Bishop’s Address to the 203rd Convention

Living Hope – Bishop’s Address 2024

Beloved in Christ,

We gather in convention celebrating our living hope in a risen savior as we continue to work on discerning how the Spirit is leading us into the future. 

Since we last met in convention in Augusta, that city has been hit hard by Hurricane Helene. As I said in my sermon this morning, the aftermath showed Episcopalians serving their neighbors including at Saint Paul’s where our previous convention Eucharist was celebrated and the Byllesby Center which is supported significantly by Good Shepherd where the convention met in the school gym. While many of us have been able to move on, it will be quite a while before many people in Central and South Georgia can say their lives are back to normal. Crisis reveals what is already present in a community and the Hurricane revealed the faith and resilience of our people and communities.

 Since that gathering, I made 50 visitations to congregations, as well as visiting Episcopal Day School and our campus ministry at Georgia Southern, for 52 of the 69 visitations that make up an 18-month cycle of visits. I also had the privilege of officiating seven ordinations since we last met in convention and the honor of serving in the funerals for priests of this Diocese and the funeral for Bishop Harry Shipps’ beloved wife, Louise, who was herself long woven into the fabric of the Diocese of Georgia.

In my address last year, I called for a strategic planning process and said, “I pledge to you that I will take the time to listen ever more in this coming year through a process that reveals our common goals.”

Since then, I worked with the Executive Council of our Diocesan Council to select Armstrong, McGuire, and Associates to guide that work. As you heard from Mendi Nieters and Todd Brantley, they interviewed more than 16 people one-on-one, held 10 in-person and online listening sessions with 215 participants, and conducted a survey to learn more; nearly 500 of you answered that call. We will use a session this afternoon and another tomorrow to further the discernment toward that plan. I also said last year in my address, “I look forward to the journey of discovery and to the ways God will use the process of creating a strategic plan to reveal what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in this moment.”

Through these meetings, those of you who attended will know of the great hope within those meetings. There is a strong sense that we are connected to one another in meaningful ways. There are also lots of you who want to step forward and help so that what we accomplish together is not just bishop and staff driven, but will increasingly be you, the people of the Diocese, making new connections and assisting others in your area or even across the Diocese in ways that make a huge impact. Mendi and Todd told me that compared to other similar groups what stood out in the Diocese of Georgia is how many people know and care about each other, how connected we are and want to be. They also noted how we didn’t long for more money as the answer to everything, but we see that we need to be faithful to how the Spirit is leading us and we will see that we already have who and what we need to thrive.

One way this is true for me is seeing that we already had an elegant solution possible for using the property we already own in ways that will unlock more mission. In the first quarter of 2025, we will be moving the diocesan offices to a new Episcopal Center on the corner of Washington and Waters Avenues in Savannah. That move is waiting on an extensive renovation effort funded by the sale of the former rectory adjoining the building. The location is the former home of St. Michael and All Angels in Savannah. The benefits of the new location include having more ample parking and better, more accessible meeting spaces for diocesan gatherings while maintaining existing ministry services in the area including operating a food pantry and providing space for community groups to gather. Additionally, the worship space will become a diocesan chapel that can still be used by the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, while also being available when helpful to the Diocese. Mostly, this move emphasizes ministries happening concurrently in the same space, while offering the potential for much more. This change will also add to the diocesan budget through a sustainable additional draw which will create additional opportunities for us to adapt.

This decision is not about money. This move is about focusing on what matters most. Worship is the heart of ministry and so all of our congregations matter. The work of your bishop and diocesan staff is also important ministry as is feeding our neighbors in need and otherwise engaging with the community around us. I look forward to welcoming you all to this new center for our ministry in midtown Savannah.

One critical place for us to discern together is with our retreat center, it is time for us to find a new way forward. We can’t keep trying harder to make our current model of running Honey Creek work. If trying harder at the same thing would yield a sustainable future, we would already be there. There are no two people who work harder than Dade Brantley and GeorgeAnne Younger. If they can’t make this work, then something has to change. I am convinced that if we were to lose this parish hall of the Diocese, the next owners would turn a profit on that piece of property. Yet, we have within the networks of our Diocese, people who can assist us in a way that makes that asset work for us. To that end, I am taking three steps to address this directly and I am asking you to support me as we move in this direction.

