“We are one together, yo, yo, yo,” we sang in the House of Deputies. Our chaplain, the Rev. Lester Mackenzie of Los Angeles, taught us this chant as part of our prayers, and at times, the song would break out spontaneously.

For me, nothing could describe better the feeling I had throughout this Convention. With a few exceptions, our discussions were courteous and thoughtful, with care given for those who disagreed. We made momentous decisions, on marriage equality, church structure, and evangelism initiatives. We elected a new Presiding Bishop who will be an amazing, inspiring Chief Evangelism Officer for our church. And for my group of friends who worked together on Episcopal Resurrection (friends who first came together around the Acts 8 Moment), the whole experience brought us closer together in friendship and united us in our dedication to God’s mission in the church. We are one together, yo, yo, yo!

For me, the whole experience of Convention was intertwined with my personal experience of Episcopal Resurrection and Acts 8 – a group of folks that I spent this Convention planning, strategizing, and socializing with.

Episcopal Resurrection

Back in April, six friends and I got together in Columbus, Ohio, and talked about what we believed the church needed to accomplish at this Convention. That meeting resulted in A Memorial to the Church, a kind of open letter that launched publicly on Ascension Day. We called on Convention to engage deeply in prayer and discernment about where the church is called to go, to fund evangelism initiatives extravagantly, and to release our hold on old structures and conflicts that do not serve the church well. We invited anyone who was inspired by the Memorial to sign on, and about 500 people did, including 33 bishops.

I believe the Memorial, and the discussion and excitement it generated, helped to set a tone for this Convention. This is the third Convention I have attended as a deputy, and in contrast to the other two, I saw far more focus on Jesus’ call to proclaim the good news this time, and far less focus on conflict.

At the bottom of this post, I’ll give a summary of how Episcopal Resurrection’s resolutions did in Convention. Most of them passed, some with enthusiastic support. I think is safe to say that Episcopal Resurrection had a measurable effect on Convention this year. To me, that fact goes to show that our polity in the Episcopal Church truly is democratic. A determined minority of folks who capture others’ attention and imagination can influence the course of the church. We had no church-wide funding (we paid ourselves for our plane tickets to Columbus, our advertising on social media, our buttons and cards, and our meeting rooms for our two gatherings at Convention). We had no official authorization to do the work we did. But we were deputies to Convention, we made proposals, and we made a difference.

There were many inspiring moments at this Convention for me. The election of +Michael Curry as our new Presiding Bishop (and he is going to be a great PB!), his closing sermon, the moment we passed the church planting initiative and the other resolutions I worked with others to draft, the tears of joy shed by many when the marriage equality resolutions passed, and many more moments inspired me.

But of all the amazing moments of this Convention, my favorite, stunning moment was when the budget amendment passed that allowed additional funds for church planting and Latino/Hispanic ministries.

Let’s be clear – this budget amendment did not make some folks happy, including some folks on PB&F. I like and admire the members of PB&F, with whom I worked as the leader of Council’s budget process. But without apology, I will say that I believe that the most vital, essential, strategic move our church can make at this moment in our history is to plant new churches, including among Latinos. We have to do this, and we have to do it now. For too long, our church has been timid, acting as though we believe that we don’t have any particular good news to share. It’s time to break out of that kind of conservatism. It’s time to take a risk for the gospel. It’s time to plant new churches.

Our Episcopal Resurrection group was ecstatic when D005, our church planting resolution, passed both houses. The House of Bishops actually burst into applause when the initiative passed there. But later that same day, we heard that PB&F’s budget proposal (which would be presented in a joint session the next day, and voted on the day after) would have no additional funding for church planting beyond what was in Executive Council’s budget, nor any additional funding for Latino/Hispanic ministries – an area closely allied with church planting, in our view. Immediately, we began to consider what we could do to remedy this neglect of the very areas of ministry that we believed could lead our church into a new era of growth and vitality.

Very soon, we came up with the idea of proposing an amendment to the budget, to be funded by an additional 0.5% draw on the church’s endowment. (The endowment has earned over 8% for a number of years, and we have drawn only 5% per year.) Now, we had all been to Conventions before, and we knew that amendments to PB&F’s budget proposals NEVER pass. NEVER. This proposed budget amendment was a “futile and stupid gesture,” in the immortal words of John Belushi in Animal House. But if a futile and stupid gesture would bring attention to this vital area of ministry, we were willing to do it.

