190^th Convention of the Diocese of Ohio, October 27 & 28, 2006.

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

Last spring I presented to the Diocesan Council a mission statement for the Diocese of Ohio. It resulted from two years of listening to you on parish visitations, in committee and commission work, at regional meetings and services across the diocese, and at Mission and Ministry, Evangelism, Stewardship, Outreach, and vocational discernment conferences. The Mission Statement was unanimously affirmed by the Diocesan Council and we have subsequently established a task force from across the diocese, representing our geographical, cultural, theological, and ecclesiological diversity, that will, with your help, discern over the next year the missions goals and strategies to achieve them that follow from it. That Task Force will give a very preliminary report later in this convention.

The Mission Statement reads:

The mission of the Diocese of Ohio is to build healthy communities that:

GROW in faith, numbers, and resources for mission,
GIVE sacrificially as a spiritual surrender of self to God, and
SERVE the world together as the risen body of Jesus Christ.

Grow, give, and serve. I offer this simple and challenging plan to you as individual Christians, as households and families, as Episcopal parishes, and as the Diocese of Ohio, and I invite you to be active participants in the process of living into it together.

Grow

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that grow in faith, numbers, and resources for mission.

Most everywhere I go in the diocese, the people of our parishes tell me that they want to grow. In congregations of every size, they talk about their yearning to grow in faith, to grow into a deeper intimacy with God in Christ. They talk about the need to grow in numbers of communicants, to reach out to those who have no spiritual home and invite them into the community of faith that we treasure. And they talk about the desire to grow in mission resources and in programs by which they are equipped to minister to their communities and the world. As well, we need to grow in our identity as Episcopalians, members of a worldwide community of Christians who are united across cultural chasms in service to a suffering world. Our General Convention, being so close this year in Columbus, offered us a wonderful opportunity to experience and grow into that identity, and I have great gratitude to all who took advantage of the proximity and came as visitors, volunteers, and participants.

It is an honor to have with us at this convention, and to help us more fully know and claim our Episcopal identity, Bonnie Anderson, the President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church. Bonnie was one of two women elected at the General Convention to the principal leadership roles in our church. A laywoman in our neighboring Diocese of Michigan, her vocation as a Christian has been lived out as a wife, a mother, and a lay professional at both parish and diocesan levels. She has served six terms as a deputy to the General Convention and was Vice President of the House of Deputies when elected President. She will preach this evening and address us again tomorrow. Bonnie, thank you for your long and inspiring leadership, for the witness, energy, and vision you bring to The Episcopal Church and its House of Deputies, and for your companionship with us this weekend as we continue to develop our diocesan convention into being not solely a legislative gathering but an integral part of our common journey of Christian formation and life-long learning as Episcopalians.

Our growth in faith will come, I am confident, as we continue to develop substantive formation and mission programs in every congregation and as a diocese. Natural Church Development, currently in a pilot phase in this diocese, will offer us programs and support in building vibrant congregations focusing on eight identifiable qualities of healthy faith communities. Our growth in numbers of communicants will come as we become increasingly invitational and evangelical. People come to church because someone who cares about church and cares about them invites them. If we really want to grow the church, we need to bring people with us to worship services on Sunday and to serve in our mission projects throughout the week. And our growth in resources for mission will come as we realign what we already have in assets and structures and become fit for mission in new ways. This will be hard work, principally because it will challenge us to change, sometimes in areas that have become secure in their familiarity.

Twice this fall I have had the occasion to travel by automobile from Cleveland up into the dioceses of Eastern and Northern Michigan, once for the consecration of a bishop and once for a meeting of the bishops of this province. Long drives offer me much needed time for reflection, prayer, and both the geographical and psychic distance that provide perspective. (This is a good thing, as I spend a considerable amount of time in the car.) Each time, while passing through Saginaw, Flint, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and the many towns in between, I have been vividly reminded of how we live in and serve industrial cities and towns in a post-industrial era. And each time I was very conscious of how we continue to live with the structures and models that served well in former times but come up short today. In the way we govern ourselves, deliver healthcare, educate our children, provide employment, and care for the poor and oppressed, we continue to act as if we had the same set of resources we had when this was a center of manufacturing production and economic prosperity. Too often we apply traditional structures and practices, with a very different set of resources. We are caught trying to do the same with less, in order to meet only the demands of the present.