 First, I have added a $50,000 line item to the diocesan budget for Honey Creek support. This is in addition to staff costs we already pay from the diocesan budget. I do this as we have been supporting the Honey Creek budget as needed since the lockdown of the pandemic and it is the honest approach to name that reality. This will assist us in literally buying time in 2025 for the next two parts of the plan.

Second, I am making changes in our staffing to meet the expressed needs of the Diocese. I will get to that shortly as I share the ways that I am beginning to respond to the feedback I have gotten through the strategic planning process. While those staffing decisions are not made for the sake of Honey Creek,  they will enable us to hold more events for both adults and youth at Honey Creek in 2025. These events will be repeated in future years. They will have the Diocese using our retreat center more often.

Third and most important, I told the Diocesan Council in our meeting in September that I will appoint a Task Group of the next Council to take a prayerful, in-depth look at Honey Creek. Task Groups of Council have, since I became your bishop, been a way to gather expertise to address some key concerns. This is part of how we are unlocking the potential within our diocesan community with more people stepping forward to lead, just as you named in the listening session.

We have been using Task Groups to completely revised our Constitution and Canons, addressed our Companion Diocese relationship, looked at our means of assessing congregations, and recommended changes to the schedule for our diocesan conventions. In the past year, a Task Group has been considering the cottage the Diocese has owned in Saluda, North Carolina since the early 1900s as a place for clergy and lay leaders to have relatively inexpensive time away in the mountains. This group, led by the Very Rev. Tom Purdy did some commendable work to look at this property from all sides. That work will continue in the coming year. It demonstrated to the Council the type of work we can do with Honey Creek to either find a sustainable path forward or to admit that we don’t have one. It is time for this realistic appraisal of what it means to own and operate a camp and retreat center. I believe that these three steps taken together—budget support and increasing diocesan usage in 2025 while we empower a group to do some hard work on behalf of all of us—will chart a path for the coming years, one way or another. We owe this change in approach to future generations of the Diocese and to Dade and GeorgeAnne who pour their hearts into keeping Honey Creek operating.

As I have been getting feedback from the listening sessions and the survey, I have seen the direction the  Diocese wishes to move. While there is more to hear, I already see clearly the ways in which the diocesan staff has to be more responsive to you, the people of the Diocese. There are two tiers in the Diocese—those who know staff well and have no trouble getting what they need from staff and those who don’t know who to call or how to learn where to go for help. This is not based on the size of a congregation, but the familiarity with the team. This cannot continue. To address this, I am taking a multi-pronged approach. We are making which staff to call for what is more readily evident on the website. We will also have a complete website redesign in 2025 with the sole goal of making it easier for you to find who you need and what you need. In addition, our phone system now lets a caller more easily reach the person you need. Additionally, I know that I need a Chief of Staff as my travel schedule has me away from the office enough that the staff needs a leader who is with them when I am traveling. Some other changes on staff are taking some responsibilities off of Canon Loren Lasch’s load and I am naming her the Canon to the Ordinary and Chief of Staff. This acknowledges some of what has already been a part of her work with the staff  and leaning into it more.

As I have noted, I was gratified to learn that many of you who took part experienced the same sense of connection to something larger that I have long enjoyed in the Diocese of Georgia. But not everyone is benefitting from that, so that I also see how we need to add to our sense of connection with more ways to support one another.

 In learning the general idea of what was said in the one-on-one interviews, the listening sessions, and then in survey responses, I see that we need a member of the diocesan staff to assist me in increasing the opportunities for connection. To do this, I need someone who knows and loves the congregations, clergy, and lay leaders, while having top-notch project management skills. I could see that we already have this in Canon Joshua Varner. He has agreed to take on a change in his work for the Diocese to become our Canon for Congregational Vitality. His work will be to increase the connections within the diocese in support of our lay leaders and clergy. For example, this will include an offering each February to bring Senior Wardens together online to meet with me and staff and to get an introduction to what the Diocese can do for churches of every size. He will also be bringing back the one-day training we offered in each convocation to develop capacity in our church leaders. This will be just part of the ways we engage more at the convocation level with increased connection. Canon Varner will also add to the Lay Leaders’ Retreat with some other events at Honey Creek including training for Lay Worship Leaders and Lay Preachers who can effectively lead worship for their church when a priest is not present. I am confident that we can create a community among those leading worship that will strengthen what we offer on Sundays when there is not a Eucharist. We have gifted followers of Jesus who are not called to the priesthood, but who can offer engaging sermons and Spirit-filled worship. We need to support those already doing this work and invite others to join in. This is how I want to build on the strength that y’all named in the strategic planning process as Joshua’s role is to assist you, the people of the Diocese, in stepping up to assist others.