So we started planning, the day before PB&F’s budget came up for a vote. Frank Logue, who served on PB&F, came up with the idea of funding D005 and A086 with an additional 0.5% draw on the endowment, and drafted the proposed amendment. The rest of us carefully planned how we would get to the microphones and propose, and then speak to, the amendment. On the day of the budget debate, many of our group queued in to propose or speak to the amendment. Frank was the first to get to the mike, and proposed the amendment. I was the third speaker, and had the honor of supporting it on the floor. The amendment passed the House of Deputies by a wide margin. Our group sat in amazed disbelief – for the first time in memory, a budget amendment had passed. And that budget amendment was to fund evangelism: church planting and Latino/Hispanic ministries. We were in awe. A new day had come to the church.

Later that same day, folks who were able to attend the budget debate in the House of Bishops kept those of us who were waiting in the House of Deputies informed about what was going on. After several speakers urged fiscal conservatism, bishop after bishop spoke in favor of our proposal. Bishop Hahn of Lexington was reported to have said, “I’d rather not be part of a church with a growing endowment and declining membership.” That sentiment carried the day in the House of Bishops, and our Episcopal Resurrection group rejoiced as texts from the observers there let us know that the amended budget had passed.

As an Executive Council member, and for the past triennium as a member of its Finances for Mission committee, I do have sympathy for those who want to be careful with our resources. And I do have hope that we can find ways to fund the evangelism initiatives without drawing as much from the endowment earnings as we voted to do at Convention. But I have to agree with Bishop Hahn – a growing endowment means little if we aren’t doing the mission Jesus calls us to do. And that mission means going out, doing the scary thing, taking a risk to reach new people and new populations. That mission means evangelism and church planting – and I am grateful to be part of a church that decided to take a risk for the sake of the gospel.

We are one together, yo, yo, yo!

By the way: by all means leave a comment. However, basically the moment I press “publish” on this post, I am leaving for China for a long-anticipated family vacation, and won’t have access to my blog to approve comments till I return. If your comment doesn’t appear for a while, that’s why. 

Footnote: How did the Episcopal Resurrection Proposals Do? Here’s a summary of how our proposals ended up. I think it’s safe to say that Episcopal Resurrection changed the conversation at Convention in a number of ways – around evangelism, and around the structure conversation.

The Memorial: Was commended to Convention, and all bishops and deputies were urged to share it with their communities and congregations, in resolution A179. I believe the Memorial had an effect far beyond A179, however; it helped set the tone for a Convention that would vote to include evangelism initiatives in the budget.

We also drafted nine resolutions for Convention, and signed on to a tenth. Here is the scorecard on how our resolutions did. (Note: you can see our original proposals here, and you can see the final proposals that were passed here.)

D005: Creating a Capacity to Plant Churches: This is a very bold and strategic initiative, not only to provide grants for church planting, but also to train church planting leaders, including lay and ordained leaders for Latino/Hispanic church plants. This initiative passed with enthusiastic support in both houses – the House of Bishops reportedly broke into applause when it passed. It was NOT funded in PB&F’s proposed budget, but with some legislative work, our Episcopal Resurrection group managed to propose and get passed a $2.8 million addition to the budget that will help fund D005 and also A086, a resolution on Latino/Hispanic ministries. In addition, the Development Office is asked to raise money for this initiative.

D009: Revitalization of Congregations: This resolution also passed both houses with wide support, but it received no funding. However, the resolution still calls on the Development Office to raise money to fund this initiative, so it may yet see the light of day.

B009: Conducting an Online Digital Evangelism Test: This resolution passed with wide support, especially on The Twitters. It also received significant funding. Watch for the Episcopal Church to start developing a much stronger social media presence, including ways to connect with people who are searching online for answers to life’s questions, and helping connect them with local communities of faith.