Likewise in the Church, as individual congregations and as a diocese, we too often try to adjust the structures and resources we have brought forward from the past in order to meet only the needs of today. We struggle to maintain buildings designed for a different economic and cultural context, buildings whose surrounding communities are radically changed from the ones the ones they were originally built to serve. We apply models for leadership, lay and ordained, that worked well in a prior economic context and a prior mission strategy, downsizing them to meet our available resources, in order to survive another year or month or week. Whether the resource is people or money or program or staff or real estate, we try to do the same with less, to be the same with less, in order to get through today. But God is not concerned only with today. God has already brought us to today, and is pointing us toward tomorrow.

Our challenge is to seek together what God is imagining us to be tomorrow - ten, twenty-five, fifty years from now - and to begin growing into that today. It means having the humility to accept that how we have been the church up until now might not be what God needs of us in the years ahead. It means having the courage to let go of the familiar so that we can be freed to try the novel. It means having a confidence in God great enough to act on Jesus's directive to the rich young man about whom we read in the gospel two weeks ago, that new life is always what we don't yet have, and is only separated from us by the life we have now. This is the heart of our Eucharistic theology. Just as we offer back to God the bread and wine God has given us so that they may be radically transformed into what God needs us to have to nurture us as the body of Christ, so we are challenged to give back to God the Church that it might likewise be radically transformed into what God needs it to be to nurture and serve the world. It means trusting that God is with us in this. We are not going to get it right every time. We are going to make mistakes. Holy scripture is not the story of people always getting it right. It is the story of people whose faith led them into "God knows what" - literally - and sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, and always getting new life.

With the Bishop's Staff I have continued to seek what it is we are going to need in the years ahead and to restructure accordingly. Thanks to the extraordinary assistance of Bishops Bowman and Williams, both of whom have this fall celebrated twenty years in the episcopate, we have continued to grow into a model of episcopal leadership employing only one full-time bishop. My continued gratitude goes to Nancy Bowman and Lynette Williams for the great generosity with which they share not only their husbands but also the retirement they have together with them earned.

We have continued working to make Peace and Justice ministries in this diocese not something focused on one office or one staff position, but rather an essential element of everything we do as the body of Christ. To that end, the Committee on the Diaconate has worked hard to redefine the ministry of the diaconate and the formation process for deacons, that we might engage that order first and foremost in equipping the rest of us to serve. Theirs must be a diocesan-wide ministry of bringing out the servanthood of every communicant in every pew of every parish across the diocese, in tangible ways serving the church to inspire its service to the world. For example, the church needs a diaconate that is given responsibility for such important efforts as the 2 Cents a Meal program, in order both to teach about hunger and to engage us in eradicating it, a diaconate that moves about the diocese teaching and engaging ministries of peace and justice across the church. Most importantly, we have embraced the eight Millennium Development Goals as a blueprint for Peace and Justice ministry in our church. As we approach the third year of committing .7% of our annual budget to mission efforts consistent with these eight goals, and in response to legislation passed by this year's General Convention, at this diocesan convention we will consider legislation that will establish a structure by which we can support every congregation in its efforts to live into this common mission. The proposed Commission on Domestic and Global Mission will provide a vehicle by which our diocesan and parochial Peace and Justice ministries will find encouragement, direction, and support.

Currently, we are restructuring the Finance Office of the diocese, reconfiguring how we accomplish the canonical and practical responsibilities of that department with a smaller staff. At the end of this month, and after 20 years of diligent service to this diocese, Fred Snowden is resigning his position as chief finance officer and going on to pursue vocational passions in healing ministry that have for a long time taken a second seat to his work here. In the last two decades Fred has brought the business practices and financial health of the Diocese of Ohio up to contemporary standards, reforming our assessment process and bookkeeping practices, bringing us into the age of technology, and providing guidance and assistance to virtually ever congregation and institution of our diocese. We will have an opportunity to celebrate and thank you, Fred, at a reception here at Trinity Commons on November 13, from 5 to 7 o'clock. But today, on behalf of myself, my predecessors with whom you have served, your colleagues on the staff, and all of the people of this diocese, I offer you deep gratitude.