This change for Joshua means that he will be stepping away from his work with youth ministries. I am incredibly grateful for his many years of dedication to the youth of the Diocese of Georgia! Moving forward, we will need a new person to lead our critical work with youth. Youth ministry is vitally important, not because youth are the future of the church. Youth are the church now. And we all know how much these years matter. It is a miracle people get out of middle school and high school with any shred of self-esteem. Most people sometime between the age of 10 and 25 pick up emotional wounds that will remain festering and seeping poison into their psyches unless they can find healing. At 40, they remember the name of the bully in sixth grade and at 50, they recall the friend who gossiped and betrayed them. In youth programs, we get to be alongside our kids and teens during these years offering them the sure and certain knowledge that God loves them. Mendy Grant has accepted my invitation to chair a committee made up of experienced youth leaders and more importantly, with teens on the committee assisting in designing what comes next for our Diocesan Youth Ministry. That group will be named in the coming weeks and begin their work with an in-person meeting at Honey Creek. During the interim, Liz Williams will keep Happening running and assist Karen Bell with New Beginnings; we will also assist Karen in her directing summer camp; and I will ask some youth leaders to plan and carry out some additional events even as we create a position description and hire someone to do this essential ministry.

I was surprised and delighted when our search for a new Canon for Administration ended with Andrew Austin accepting this call. He has already demonstrated as Treasurer his focus on the mission of the church as driving our sense of what it means to be effective. In his new role he will continue to help us ask the important questions surrounding our ministry: Are the ways in which we are deploying our resources resulting in more people coming to experience faith in Jesus, are those who already are in our pews encouraged and offered ways to deepen their faith, and are we reaching out to our communities to share that love with others? 

With Daniel Garrick choosing to step down as Assistant Administrator, we have a vacant staff position. We will not fill that yet, but the existing team will work together to cover the responsibilities through the end of the year. We will listen to what emerges from this convention and we will notice the gaps that need staff support. Then we will be in a position to decide how to best staff the Diocese with your needs in mind.

In order to keep you informed about the ways in which I have heard you and am beginning to respond, this address has focused a lot on Honey Creek and Diocesan Staff. But these are the levers at hand for me to begin to shift us in the direction that you named that is built on a desire to better be there for one another. I trust that you know that my real focus is not to make an institution more effective, as important as that is. The Diocese only matters to the degree it supports the Body of Christ in this corner of the vineyard. My goal, your diocesan staff’s goal, is to support you and your congregations for the purpose of bringing glory to God and bringing more people into a relationship with Jesus.

In every community where we have a church, we are surrounded by people who still need the grace, mercy, and love found only in Jesus. They need this more than they need air and water and yet they are sure that the one place where they won’t find that vital is in a church as they have been hurt by the church or only seen Christians as hypocritical. The world is not waiting for us to get our act together and so come flocking through our doors. We have to do what is necessary in inviting new people to worship with us, welcoming newcomers as if welcoming Jesus and then connecting them to the Body of Christ in our congregations. This is the work of every generation as we pass our faith on to those who will follow. We know that fewer people in younger generations are attending church. If we don’t work now to connect with them, they won’t find their way to the faith that nourishes us. That is an avoidable tragedy. For we know that our neighbors need Jesus as much as we do. We are to be faithful now as those who founded our churches were in their day. We know that the Holy Spirit has done not only the difficult, but also the seemingly impossible before and can and surely will do it again. 

 We have a living hope in a risen savior and this is no time to shrink back from the challenges before us, for greater is the one that is in us than the one that is in the world. As your chief priest and pastor, I find myself, as always, extremely grateful to be with you on this team.

Amen.