D007: Permit Dioceses to Explore Shared Ministry and Collaboration: Passed. This resolution loosens up the requirements for dioceses to have separate Commissions on Ministry so that they can explore ways of sharing resources. Our original resolution allowed a diocesan bishop to reside outside his/her diocese if the bishop living in another diocese where he/she also serves, but this provision was struck.

D003: Amend Article V of the Constitution: Passed. This is the first reading of a constitutional amendment, which must be approved at two consecutive General Conventions to become effective. This provision allows two dioceses to merge when one is without a diocesan bishop – the precise time that may be most attractive for a merger.

D004: Create a Task Force to Study Episcopal Elections: Passed. Apparently there was some anxiety in some places about whether this task force would impose church-approved candidates on dioceses. That was certainly not our intent. While the hope for more diversity in the House of Bishops was the part of this resolution that received the most attention, we also hoped that a set of best practices would be created that would be electronically available, to help bishop search processes become more transparent. The next question is whether the funding allocated to this task force by Executive Council (out of Convention’s total budget for CCABs) will be adequate to the task.

D008: Amend Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution: Passed. This is the first reading of a constitutional change. If passed on the second reading, it would allow the two houses of General Convention to hold joint sessions and deliberate and vote together. While TREC proposed an immediate move to a unicameral Convention, this intermediate step allows us more flexibility to experiment with joint sessions and see how we like them.

D013: Budget Process for the Episcopal Church: Passed with some significant modifications. Our proposal clarified the budget process so the canons conform to actual practice (we haven’t actually followed our canons on the budget in years). We made the diocesan “asking” into a mandatory assessment, with waivers to be granted by Executive Council for dioceses that cannot pay the full amount; this provision becomes effective in 2019. Thank God for this change, which I believe will contribute greatly to the spiritual health of the church, as all dioceses participate equally in paying their fair share. My hope is that the assessment could even fall below 15% as this provision takes effect.

The most significant change to our original resolution was that we proposed that the President of the House of Deputies should receive a salary, a proposal that seemed self-evident to us since it is a full-time, unpaid position. Keeping it as an unpaid position means that only independently wealthy or retired people can serve, and as the Bible says, the laborer deserves her/his pay.

However, this provision caused significant controversy in the House of Bishops, which reportedly complained about the increasing scope of the PHoD position (apparently without irony, given the corresponding increasing scope of the Presiding Bishop position). This sniping at the PHoD by the bishops seemed petty and mean-spirited to many deputies. The people in the purple shirts would not dream of working for no pay – why would they demand it of others? In the end, after significant work by a conference committee (the first since 1997), the two houses compromised on this issue by agreeing to form a task force to explore issues of leadership and compensation for the PHoD. The whole conflict seemed indicative of the deep divide that has opened between bishops and deputies over the last several years. I hope that over the next three years, reconciliation will come, and  the full scope of the PHoD’s position will be recognized and honored. And I certainly hope that we can build trust and work together productively – after all, in God’s kingdom, we are all on the same team.

D010: Clarify Officers of the Episcopal Church: Discharged, but some provisions from this proposal were folded into A004, which clarified the roles of the Presiding Officers, Executive Council, and staff. One of Episcopal Resurrection’s contributions to A004 was to propose the position of Chief Legal Officer. Resolution A004 was the subject of some intense debate and compromise, but in the end, it passed both houses.

D011: Eliminate Provinces: Substitute resolution passed. Our original resolution, which would have eliminated provinces altogether, was re-written to establish a task force to study provinces and report back to the next General Convention with ideas for what might take their place if they were eliminated. On the Governance & Structure committee, on which I served, testimony on the provinces resolution clearly fell along age lines. Older folks testified to the meaningful contributions of provinces and the networks they support; younger folks wondered why networks should be organized geographically and involve required governance structures, when electronic communications make organizing along interest lines much easier. As I listened to the testimony, it became evident to me that though the time for eliminating provinces may not be now, that time is coming. And the networks we form in the future will be right for that time, just as the Provinces were the right networks for their time.

Overall Episcopal Resurrection scorecard: 6 resolutions passed essentially unchanged; 2 resolutions passed with modifications; one resolution discharged, but with significant provisions combined into another resolution; one resolution caused intense conversation and was referred to a study committee. One Memorial changed the conversation around the church. A pretty good record, overall.