The Lead

Walk of abundance

An idea to help re-stock your church's food pantry from Episcopal News Service:

During the recent Spring Picnic at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi, parishioners created a unique labyrinth out of canned goods to benefit Stewpot’s Food Pantry.
Parishioners donated more than 1,700 cans of food and then used them to create a seven-circuit labyrinth. Cans of beans, mandarin oranges, carrots, tuna, peanut butter and tomatoes lined the one path to the center of the labyrinth and out again.

Both adults and children walked the winding food-lined path of abundance to the center. A small table with an empty white bowl at the labyrinth’s center served as a reminder that there are many empty bowls and stomachs in the community and state. When returning from the center, adults and children walked the same path, but this time the many cans challenged the walkers to take action and to do something for those who are hungry.

*ENS photo by Shannon Manning

Posted by Ann Fontaine on June 18, 2013 4:01 PM | Permalink | Digg this | Comments (1)

The Center for American Progress interviews the Rev. Liz Muñoz about the on-going strikes against fast food outlets. The strikes are occurring across the country to support fast food workers in their quest for a living wage and full time employment:

Listen to the interview here (mp3)

Jack Jenkins: Hello. My name is Jack Jenkins, Senior Writer and Researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative here at the Center for American Progress. With me today is Rev. Liz Muñoz, an Episcopal priest at St. James Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, who also sits on the board of directors for Arise Chicago, an organization that builds partnerships between faith communities and workers to fight workplace injustice through education, organizing, and advocating for public policy changes.

We brought in Rev. Muñoz this afternoon because she is involved with the Chicago iteration of what are being called the “fast-food strikes.” Since January, fast-food and retail workers in seven cities—New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, and most recently Seattle—have all gone on strike, walking out of their workplaces en masse demanding higher wages and the right to unionize. And the movement looks to be growing. But since these workers don’t usually have a union to organize them, they rely on partnerships with local community groups—including faith groups and faith leaders such as Muñoz—to help coordinate their efforts.

....

JJ: Just one more question. You’ve talked a lot about collaborations between faith groups and other community groups in Chicago during these fast-food strikes. Could you say a little bit more about the role of collaborations and coalition building in this work?

Liz Muñoz: Right. I think a lot of different organizations are coming together—churches, community-based groups such as Action Now here in Chicago, churches similar to my own—because there’s a crisis in this country, and we recognize that all these different issues are actually related. The issue of worker’s rights is related to the issue of immigrant rights. It’s related to the issue of women’s rights. It’s an economic issue too, because in this country, more and more of the wealth is at the top, and very, very little of the wealth is being dispersed among the people who need it most.
As the consequence 49 elementary schools just got closed down here in Chicago. There are less mental health and health care services available. There are less opportunities for people to come together and actually plan a future for themselves and for their children. So we come together as faith leaders to support those workers and those community leaders who are looking to improve not just the status of individual workers but also the condition of all people, so that the wealth that is being concentrated at the top can be distributed and shared and used to promote the well-being of all

Read or listen to the whole transcript here.

Posted by Ann Fontaine on June 18, 2013 12:07 PM | Permalink | Digg this | Comments (0)

Next Presiding Bishop: caretaker or visionary?

The Rev. Susan Snook and Dean Tom Ferguson offer differing perspectives on the election of the next Presiding Bishop and the work of restructuring the church.

Snook calls for a visionary leader and a Chief Operating Officer that is accountable to General Convention and Executive Council:

I believe that it is perfectly possible for us to elect a real agent of transformation as our next leader, and that that leader will be able to inspire change that our current structures will find very difficult to imagine. We need the kind of change that even the Task Force for Reimagining The Episcopal Church (TREC), with its mandate to consider new ways of doing things, will find it hard to convince the rest of the church to risk. That is why I hope the next Presiding Bishop will turn his/her attention from the issues that were most pressing in the current triennium (relations with the Anglican Communion and our own breakaway groups), to the issue that will be most pressing in the next (transformation for mission within the church).
...
I think real transformation happens with real leadership. And because I believe this, I can’t agree with the Crusty Old Dean’s suggestion that we elect a caretaker/interim PB at the next Convention. His argument is that we can’t elect a PB until we have defined the job. But I think that in order to change, we should elect a transformational leader, who shares the church’s vision and passion for change, and who has the ability to gather others around that vision....

