Oversight

Editorial

We've a new bishop in Tennessee. That it took us all this time should be a clear message of a state of affairs that we dare not allow our new overseer to overlook. May he -- and we -- be blessed with the secure grace of enough chutzpah to risk the effective servant leadership we need so gravely and have lacked for so long.

One obvious signal he can send is how he will cooperate with vestries and others in the deployment of clergy. Whether he overrides lay leadership and encourages only his clones as in the recent past or seeks and affirms true colleagues who won't ultimately turn against him, who speak minds of their own to enrich his own apparently perceptive sensitivity. Put another way and as his ordination vows affirm, "will (he) sustain (his) fellow presbyters and take counsel with them?"

Another signal is what kind of ministry our new bishop wants for all of us, whether it will be for secular success ("plant" new churches at the cost of those already existing and accumulate more debt) or for the enabling of congregations so winsome that people simply can't stay away.

Still another question is to whom will we be called to minister? Will it continue to be the classy new suburbs of mega-million dollar houses with three-car garages or perhaps those other changing and growing communities in our diocese? Those that now present us with economic, cultural, and linguistic landscapes that should we turn from our pained introspection and our secular criteria for success, we would scarcely recognize.

I asked our new bishop when he was yet making the rounds in the dog and pony lead-up to his election what sacrifice he would ask of the diocese were he elected. After a welcome and refreshingly thoughtful reflection, he said, "I would ask you to trust me." All might find those to be more comfortable words and of the better way to begin anew.

I asked some colleagues of mixed persuasions for their opinions about future diocesan directions. I found that we all yearn primarily for reconciliation among the laity as well as the clergy.

Only one suggested a way we might achieve this. "Orthopraxis always trumps orthodoxy," he wrote and then advised a serious look at something Jesus seemed to like a lot and which is also a favorite of our new PB. You know how it goes -- "preach good news to the poor... proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind... set at liberty those who are oppressed... and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (cf Lk 4.14-21).

"In our inner cities," he continued, "in the 'haunts of wretchedness and need' two, perhaps three generations are perishing for want of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as incarnated in the ministries of his Church. It is not enough to have compassion from a distance, for compassion isn't necessarily justice.

"When we creatively engage ourselves directly in fulfilling our Baptismal Covenant's justice ministry," he concluded, "we will find that the reconciliation we so desire and that so eludes us, will be accomplished in our midst."

[The Covenant Journal, Number 24, March 2007]