Rector’s Report to the Annual Meeting:
“They love you over there”
The Reverend Donald L. Hamer
January 28, 2007
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
1 Corinthians 13: 1-13
A few years ago I heard a series of radio spots on the subject of Love. A typical broadcast would feature an adult announcer asking a question to a young child such as, “What does love look like?” In one particular ad the child responded, “Love looks like giving my friend Sally part of my sandwich.” The adult feigned surprise and asked, “How does giving your friend part of your sandwich look like love?” And the child responded, “Well, yesterday Sally forgot her lunch at home. When we were at lunch, I saw that she didn’t have a sandwich. So I gave her half of my sandwich, and my friend Jane gave her some of her grapes, and my friend Robbie gave her some of his potato chips. That’s what love looks like.”
In this morning’s passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives us a similar statement about the essential elements of Christian love. Bert Landman points out in his “Music Notes” this morning that Chapter 13 is often associated with celebrations of Marriage. It should not be lost on us that in the traditions of Christianity, the institution of the Church has long been identified as the “bride” of Christ – that is, being the necessary partner of Christ in continuing his missionary work on earth. And so it is particularly appropriate to focus on this passage as we reflect on the status of Trinity Episcopal Church on this day of our Annual Parish Meeting.
But we will not understand the full impact of this morning’s passage unless we look at it in context. Last week we read the end of Chapter 12, in which St. Paul has identified a series of spiritual gifts from God. He has pointed out that each member of Christ’s body – the Church – has a special gift. He stresses that unless every member of the body is exercising his or her own special gift, Christ’s body is not complete, and so it is not functioning as it should. He emphasizes that no one in Christ’s body has a monopoly on ALL of the gifts, and that no one gift is greater or more important than any other gift. He closes Chapter 12, curiously, with these words: But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still better way. And with that, he introduces Chapter 13, which we heard this morning.
Recalling that the church in Corinth was a badly divided organization, St. Paul’s words to us this morning are all the more important. Not only does he imply that among all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Love alone stands in some sort of hierarchy. He seems to imply that one of the properties of Love is to pull together all of the other gifts and to give them special meaning. For example, if I have the gift of tongues, he says, but not the gift of love, all of my talk is really just a bunch of meaningless noise. If I have the gift of prophecy, but don’t have love, I have nothing. If I have a faith strong enough to move mountains, but do not have love, similarly, I have nothing. I can even give up my life, but if I don’t have love, that giving of my life has been meaningless.
It is in this context that I want to report to you this morning the status of Trinity Episcopal Church as I see it on this Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany 2007. Because irrespective of all of the wonderful things we may or may not have done during the past year, if we have done them without love, we may as well close up shop and go elsewhere.
Last year at this time, I called upon all of us to keep Christ at the center of everything we do. I called upon us to be more conscious of not just being self-proclaimed followers of Jesus, but to be Doers of the Word as well. I encouraged each of us to be responsible in seeing that we were growing into becoming true disciples of Jesus – sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in everything we do, everywhere we go, all of the time. This morning’s passage from First Corinthians reminds us that to be true disciples we must above all do everything we do in the spirit of Love which God gave to us in the person of Jesus.
And so, beginning with our Vestry retreat and continuing throughout this past year, we have spent a lot of time studying what discipleship means here at Trinity. We looked at our strengths as a community – the fundamental tools that we bring to the task of living out our Christian life and ministry. Beginning in mid-October, we began preparations for the Futuring Conference held last weekend under the guidance of Dr. Cynthia Woolever from Hartford Seminary. Every member of this parish provided Dr. Woolever with written responses to various questionnaires covering everything from the functioning of committees, to our hospitality to newcomers and to long-time members alike, to interactions between the congregation and clergy and lay staff. Dr. Woolever was very impressed by the level of participation from this congregation, and for that I personally want to express my gratitude as well. As I frequently observe, the Parish of Trinity Church is not the building or the staff, or any of the committees, but all of us together as the Body of Christ. Long after I retire – which I pray is a long way off – it is important that there be a 13th rector of Trinity who has the privilege, as I do, of being the spiritual leader of a vibrant, forward-looking community of faith committed to being the face of Jesus in this community and beyond.
And so last weekend Dr. Woolever was here from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening. I have to tell you, I had many high expectations for this weekend – I have wanted to do something like this for a couple of years. As high as my expectations were, I am delighted to tell you that they were exceeded. Instead of reviewing what is past and reported in your annual reports, I would like to spend a few minutes now reviewing where I think it is we need to be going in the months to come.
