parishes more inviting, find the most appealing hour to offer Sunday School, tested out contemporary worship styles, new sermon styles, newcomer programs and adult formation.  We’ve done a very good job, many of us, in meeting our neighbor’s needs and providing the space for God’s transforming love to work on our hearts.  And for those who have grown and prospered, we are glad.

For others, it is perhaps time to look around and stop trying to fix things that cannot be fixed and to stop paring away at the life of the Church to arrive at the LCD.   It is time to open ourselves to new ways of being Christ’s community-  new ways that we will only imagine if we let go of some of our old dreams and boldly reach out to each other-  in collaboration, in fellowship, and in the spirit of cooperation.   God will guide us, keep us, and save us. There is mercy and grace.  And in that, there is hope.

What do you think of the LCD?

memorial day

The blog will be suspended this week in observance of Memorial Day.
Pray for peace among the nations.

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

a chicken in every pot?

In the presidential campaign of 1928 in which Herbert Hoover ran against Alfred Smith (and won by a landslide), he used the slogan: "If I am elected, there will be a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."

Considering what happened just a year later, I'm not sure that came to fruition, but the dream and sentiment persisted, and not just in the area of poultry and automobiles...

The Episcopal Church has had two heydays in its American history.

The first was in the late 1800s and the other was in the mid-twentieth century. (For a great graphic look at this, check out this link-

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/files/number_of_episcopal_congregations_by_year_founded.pdf  )

In the New England diocese of my origin, at the time when I was serving (early 2000s) there were 172 parishes in a diocese with 169 towns.

In our diocese, the number of churches is fewer, and the playing field is different:  here, we are more likely to talk about  counties than towns.  I am still learning the difference between townships and boroughs and cities, but it appears that our planting of congregations has been judicious. (There are 25 counties in our diocese and approximately 750 municipalities in Central PA including everything from one-stop sign towns to large urban centers.  In some of my research, I have learned that what we call "Central PA" is really three different geographic regions:  South Central, Central, and North Central.  There's a lot to learn!)

Two years ago, now, when my husband and I took a road trip to look around at the Diocese of Central PA, we got to giggling as we entered every small township and found not one, but two or more Methodist churches in every town square.  We would pull up to the stop sign, look across the square and say, "Methodist!,"  and then confirm our hunch, as we pulled closer to the building.  The Methodists, by example, have 850 parishes in their Susquehanna Conference alone which covers the metropolitan areas of Altoona, State College, Williamsport, Harrisburg, York, Lewisburg,and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.  Wow. This is due, mostly to numerous mergers during the 20th century which made the United Methodist Church the second-largest Protestant denomination in the USA behind the Southern Baptist Convention. A merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Protestant Church in 1939, resulted in the formation of the Methodist Church. Coupled with the Evangelical United Brethren, the United Methodist Church (UMC) was formed in 1968. 

Denominational Statistics are fascinating to me-  but here's the point:  I think that we need to break the mindset of a church in every town, a priest in every parish, a  chicken in every pot, ecclesiastically speaking.  It is time for us to explore ways to think regionally about our church and to think about how we can have "an Episcopal Presence" in towns where there may not be a physical Episcopal structure.  We need to think about our convocations as mission fields that include townships and boroughs with no Episcopal presence, but that can still receive the ministrations of our Church.

So what might that look like?

Some of the ideas that might seem fresh to us today are old, actually, and extend back to the days of the Colonial settlement and the later Westward Expansion of our country. (For a good read on this with a Central PA connection, read My People of the Plains by The Rt. Rev. Ethelbert Talbot, third Bishop of Central PA, as he tells about his missionary experience ministering in the Rocky Mountain Region in the territory we now call Idaho and Wyoming in the late 1800s.)

Here are some ideas:

Circuit Riding (as the jobs shrink in size, invite one clergy person or a team of clergy people to minister to several congregations.)

Clustering  this is similar to circuit riding where each parish maintains its own building but as a group, the parish entities share resources like bookkeeping, parish administrators, train up one team for pastoral calling, etc.

Merging  Two parishes (or more) combine and form a new entity with one parish body and  one location and one priest.  This is most successful if the chosen site is new to each party.

Mission Fields  Send a team of ministers- lay and ordained- into a place with no Episcopal church and conduct services in a secular setting (i.e.: coffee shop, park, library) or rent space from another denomination.  Personally, I prefer the idea of an Episcopal service in a secular setting rather than a  "borrowed" church as it feels  more welcoming to some unchurched folks. Do this on a regular, weekly or monthly basis.

Pop-up Church  Plan a regional, semi-spontaneous rotation of Episcopal worship in places where there is no Episcopal church in order to raise awareness of our tradition and provide direction to the closest planted Episcopal church- focus on a spring and summer of worship in parks:  call it "For the Beauty of the Earth" and publish a schedule of different parks that you'll be setting up services in for the months of May-Sept.

Seasonal Collaboration  form a cluster of churches that have, say, 3 ordained ministers for 6 churches and rotate priestly presence by the season.  Maybe one or more of the churches is closed down for a season at a time and the congregation attends their sister church. (Good signage explaining the location of the worshipping community when not at their home space is essential so as not to miss occasional visitors and can actually be presented in a way that lauds the good stewardship of resources.)

Ecumenical Partnerships  in some places, Lutheran and Episcopal Congregations worship together, in the same building at the same time  with one pastor/priest and they alternate using Lutheran or Episcopal liturgies by the week, month or season.  It works!

Building Sharing/Faith Sharing  invite another congregation from another denomination (not ELCA or Old Catholic or Moravian with whom we are already in full communion) to share your building.Every other week worship in the tradition of the other denomination. Episcopalians welcome all the baptized to share in our sacramental worship.  We are welcome in many other traditions, as well.  This does not provide an "Episcopal experience" or one of "Common Mission" every week, but it might work in some very rural areas.

Home Church gather a group of folks for Episcopal worship in homes, taking turns.  Stained glass and organ music is nice, but not essential.

These ideas do not touch on the idea of lay presidency of the eucharist, intentionally.  That is a bigger subject to open at another time.  And, it offers a rich variety of possibilities for worship that at this time are not canonically  permissible in our Church... but stay tuned.  There's so much to think about.

For now, share your responses in the comments section or on Facebook about the various physical and structural possibilities presented here and please, give some of your own good ideas!