While some focus on finding his successor, Bishop Charles E. Jenkins is focused on improving a ministry.
He said much of his energy in his final six months as leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, will be on Episcopal Community Services, a new agency created to expand on the work of Diocesan Office of Disaster Response.
Jenkins explained that he is pleased with what the Office of Disaster Response has accomplished by using volunteers to gut more than 900 hurricane-damaged homes and rebuild more than 50 others.
It’s interesting that +Charles Jenkins is here said to suffer from PTSD, post-traumatic stress diesorder, since all the devastation wrought by Hurrican Katrina in 2005, and that this prompted a relatively early retirement.
The closing line of the article is a fine finish. Jenkins says, [i] “When your focus as a church is on missions, church issues take on their relative unimportance.” [/i]
That’s an important truth. But it’s not the whole truth here. In a time of genuine crisis, people do rally and work together in the face of a widely perceived common threat or overwhelming need. But when the emergency stage is over and life starts returning to normal, the normal internal struggles tend to re-emerge.
Back in the early days of the ecumenical movement, before the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948, there was a popular saying, [i] “Doctrine divides, but service unites.” [/i] And for a while, it looked like the most promising way to reunite the long divided churches of Christendom might be to concentrate on jointly serving the world in Christ’s name, engaging in Matthew 25 type ministreis to “the least of these” and fighting for social justice. But as time went on, it became all too apparent that the churches weren’t able to agree on what constituted social justice either.
And of course, the turmoil and strife within TEC illustrates that unpleasant fact. So yes, +Jenkins is right, of course, that when a church is outwardly focused on reaching out and ministering to the wider community, it tends to thrive and internal squabbles are minimized. That’s all well and good. But HOW to reach out to the world in Christ’s name remains a question that can’t be permanently avoided.
For example, do you emphasize evangelism or social outreach? And with regard to the latter, once you go beyond mercy ministries to the most needy and vulnerable people around you, and go beyond treating the symptoms to trying to solve the underlying problems that cause them (i.e., social justice), then all osrts of profound theological differences inevitably start emerging.
David Handy+
Well the question is he really suffering from PTSD or is he getting out of the kitchen because the heat is growing…
Notice that many bishops are retiring early. It is no longer a cushy position more administrative than not. Today, a bishop is on the front line. They have are called upon to answer the tough question and lead one way on the other and it is getting tougher ever day….