Bishop’s Sermon
To the Forty-eighth Annual Convention
of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota
October 20, 2018
To the Forty-eighth Annual Convention
of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota
October 20, 2018
Jesus said: “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you
to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last” (John 15:16).
There are exceptions to every rule, but
generally-speaking, this is a time of tremendous challenge for the
institutional church, not only in North Dakota, but across western
civilization. Our culture is changing and becoming more and more secular and
materialistic, and less and less spiritual and faith-oriented. I had to chuckle
at a recent Church Pension Fund cartoon where a young football player speaking
to his coach says, “Coach, I’m really sorry but I can’t play in the game on
Sunday morning because I’m signed up to serve as an acolyte.”
And yet despite this, we are still chosen by Christ to
bear fruit that will last.
Before he was Pope Benedict XIV, Joseph Ratzinger
predicted the changes in church and culture we are seeing today some fifty
years ago when he said in a German radio broadcast: “From the crisis of today
the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become
small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will
no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. …
But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more
spiritualized and simplified Church.”[i]
And, yes, even in this context, we are still chosen by
Christ to bear fruit that will last.
And it is not only a loss of members, financial
resources, and influence the church is experiencing, it is an erosion of the
substance of the Christian faith itself. Rod Dreher in his important book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for
Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, cites a 2005 study conducted by two
sociologists to examine the religious and spiritual lives of American
teenagers. In most cases, they found the youth believed in a quasi-Christian spirituality
the researchers termed “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
“Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has five basic tenets:
·
A God exists who created and orders the world
and watches over human life.
·
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to
each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
·
The central goal of life is to be happy and to
feel good about oneself.
·
God does not need to be particularly involved in
one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
·
Good people go to heaven when they die.”[ii]
I don’t know about you, but I also know many adults who
believe in this religion. As our culture becomes more pluralistic, it is
essential that we be clear about what the Christian faith teaches and believes.
But that’s just one more opportunity to bear fruit that
will last.
The spiritual director I have been seeing is a member of
a Roman Catholic community of Benedictine Sisters. Her community is in decline
and facing many of the same challenges as we are. When I ask her about it, she
shrugs her shoulders and says: “It just means that God is doing something
different.” That “something different” is what I want to foster and serve with
however many more years I have under the sun, as I know you do as well. But
this “something different,” this “power flowing from a more spiritualized and
simplified Church,” to borrow a phrase from Pope Benedict, will require new
ideas, vision, and experimentation. Fresh expressions of church require fresh
leadership.
Our diocesan motto is Deus
incrementum dat. In English, it is translated “God giveth the increase” or
“God gives the growth.” It comes from one of St. Paul’s letters to the
Corinthians where he writes: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). In part, Paul is reminding us that as church
leaders we are called to take our turns tending God’s garden, and when the time
is right, to turn those responsibilities over to others, mindful that we are
part of something much larger than ourselves. For some time, I have been in
discernment about my future through prayer and by consulting with family,
colleagues, a spiritual director, and the Presiding Bishop’s office. I believe
the time is right for me to make way for fresh leadership. Therefore, today I
announce my retirement as Bishop of North Dakota, effective May 1, 2019.
As I said before, the cultural context in which the
church exists is changing. Practically speaking, with a diocesan budget as
small as ours, it is extremely difficult to make changes in terms of
reorganization for mission and ministry with the incumbent bishop in office. My
retirement, along with the approaching retirement of Canon Zanne Ness, will
make room to discern and support a renewed vision for the Diocese of North
Dakota in the face of ever-increasing challenges for the institutional church.
In his sixth century Rule for Monasteries, St. Benedict
encourages disciples “to attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good one
sees in oneself, but to recognize always that the evil is one’s own doing, and
to impute it to oneself” (RB 4.42-43). I think we can also apply this wisdom to
the “successes” and “failures” we have experienced together these past fifteen
years.
Thank you for the honor and privilege of serving as your
bishop. Let us keep one another in prayer as we move into a season of
transitions, never forgetting that we have been chosen and appointed by Christ
to bear fruit that lasts.
[i] Tod
Worner, “When Father Joseph Ratzinger Predicted the Future of the Church,” Aleteia, June 13, 2016, accessed October
16, 2018, https://aleteia.org/2016/06/13/when-cardinal-joseph-ratzinger-predicted-the-future-of-the-church.
[ii] Rod Dreher,
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for
Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 9-10,
Kindle.