Growth in resources for mission must not only come from realigning the resources we currently have, but also by developing new ones. In some instances this will mean letting go of assets we have long sought to preserve, but which stand as impediments to future service. It may mean closing buildings or redirecting funding, it may mean restructuring church staffs or sharing personnel among congregations. If we are going to be vibrant in ministry, we cannot be afraid to try new ways of being the church. None of us can know now exactly how this will look or what it will entail. In time, we may become a church of fewer but more vibrant congregations. Or we may be a church utilizing a variety of models of leadership in differing ministry contexts and in different size congregations. However, one thing is certain: like fruit trees and grape vines, we will need to prune if we are to grow. Our ability to grow in resources for ministry will be inextricably linked to our willingness to try new ways of being the church. Mahatma Gandhi said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." Likewise, as a church, we must be the change we believe God is dreaming of for the world.

I have one additional thought about growing that I want to share with you. Since the beginning of this month I have been replaying, in my mind's eye, the many miles we bicycled through the beautiful rolling farmland of northern Ohio following the General Convention. I have because since the tragic and terrifying shooting of the schoolgirls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, I cannot get out of my mind the quiet, disciplined farms of the Amish, and the steady, disciplined way they go about living their faith. In the last four weeks they have shown us what it means to be big. Perhaps no other religious group in the world has so powerfully exhibited their faith and the profound result of religious practice.

These are a people who attended the funeral of the neighbor who murdered the children of their own community and who opened up both the depths of their own grief and the breadth of their reconciliation to his widow by inviting her to the funerals of their slain daughters. These are people who, when funds were collected to help afford the medical and other expenses incurred by the shooting victims and their families, asked that some of it go to support the gunman's widow and children. They are big because they make room in themselves for others, no matter what it cost them. This is not something that they are genetically better equipped to do than we, rather it is something they practice, day after day. It is the result of spiritual discipline. It is something they teach their children, generation after generation. It is an ability into which they grow.

The Amish employ none of the technology with which we claim to communicate better and build greater community - automobiles, telephones, cell phones, Internet, e-mail. Ironically, these are often the very tools by which we, in our denomination, foster domestic and global division. While the Amish appear to build a community that is isolated from the contemporary world, they in fact practice an inclusiveness and forgiveness that connects them more intimately with others than we might be able to imagine.

As individuals, as a diocese, and as a denomination, we need to practice anew how to be big, how to make room in ourselves for one another, especially for one another when we disagree about things that are very important to us. How much room? As much as is in the heart of God. The truth is that each of us in this church is here because God has invited us to be here, in part as a gift to make one another bigger. We may not be able to talk our way through our differences, but we can surely serve our way through them. I continue to appreciate your patience as I attempt to find a generous and reasonable resolution in response to those congregations who almost a year ago informed me of their disassociation from this diocese and The Episcopal Church. I maintain a realistic hope that such a resolution is possible, and I, with the support of the Standing Committee and the extraordinary counsel of the Chancellor, continue to work toward that end. If it is not possible, I will honor the Constitution and Canons of our Church and act in the best interests of the people of this diocese. However, it is time for all of us to get past our self-focused struggles, to roll up our sleeves, to return to the work of the body of Christ, and to cease squandering the most precious resource for mission that God gives us, one another.

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that grow in faith, numbers, and resources for mission.

Give

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that give sacrificially as a spiritual surrender of self to God.

When I was in Nigeria with Collins Asonye last year, I was overwhelmed with the spirit of giving that I experienced throughout the churches we visited. It did not matter how much or how little people had to give, the spirit with which they gave was energetic, enthusiastic, and joyful, and clearly sacrificial at a deep level. Their giving was not need based, in the sense that someone said, "We need to pay these bills," or, "We need to support this ministry." The only basis of need was their own need to give. And give. And give. I have often thought of giving as spiritual calisthenics for giving ourselves to God, but our Nigerian sisters and brothers in Christ took my sense of calisthenics to a new level altogether. At an ordination service we attended (which, by the way, lasted 5 1/2 hours) there were four offertories. And no one brought alms basins to the pews to wring the money out of people to the accompaniment of a serene choir anthem. Rather, each time all three thousand in attendance danced their way up to the chancel to put their gifts in huge, overflowing bowls and baskets. This was not ballroom dancing, either. It was raucous, spirited, and laughter-filled dancing to a loud and energetic beat. Look at these pictures. Now, can you imagine what we'd be like if in our worship every Sunday we practiced giving ourselves to God with offertories like this?