During the next week or so, the post office willing, you should be receiving a copy of Dr. Woolever’s report. As did the entire conference last week, Dr. Woolever focuses on three main questions:
1. Where are we strong as a congregation?
2. Where would we like to grow stronger as a congregation?
3. How, exactly, can we go about growing stronger as a congregation?
As any good strategic plan for the future should, Dr. Woolever begins her report with a list of the strengths of this parish. And the good news is that we are a basically healthy parish, with many, many strengths. The one mentioned most frequently by you was the perception that we are an open, inclusive and diverse community of faith. Closely related to that was another perceived strength: That we are welcoming to visitors. I want to dwell on this finding for a moment, because it relates perfectly with the passage from Corinthians this morning, and I think it needs to form the basis for everything else we take from this experience.
During this past year, when I have spoken to others about our mission and ministry here at Trinity, I have been using more and more a term that is a quality of churches that approach everything they do in a spirit of love. That term is Radical Hospitality. What do we mean by hospitality? Welcoming everyone, no matter who they are. Inviting everyone into our midst, into the full life of our community, with a heartfelt spirit of warmth, kindness and generosity. When we practice Radical hospitality, we provide a welcome that comes as second nature to us – it is deep-seated, part of the essence of who we are. It’s not something we put on when we leave our house or apartment on Sunday morning, and remove like some garment the minute we return. It is not something that we do for a change of pace. It is who we really are at our core, in our heart, and we express it most fully when we live it at the place we call our spiritual home, Trinity Episcopal Church.
Dr. Woolever lists many other strengths: Strong music ministry; high value placed on community service ministries; a spirit of warmth and caring among members; a beautiful place of worship in a historic building; excellent liturgy and engaging worship; a dedicated and talented core group of lay leaders; many activities and programs; use of the arts in worship and programming; our urban location; good clergy leadership and excellence in preaching; an atmosphere of fellowship and fun among members; a commitment to Christian formation, and high value on children and youth ministries; flexibility; and a positive attitude and atmosphere among members.
Given these strengths, how do we want to build upon them to continue becoming stronger as the Body of Christ at Trinity? We as a congregation identified four areas in particular as ways in which we want to develop:
1. Increase our ability to attract and retain adults ages 18 to 44 and their families.
2. Increase our worship attendance and membership.
3. Increase the percentage of members actively involved in our various ministries.
4. Strengthen our financial stewardship.
Guiding us in pursuing these goals over the next year will be a Futuring Team chaired by Penny Pearson and with Daniel Dollar, Ray Esponda, Jacqui Johnson, Linda MacGougan, Pam Williams and me as members. They will begin meeting this very week to serve a guidance and coordination function as our Vestry and Committees consider ways in which our congregation can continue to evolve in positive ways. Here are just some of the initiatives that we will be considering:
Most immediately is the issue of staffing. Having significantly fewer staff hours today than we did three years ago, we continue to draw far too heavily on our endowment in order to balance our budget. I will own my own version of George H.W. Bush’s famous “Read My Lips: No New Taxes” statement of 1992. Last year I stood before you at the annual meeting and, in response to a question, said that I would not stand before you this year with another $100,000+ deficit in the budget. I have tried to achieve that in two major ways: 1) Not immediately hiring a full-time successor to Fr. Horace when he retired – Mother Joan is serving in a one-half time capacity; and 2) Not hiring a Director of Religious Education when Lesley Markham resigned to assume her duties as our Financial Manager. Both have achieved significant cost savings, but at a price that seems to high to pay. At a time when we have more children coming into our Church School and Journey to Adulthood programs, the faithful and talented teachers in those programs are at the same time obliged to coordinate the programs and curricula, and in the case of the teenagers, to plan, publicize and carry out social and outreach activities that require independent supervision. And so two of the recommendations coming out of our Futuring Conference requiring immediate attention are that we hire a full- or part-time Director of Religious Education for Children and Youth no later than July 1, and that by that same date, we hire a full- or part-time clergy person when Mother Joan completes her interim term on June 30.
For the most part, the remaining recommendations do not necessarily carry a price tag, but rather involve improving the way we do some things that we do reasonably well already. Organizationally, we will be looking at ways to streamline our committee structures and, at the same time, improve coordination and communication among our various ministries. This will inevitably involve reviewing and sharpening our mission statement in order that we may more easily align all of our efforts with our stated mission.
