The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt: Bishop’s Convention Address, Diocese of Tennessee, January 26, 2008, St Bartholomew’s Church Nashville

It seems difficult for me to believe that a year has passed since January, 2007, and the great events of the Convention Weekend and the Consecration service. The past year has been a quick race for me through new experiences and new people, new institutions and new communities of faith, in the Diocese of Tennessee. On some days it literally has been a race as I’ve tried to arrive on time for meetings or visitations, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m finding my way in the Diocese of Tennessee, both literally and figuratively. At least, it feels that way to me. It has been a wonderful experience to meet people and to come to know the communities of faith of which they are a part. I have felt the support and prayers of the people of the Diocese, and I am grateful for it. Thank you.

We are in this together because no ministry exists alone, least of all the ministry of bishop. We are part of a Eucharistic fellowship, gathered in unity around Christ’s table, the altar where we commemorate his sacrificial death and glorious, life-giving resurrection. As bishop, I never forget that the essential role I play in the Diocese is as the leader of our Eucharistic fellowship, in communion with my fellow presbyters and assisted by the deacons, surrounded and supported by the prayers of the People of God. As I understand it, the bishop at the altar represents the apostolic ministry of the world-wide church, which carries forward Jesus’ own ministry of love and service. The ministry of the bishop has two poles: the local Eucharistic community of the diocese, on the one hand, and the world-wide church on the other. The bishop is a “bridge builder” in the old meaning of the word “pontiff”, and acts as a point of connection bringing together the local church, the world-wide church, and the ministry of Jesus himself. The presence of the bishop at the altar at parish visitations is a reminder of the greater fellowship of which we are a part. So I am encouraged in this ministry! Is it possible to be discouraged when you are surrounded by saints and angels and the prayers of the church? I think not.

I am very grateful to the members of the Diocesan staff for their help this year, and I thank them for it. It has been a year of transition for the staff, with departures and arrivals, but I appreciate all who have served this past year through a time of adjustment in the Diocese of Tennessee. I am also grateful to the Officers of the Diocese, our Treasurer and Chancellor, and to the members of the Bishop and Council for their leadership. I have had good advisors in the Diocesan Standing Committee this year. This, too, is a reminder that no ministry takes place in isolation.

I’m grateful for all the good work that has gone on in our institutions, committees and commissions this year. In particular I’d like to mention a significant transition in the Commission on Ministry, where Fr Peter Whalen has retired from service and from chairing the Commission for a decade or more. This is taxing work, and I want to express my thanks publicly to him, and for his good help in making this transition this year.

Most of all, I want to thank the clergy of the Diocese of Tennessee for negotiating with great grace the Episcopal transition of leadership in the Diocese, and for carrying forward the work of Christ this past year. I am so grateful for these servants of Christ, my colleagues with whom I share this ministry. Leadership is a difficult business, in the best of times, and I believe that the times we live in pose unique challenges to ordained ministry. Thus my appreciation for the priests and deacons of the Diocese of Tennessee is heartfelt. Again, we are not alone in this ministry.

In my ministry among you this past year I have tried to hold up some themes that I first shared with you on the weekend of my consecration. Indulge me for a moment in their repetition. The church’s mission involves it in outreach, a “reaching out” beyond itself to others which is a part of its God-given character. I hold up for you two parts of this outreach work: 1) the creation of new Christian communities, one of the most effective ways of reaching new people with the Gospel message; and 2) ministry to and with the most disadvantaged in the communities in which we live, the way in which the Gospel message is incarnated in our midst. I put it to you that we discover the church at its most authentic when we focus on these most basic tasks. We form communities of faith and form Christians in the faith so that we can move forward together outside of our own immediate circle.

In this year, I have attempted to tap some of the wisdom we have acquired in the last decade of church-planting in the Diocese of Tennessee, consulting with our missioners and with others and gathering a small “think tank” on church-planting to help us do this work better. We live in a high growth area, and there are many opportunities for us; much responsibility, too, as we try to minister to the many new people who are moving into our communities. We’ve learned a lot in this past decade, and this naturally leads to adjustments in our model of church-planting as we gather experience and face new situations.

I’m grateful to the Volunteers for Mission who have helped us with our church-planting efforts in the past, and I look forward to their help in the future. These efforts are not just the concern of some of us in the Diocese, but in fact concern all of us as we attempt to form those new communities and new ministries that will meet the new century. We are not done with the work of church-planting in Tennessee; we can’t afford to be if we are going to be faithful to our mission.

The Diocese of Tennessee has a great history of ministry and outreach among those in need. One of the great institutions that helps to bind us together in unity in this Diocese is St Luke’s Community House, supported by so many of our congregations in Nashville and elsewhere in the middle portion of our state. Not only has this institution had a positive impact for good in people’s lives, it has also helped to bring us together, and served as a practical instance of the reality of our life together as a Diocese. So there is a great history of ministry here, but also new opportunities, at St Luke’s but also elsewhere. I plan to bring into existence an Outreach Commission for the Diocese in this next year, to give us some infrastructure as we think together about the work of outreach. This will also give us the means to move ahead as we attempt to engage the ambitious agenda of the Millennium Development Goals that has been placed before us and explore what these goals might mean in our local situation.