There is a clear and distinct connection between the discipline of sacrificial giving and spiritual growth. The way we give to God of our ability, energy, creativity, and money, forms and informs the way we give ourselves to God spiritually. As well, when we give of ourselves with enthusiasm and joy, we exhibit a confidence in giving that encourages others. A diocese that gives joyfully its fair asking to the larger church, and gives enthusiastically to effect mission beyond itself, gives confidence and encouragement to congregations to do likewise. And congregations that give joyfully their fair asking to the common work of the diocese, and give enthusiastically to effect mission beyond themselves, give confidence and encouragement to their communicants to do the same. Conversely, a diocese that is limited in giving itself in service and support to the wider church, or a parish that does not participate enthusiastically in keeping its commitments to the larger body, teaches communicants to be restricted in their own giving. Surely, we are all in this with the ultimate aim of giving ourselves over to God for eternity. We have a responsibility to teach and encourage one another in joyful giving all our lives, in order to make us fit for the kingdom of heaven right here on earth.

I am very gratified and encouraged by the response to the Bishop's Annual Appeal, which provides support both for the Episcopal Community Services Foundation and for new initiatives across the diocese. As of today the Appeal has exceeded $200,000, over 80% of our goal, with two months left to go! If you or your parish has yet to participate, I urge you to do so in the next few weeks, so that we can end the year strongly. Most importantly, I urge you to consider what it might mean for us to build a culture of giving in this diocese that helps every communicant of every age to give herself more fully to God. I hope and expect that in the coming years we can together help every congregation build enthusiasm for giving, providing support for stewardship and planned giving programs that grow us as joyful and sacrificial givers of ourselves to God.

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that give sacrificially as a spiritual surrender of self to God.

Serve

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that serve the world together as the risen body of Jesus Christ.

This the essential purpose for which God has called us all together - with our great differences of experience, perspective, opinion, conviction, ability, and passion - to be the hands and heart of the risen Christ in service to the world for which he died. That is why God brings us here today and every day: to serve. To serve across all barriers - geographical, cultural, political, theological, ecclesiological - so that the all the children of God can be lifted up. The power of evil hates this and will do everything in its ability to distract and dissuade us from it. It will especially distract us with self-focus, internal division, and mutual isolation from one another in order to make us lose sight of our purpose. But we have a greater power, a power that is able to move mountains. And I am convinced that serving together is the vehicle God offers to release that power.

Let me give you an example. Last year St. Paul's Church in Marion had, according to their parochial report, an average Sunday attendance of 27. Now, we all know that occasionally Sunday attendance figures are inflated, but I think this one is pretty accurate. They also have a feeding ministry in which they feed nine meals a week to any in their community who need them. This year they will feed nine meals to 6000 people. That is 54,000 meals. If we apply that ratio to the Average Sunday Attendance reported by all the congregations of the Diocese of Ohio, we could together, in the next year, feed nine meals to 2 million people - that's right, 18 million meals. That would be moving a mountain of hunger. That would be a justice ministry of tremendous proportion.

The Gospel teaches us that "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve." (Mark 10:45) So when Jesus said, "Follow me," he meant into this very servanthood he lived himself. We follow Jesus into a life of service not only to make the world a more godly place, but for our own conversion. In serving others we grow into the full stature of Christ. And so for our sake and the world's, the parishes of our diocese are called, perhaps more than anything else, to be mission outposts of service. This is where we learn to be servant leaders, where we take on the life of serving others that makes us whole. Many of our congregations have remarkable ministries of social outreach, and yet when I ask on parish visitations, whether candidates for the laying on of hands have participated in service projects, they rarely report that they have. And so I challenge every formation program and every candidate for confirmation, reception, or reaffirmation in this diocese, regardless of age, to include in her preparation a service project - making a substantial commitment to serving in a soup kitchen, an after school program, a nursing home, a Habitat for Humanity building project, a correctional facility, or some other service site, either individually or as a group, in the immediate community or elsewhere.

