I would like to begin by welcoming
our new Diocesan Bishop, Leo Frade and his wife Diana. Welcome
to the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida and to this Diocesan
Convention, Leo and Diana. I hope and pray that your life and
time among us will be exciting, joyful and fulfilling for both
of you as well as for all of us. I pray it will be a time of growth
and change that will be pleasing in God’s sight. Again, welcome
to you both.
And, now, Rt. Rev Sir, Delegates,
Visitors and Friends. I would like to share with you a short quotation
that I found in a Parish newspaper recently. I have already shared
it with the Executive Board. It goes like this:
"I’m not what I ought to be.
I’m not what I wish to be.
I’m not even what I hope to be,
But by God’s Grace and Christ’s
love, I’m not what I was."
When I first read that I thought
of myself. I thought of me personally. I’m not what I ought to
be, or wish to be or even what I hope to be. But by the Grace
of God and the Love of Christ I’m not what I was. The more I pondered
these notions the more I felt that this also applied to us as
a Diocesan Family. Look at our history, we have grown, changed
and hopefully matured in our understanding of God and of each
other. We are not what we were.
Recently in the Miami Herald there
was an article concerning the Southeast Florida community and
its diversity. After reading that article I guess I still didn’t
understand just how diversified we are. Then we hired Percept
to help us with demographics, growth and diversity itself. I began
to understand. Percept tells us that in sociological terms there
are fifty different lifestyles in the United States that they
measure and research. Forty-nine of those fifty are present within
the borders of our Diocese. No other Diocese has that characteristic.
I was so staggered that I didn’t even think to ask about the one
we did not have. We are diverse. We come from many different countries,
we speak several languages, we are of different colors and of
course we are of different cultures. Until I came to South Florida
and St. Kevin’s I didn’t know how many different ways there are
to fix chickpeas and rice. Go to a parish pitch-in-dinner.
We are many but yet, we all belong
to the largest international organization in the world, the Christian
Church. You don’t need a passport, you don’t go through customs,
you just show up. We are all members of the Body of Christ through
our Baptism, we are sisters and brothers of Christ and of each
other, we are Episcopalian type followers of the Way of Christ
and by "God’s grace and Christ’s love we are not what we
were."
We are the Good News people of
God living in an area that has exploded in population and is now
exploding in technology. Cyber-beach we are called because we
are the focal point of the life between the northern and southern
parts of the western hemisphere. We are at the fulcrum of the
development of the western hemisphere. And so are our people.
The questions raised by growth,
change – even technology – are questions of values, worth and
even existence itself. Those questions are answered in the context
of the Life lived in Christ. How valuable is a human life? Is
it measured in dollars? When do you pull the plug? How and when
are guns to be used? How do we educate our children and what do
we teach them about violence, forgiveness, diversity, understanding?
Where does one find the answers? I know that these are rhetorical
questions. You know they are tough to answer. Where do we find
the answers unless we find them in Christ? You see I believe that
we hold in common and share an experience of Christ that the world
is hungry for and that the world needs. I believe that our experience
of Christ is of little or no value unless we share it with those
who know not our Lord. James tells us that Faith without Works
is Dead and the work of the Church is to share the riches of Christ
with anyone in need of it. Yes, that means starting new groups
of Christians and growing the groups that we have. Our Bishop
Diocesan has called us a Missionary Diocese. The Parishes are
then Missionary outposts and you and I are the Missionaries. Missionaries
are the people of God who bring other people to Christ.
There are lots of people we can
bring to Christ! There are Anglicans in our midst that don’t know
that Episcopalians are Anglicans. We can find them and bring them
to Church. There are un-churched people who have been ignored,
left out, forgotten. There are people who have never heard of
Christ. There are people who have been hurt by the Church, other
Churches and by our Church. Forgiveness, healing and understanding
are called for. There are people who have not understood the way
of Christ for whatever reason. We are the people of reconciliation
who are called to bring people to Christ.
The General Convention in Philadelphia
in 1997 passed a resolution requesting that each Diocese increase
the number of its parishes by one per cent per year. For us with
81 Parishes, that means one new Parish about every 15 months.
General Convention in Denver last summer passed a resolution called
20/20 Clear Vision, which calls us as a National Church to double
our membership by the year 2020. Our Diocesan Bishop at the recent
Clergy Conference called for us to double our membership in ten
years and to increase our parishes from the current eighty-one
to one hundred in the same time. We have already begun.
Last year at this time we accepted
San Francisco de Asis as a new congregation in this Diocese. That
moved us from 80 to 81 congregations. We have congregations that
are working separately in multi-cultural groups, congregations
that are working in separate cultural settings but using the same
buildings. And of course we have congregations that are working
and ministering in what appears to be a single cultural atmosphere.
I feel and I pray that we are all working to grow our congregations
where they are. Yet, we can do more. First: I would hope that
we could enlist Parishes of corporate size, and some program size
Parishes, to participate in the planting of new congregations.
This means that some of our planning and working for new groups
of people will need to be done on the Deanery level of administration.
That is where the decisions will be made concerning which comes
first the people or the land, the people or the money. I do not
believe that there are any hard and fast rules in this area of
development except one. That is that you and I need to be free
to dream, to imagine, to experiment, and to fail. We have been
promised that freedom in the Gospel and by our Bishop Diocesan.
We are not what we were.
In order to respond meaningfully
to the Gospel of Christ, to spread the Good News, and to bring
people to Christ our Bishops need to be free to be Bishops. Our
Priests need to be free to be Priests. Our Deacons need to be
free to be Deacons. And of course, our lay people need to be free
to be ministers of the Gospel using their time and talents in
the service of the Gospel – bringing needy human beings to Christ.
I believe that this means that each one of us re-evaluate our
ministry looking at how we spend our time working for God in and
through His Church. The principal priority for each one of us
needs to be those, which God has, called us to do to, that will
increase His Kingdom. For some of us that means we will be asked
to learn new skills. We may be asked to do things that we have
never done before. In all cases we will be called upon to share
our experience of Christ with someone. We will be asked to bring
someone to Church. We will be asked to introduce some one to Christ
and lead them into His Way.
"I’m not what I ought to be.
I’m not what I wish to be.
I’m not even what I hope to be,
But by God’s Grace and Christ’s
Love, I’m not what I was."
-- Source unknown
We are the people of the Kingdom
– the Kingdom of God. We are called to ‘represent Christ and His
Church and to bear witness to Him’ wherever we may be. Let us
be about our Father’s business.