Communication has also been part of what I’ve held up before you this past year. I keep thinking that there are so many good things that are happening in the congregations of the Diocese of Tennessee, but that so often we do not know about them. This is an area of our life where we can always do better, always tell more fully the Gospel story of how Jesus is living out his resurrected life in his Body the church. The Gospel story is multi-layered, and so there is always more to tell. I hope you know about the changes in the Diocesan web site, with more changes to come; also the launch of Connections, a diocesan publication with both on-line and hard copy editions. We are committed to being better communicators because it is Gospel work, “Good News” that needs to be shared.

I have also been bringing before you the theme of transition, change on our local level with the change in the episcopacy, but also more broadly as a theme in society and in our life in the church. Rapid change is a part of the world we live in, our context for ministry; but we need to leave plenty of space for reflection as we move ahead, because change needs to be evaluated and responded to appropriately. For Christians, transition needs to be a move from death to life, the discovery of the new resurrection life of Jesus Christ in the midst of our own lives.

Our congregations in this diocese are challenged by change, but change brings with it opportunities as well. Some one has said somewhere that a feature of modern church life in the United States is that our largest congregations are getting larger, and our smallest congregations are getting smaller. I think this is true. The change in large congregations as they become larger brings challenges with it, challenges to operate differently and to preserve what we love in the character of our congregation as we welcome new people; while the change in small congregations challenges them to operate with new patterns of ordained ministry and with a broader understanding of the ministry which all baptized people have. There are opportunities here. We have to work ahead and plan, so that we can do something more than simply react to change. Remember, the pattern we have learned from Christ moves us from death to life. Christian community is precious, and I am committed to practical ways in which we can reflect together about the meaning of these changes for us and strengthen our ministry in all our congregations.

Finally, I want to say something about the peculiar point in our life as Episcopalians and Anglicans that we presently inhabit. I believe the Windsor Report offers us the way forward as we work to repair the common life of the Anglican Communion. At our 2007 Convention, clergy and delegates resolved that “the findings and recommendations of the Windsor Report represent the best way forward for the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Communion”. In addition, the Diocese re-affirmed a commitment to being a “full and active part of the Anglican Communion, in unity with the See of Canterbury, and the Episcopal Church USA; forgoing our own local desires for the sake of the greater Anglican Communion; and a conciliar approach to decision-making in the life of the Church and the Anglican Communion by working with and heeding the collective wishes of the Communion before making unilateral decisions”. These graceful words of connection I have made my own on a number of occasions, and I do so again today.

As Bishop of Tennessee, I am committed to the so-called Camp Allen principles of compliance with the recommendations of the Windsor Report, principles that the Archbishop of Canterbury identified in his recent “Advent Letter” as making obvious “that such dioceses and bishops cannot be regarded as deficient in recognizable faithfulness to the common deposit and the common language and practice of the Communion”. I hope that you know that I am committed to a traditional understanding of Christian marriage, and that that I believe the Church’s traditional teaching on sex and sexual relationships. I have been saying this consistently and publicly, I believe, since the year 2000, when it suddenly seemed necessary (at least to me) to say so. I will follow through with the discharge of my responsibilities as bishop, but you should also know that I am not planning on taking my beliefs and commitments and using them as a weapon against anyone, a tool in some war of separation that I do not believe will serve the Gospel or the Church.

I reaffirm these commitments in regard to the Windsor Report that I have made on a number of occasions before. I plan to attend the Lambeth Conference, one of the four “Instruments of Unity” that we have as a Communion. I believe that we are called to life together, as a Communion and as a Diocese, to unity in the midst of difference. Can we model in the Diocese of Tennessee a life together, where we can recognize the life of the Risen Christ present within each other, even when we disagree about important and even fundamental things? There are other voices that have put before us a different view of the situation, in which the church is defined by separation from those with whom we disagree. These voices identify the errors of others and then continue on a separate way. I believe that the end result of this process is the end of the church as a community of faith, faith that overcomes difference in the Risen Lord. We need to seek a common mind in the Church, that’s absolutely correct; there is no virtue in difference for difference’s sake when we can seek agreement, especially about fundamental things that might now divide us. But in order to seek a common mind we are going to have to show up in the same place and share the same life. That’s the life I’m committed to. It is the way of death and resurrection, the pattern we have learned from Christ; it is the way of bearing one another’s burdens, though I am acutely aware that the burden I bear may be small in comparison to that of others; it is the way of self-giving, of sacrificial offering, so that others may live. It is not the easy way, but I think it is the Gospel way, in this time and place, for us now in the Diocese of Tennessee.

So now, let’s get moving. There is enough church-planting and re-planting, strengthening of congregational life and work of ministry among God’s people the poor, to keep us going for at least the next twenty years. What a masterpiece of understatement! Years from now, we will be so expert that people will invite us to lead conferences on the subject of re-planting congregations! There is enough Good News to be communicated to keep a thousand web sites going ad infinitum. I want you to join me in this work of ministry, to get out of your bunker (wherever you may be dug in) and to move forward with confidence. I know I’m not in this alone, that we are in this together. What great work we are called to! It’s nothing other than the work of Jesus Christ himself.

Thank you all for your support and prayers. I rejoice in my relationship with each of you. The Communion we share in Christ, in the church which is “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23), as bishop, clergy, and people, empowers my ministry, and I am so grateful to you. Thank you again.

The Rt. Rev'd John C. Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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