I am delighted to report that because of the response to the Bishop's Annual Appeal and our bike hike home from Columbus in June, this year every young person in the diocese who is old enough to participate in a mission trip will be able to. Service will be part of her formation as a Christian, as it should be part of each of ours. Susan McDonald and a team of experienced mission project leaders are already putting together plans for a diocesan youth mission trip in July, and I will make available the funds we raised to any parishes who, working collaboratively with other parishes, put together mission opportunities for young people the way St. Mark's, Toledo and St. Michael's, Ottawa Hills did last summer.

During this last year, as individual congregations and a whole diocese, we have indeed served the larger church in exceptional ways. From the Church of the Advent, Westlake to the Episcopal Chaplaincy in Gambier, the response to rebuilding the Gulf coast has been inspiring. Our support of the St. Andrew's Housing Project in Ramallah, Palestine has helped to provide 33 families with homes in a war-torn part of the world. And the extraordinary support from across the diocese for St. Paul's Church in Aluu, Nigeria resulted in Collins Asonye being able to oversee the construction of the Christian Formation building over a two-week period last winter. The facility is being used today for Christian education, and the women of the village use the retail stalls along the street to sell their produce and crafts, building the local economy. Parishes in this diocese continue to contribute to this project, and there is more we can do. The building would benefit from electricity and having doors and windows installed for security. So that we can continue to support the mission of Jesus in that community and diocese, I have asked that the offertory for this evening's convention Eucharist again be designated for St. Paul's, Aluu and the work we have begun there, and I urge you to be generous, if not dancing, in your giving. In spite of the political wrestling of the larger church, the reality of our commitment to the children and families of St. Paul's, Aluu bears witness to the depth of our communion as Anglicans. By rolling up our sleeves and serving them, we continue to build strong the fabric of Christ's church.

In the very same way, our serving side by side with one another will do much to lead us beyond the ecclesiological challenges of our church here at home. There is no parish I have visited in this diocese where all the communicants think alike and agree on every issue. There is no congregation I have visited where there has been uniformity of opinion on theological, political, or societal challenges. That is because God alone has invited us here, every one of us, with all of the challenging abundance of our differences. We don't all agree because that is the way God has made us. And yet I have witnessed across this diocese a desire for deeper unity between communicants, for deeper unity among neighboring congregations, for a deeper collaboration across deaneries, and for deeper unity throughout the church - a deeper unity borne of serving together that will help us reclaim our common mission as the body of Christ in service to the world. Without doubt, the Millennium Development Goals will give us direction in that and the diaconate will provide teaching and encouragement, but most importantly, our intentional collaboration with one another in serving others will strengthen us as one church, growing into the full stature of Christ.

It is the mission of the Diocese of Ohio to build healthy communities that serve the world together as the risen body of Jesus Christ.

Grow, Give, and Serve

The mission of the Diocese of Ohio is to build healthy communities that:

GROW in faith, numbers, and resources for mission,
GIVE sacrificially as a spiritual surrender of self to God, and
SERVE the world together as the risen body of Jesus Christ.

Grow, give, and serve. The three are interconnected and interdependent. Each is incomplete without the other two, and we are going to be better able to accomplish all if we work together. As each of you arrived here to register, you were given a new wristband. This one is green, and like the purple one, has on one side the Diocese of Ohio's website, www.dohio.org. That is our "cyberspacial" icon of the unity we share as a diocese. On the other side are the three words of our mission statement: Grow, Give, and Serve. I invite you to put it on your wrist as a reminder, every time you fold your hands in prayer or roll up your sleeves in service, that ours is to grow, give, and serve.

There is much available to us this coming year, much God can and will do with us as we continue to grow, give, and serve. The Mission Strategy Task Force, the Commission on Domestic and Global Mission, the Millennium Development Goals, Natural Church Development, Commissioned Youth Ending Racism, Diocesan Youth Mission Trips, and other common projects will challenge and support us in growing, giving, and serving. I have every confidence that our new leadership in the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops will add to all that we are exploring with God as a diocese and as part of the larger Church. And I am deeply grateful for the continuing opportunity to grow, give, and serve that I am offered in walking with you as your bishop. For your companionship, fidelity, and prayers I give thanks to God. It remains a singular privilege to serve you and to serve in Christ with you.

The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr.
11^th Bishop of Ohio