... How is this (the current Office of COO) a healthy situation, for the General Convention and its elected interim representative, Executive Council, to have the power to fund a staff, but little power to hold the staff accountable? For the House of Deputies, one whole house of General Convention, to have no oversight over staff priorities because the staff is accountable to the Presiding Bishop and his/her appointed officers? (Please do not read this question as a criticism of the current CEO, COO, and staff, or anything they have done, but rather of the strange way these roles have evolved.)

This is why I think the Crusty Old Dean’s suggestion of having an elected COO, from any order of ministry, has real merit.

And Ferguson thinks a caretaker Presiding Bishop is what we need next:

1. Nominate candidates to be a caretaker PB, an experienced or even retired bishop who may be willing to serve for a triennium. We cannot elect a 9-year incumbent and possibly think we can make any changes to the office, so, in reality, we are locking in many aspects of our current structure through 2024 by electing a 9-year incumbent in 2015.

2. So essentially elect an interim PB in 2015 while the church considers proposals to restructure and rethink the church. Get a commitment from candidates, and have the PB-elect publicly announce, the intention to resign at the end of the 2018 General Convention. Instead of spending over $500,000 to transition to an office which might be restructured, why not actually think about changing the office? Currently we are coming up with a transition plan for the people in the office, not the office itself.

If we are able to make a first vote on Constitutional changes in 2015, and a second in 2018, then we could elect a new PB to serve under the new definitions of the office. If we are unable, we could do any number of things depending on circumstances. Ask the incumbent to stay on for three more years. We could elect someone to serve out the remainder of the term through 2024, and then elect someone under any new provisions. Sure, there would be some bumpiness and perhaps uncertainty, as in any kind of interim or transition period, but is this any worse than locking ourselves into our current system through 2024?

Both like the idea of a elected Chief Operating Office - believing it could be a lay or ordained person.

Read both blogs and add your thoughts about the upcoming election of a Presiding Bishop and re-visioning of the structure of the church.

Posted by Ann Fontaine on June 18, 2013 8:07 AM | Permalink | Digg this | Comments (19)

Hospitality is not enough

The Archbishop of Canterbury has written a lovely column about the ways in which Christians are called to cultivate and participate in community, but as much as I appreciate it, I have a small gripe. But first an excerpt from the column.

...Christian conversion calls us into a horizontal community, with all those others who are walking the path of Christian discipleship with us. Those are the communities that Livability is working with to help make them more effective. When they are good they are the most beautiful things on earth. Good does not mean perfect. Good means that they are open, hospitable and accepting. They start with the same basis that God starts with us, they accept people where they are but love them too much to leave them there. It is a rare treat to be part of such a community.

So what are the chief contributors to these horizontal communities, usually called ‘the church’? It is very similar to the vertical community. They always needs to leave space for the guest. In the sixth century Saint Benedict, in his rule for monasteries speaks of guests. He says (I suspect with a slight sense of weariness) that ‘there will be many of them’. Guests at medieval monasteries were there because they were travelling and needed somewhere safe to stay. You had no idea who they were, where they came from or where they were going. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity is like that, the space is there for whoever turns up. Real communities are not closed, like wagons trains in the Westerns, where the wagons are circled at night to keep all strangers out, but have space for all who turn up to take part.

Building real community means leaving space to accept all who come through the door and giving them the sense that the place to which they have come, the gap at the table, was there waiting especially for them. They may have disabilities (like many of us), or appear very on top of life. Either way the reality is of a community that is not there for its own sake but to bring those who find a place at its table to find a place at Gods’ table, where immeasurable love opens the way to extraordinary healing.

I have no objection to what the archbishop puts in, but I think he leaves too much out. Hospitality, typically defined, is extended to those who visit us, find us, those who show up. Increasingly the western world is ignoring the Christian church. Hospitality is not enough. Inclusion is not enough. Treating people well once they show up isn't going to spread the Gospel as broadly as we would like because not enough people are showing up in the first place.

Hospitality is not enough. Persistent, sometimes provocative invitation is necessary. And this is an art that in most places we are just beginning to cultivate.

Posted by Jim Naughton on June 17, 2013 7:54 PM | Permalink | Digg this | Comments (3)

Bishop on a motorbike

The Lutheran bishop of New England cuts quite a figure.

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