We will be looking for ways in which we can nurture relationships with both existing members and with prospective new members of our congregation. Particularly with respect to worship guests and people who are seeking a relationship with a congregation, we are looking for parishioners who feel called to our ministry of hospitality and work with the clergy and lay leadership in formalizing our process for welcoming and integrating new members fully into the life of our community. Mother Joan, Yejide, and Deacon Al have already begun to invite members of the congregation as we seek to strengthen pastoral care ministries.
As a follow-up to the conference, Bert and I have continued an ongoing discussion about continuing to enhance the worship experience for all of our parishioners by showing equal respect for the needs of multiple generations as well as for the many cultural traditions which we value so highly here at Trinity. Again, we welcome any parishioners who feel called to contribute to these ministries.
A final area which bears mention here is our Trinity Outreach Ministries. I rejoice that through our Light and Peace Program, which has a record number of participants, and the work of our Trinity Tutors at the West Middle Elementary School, our witness to the Love of Jesus Christ has blossomed here on Asylum Hill. I pray that we will continue to strengthen our ties to the community and be known as both a welcome and welcoming presence.
Not so positive is the news from our partner parish in Tanzania. As you know, Debbie and I visited Mbugani Parish and Tumbi and Mpungu missions in late July, when I was actually teaching at the Tabora Diocesan Clergy Conference at the invitation of Bishop Sadock Makaya. That visit could not have been more positive and fulfilling for Debbie and me, as it was for our hosts. However, there are larger forces at work here.
By now, many of you have heard about the action taken by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Tanzania in early December. I have written about it in detail in this month’s edition of The Voice. Sadly, the House of Bishops of Tanzania declared their Church in a state of “impaired communion” with the Episcopal Church over issues of biblical interpretation and, in particular, of human sexuality. The apparent reason for the statement was a perceived lack of substantive response by the Episcopal Church to the standards of the so-called “Windsor Report” which established a kind of road map for ongoing discussions within the Anglican Communion on the subject of human sexuality.
As a result of its findings, the House of Bishops of Tanzania has prohibited Tanzanian churches from accepting any kind of support, financial or otherwise, from most Episcopal churches. This decision has an obvious impact on our partner relationship with Mbugani Holy Trinity Anglican Church, which we helped to build and for whose high school students we have been paying high school tuition, books and uniforms for the past five years.
Since the decision was made, I have been regularly communicating by e-mail with Bishop Makaya and with Canon Isaya. I have shared with the bishop my personal heartbreak over this decision, and the deep sorrow that we will feel as a congregation.
On a positive note, I am happy to report that the love of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are working among us even during this time of difficulty. My ongoing conversations with Bishop Makaya are warm, frank and providing new understanding to both of us. We are both encouraged by our ongoing dialogue. I am also in contact with the retired Bishop of Tabora, Francis Ntiruka, who is spending the winter in Florida with his wife, Miriam. The have visited Trinity before and will be visiting us again when they are in Connecticut in late February. I have extended an invitation to them as a way to continue and expand our dialogue and appreciation for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. I am heartened that because of the personal relationship we have established God is able to continue working among us even now. Our Outreach Committee and Vestry have voted to pray over this situation between now and June and at that time to consider how to proceed. In the meantime, I ask you to pray for our brothers and sisters in Tanzania, in particular for Bp. Makaya, Canon Isaya, Evangelists Danny and Eric, and the members of Mbugani Parish and Tumbi and Mpungu missions. Let us pray for a spirit of openness and dialogue that these two parts of Christ’s body may soon be reunited.
And so, we have a lot of work ahead of us. But it’s good work. It’s God’s work, and it’s our privilege at this time and in this place to have it set before us. When we don’t see the path clearly, or we’re not sure of the way, it is Christ’s love and Holy Spirit who will guide us through. I want to close with a final comment about the importance of Christ’s love in our life of discipleship.
In Chicago a few years ago a little boy attended a Sunday school. When his parents moved to another part of the city the little fellow still attended the same Sunday school, although it meant a long, tiresome walk each way. A friend asked him why he went so far, and told him that there were plenty of others just as good nearer his home.
“They may be as good for others, but not for me,” was his reply.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because they love you over there,” he replied.
They love you over there. My brothers and sisters, we have all kinds of plans, many dreams we want to follow, lots of processes that we want to get in place. And all of these are important to our effective functioning as a community. But I want you to know that my prayer for us here at Trinity is that whatever else people may say about us, they will always say, “They love you over there.” AMEN.