Dear Friends,
The most lasting impact of the 76th General Convention is likely to be an increase of initiative and energy in local congregations and dioceses. The sharp budget cuts in the three-year budget of the General Church will have a painful impact on some faithful staff members, but will shift the focus for mission to the local church, rather than the local church waiting for initiatives from the General Church.
The emphasis on local ministry is a proper expression of the principle of subsidiarity, whereby mission should occur at the level closest to the people who are called to engage in that mission.
Local mission is also enhanced by resolutions which the secular press has incorrectly interpreted as necessarily damaging our worldwide relationship and as following the agenda of a gay and lesbian lobby. Instead, what the Convention did is to reaffirm that the ordination process is under the control of local bishops and dioceses, while stressing that access to that process is open to all baptized persons.
The Convention also invited local churches and dioceses (as well as churches elsewhere in the Communion) to collect liturgical and theological resources regarding same-gender blessings. Recognizing the unique pastoral needs of those dioceses in jurisdictions where same-gender marriage or civil partnerships are legal, the Convention affirmed that a generous pastoral response is needed.
The emphasis on the local did not deter the Convention from adopting both a denominational health plan for the whole Church and a mandatory lay employee pension plan, both of which, in the long run, will strengthen the local church.
Faithfully yours,
–(The Rt. Rev.) Peter James Lee is Bishop of Virginia
what elephant?
What convention did he go to?
Well, at least he isn’t flat out lying about what took place.
The most lasting impact of the 76th General Convention is likely to be an increase of initiative and energy in local congregations and dioceses.
Who will become more energized (and how will be be able to tell)?
What exactly will energize them? The prospect of freeing up more money to fund lawsuits?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The sharp budget cuts in the three-year budget of the General Church will have a painful impact on some faithful staff members.
But the cuts will fall mostly on the staff at 815.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The [budget cuts] will shift the focus for mission to the local church, rather than the local church waiting for initiatives from the General Church.
ECUSA has shifted the focus for mission to the courtroom, not the local church. ECUSA also continues to move toward centralized, top-down control—a polity antithetical to its founders’ intent.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Local mission is also enhanced by resolutions which the secular press has incorrectly interpreted as necessarily damaging our worldwide relationship.
Enhanced how?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
This letter is a pitiable attempt to paint a happy face on institutional disaster.
Surely Bp. Lee knows better.
codswallop.
I hope St. Peter reads letters of this ilk back to their authors when they knock at the pearly gates. This missive befits a political party chairman, not a shepherd of a flock. And to think it’s associated with a Lee in Virginia.
Mark Brown
San Angelo, Texas
July 22, 2009
“How are the mighty fallen!”
This was +Lee’s last Gen Con; he retires October 1st. I think he’s been Bishop of VA since 1985. And during most of that time, he guided the diocese very skillfully, overseeing a remarkable sustained period of growth and vitality, and the planting of more new churches than any other diocese in the country. Many of us on the conservative side respected and trusted him as an honorable man of integrity, and a true centrist with a genuine appreciation for the many ardent evangelicals in that formerly great diocese.
Then came GenCon 2003. In Minneapolis, +Lee fatefully chose to follow the course that was politically correct instead of what was theologically and pastorally correct. And the rest is history.
Alas, now his distinguished episcopate is ending in disaster, and sadly, his legacy will surely be remembered mostly for how everything he’d worked so hard for two decades to achieve fell apart into utter ruin at the end. This was especially due, of course, to his sudden, shocking cancellation of the protocol arrangement that had been negotiated with the 15 congregations that had departed TEC by early 2007 and his decision to file those notorious lawsuits against them, at the urging of the nefarious PB. A horrible blunder.
How catastrophic have been the changes in the Diocese of VA in the last three years! It’s all very tragic. It didn’t have to end this way. But it has. And to a very large degree, +Peter James Lee has no one to blame but himself.
To me, it’s a grim reminder that it’s not how you start a race that counts, it’s how you finish it.
David Handy+
Bp Lee said: ‘Local mission is also enhanced by resolutions which the secular press has incorrectly interpreted as necessarily damaging our worldwide relationship and as following the agenda of a gay and lesbian lobby. Instead, what the Convention did is to reaffirm that the ordination process is under the control of local bishops and dioceses, while stressing that access to that process is open to all baptized persons.”
Do any of these people on the left have any clue that others in the Anglican Communion: A) understand English B) can read?
Nothing but empty spin.
#7,
Or as one longtime member of DioVA said to me, “Poor Bishop Lee. If he’d retired in 2002, they’d have put a statue of him on Monument.”
#7. David, thank you for the clear summary of the sad decline in DioVa. If Peter Lee had not sold out to political correctness in ’03, we would still be in the midst of TEC and fighting the battle to keep it from going totally Post-Christian. That battle was lost, perhaps even before ’03, and now the Christian Church no longer has TEC.
I feel really sad for Peter Lee. He seems to have built an impervious wall of denial around himself. Nothing of substance gets in. But, of course, nothing of substance gets out either. — Stan
He knows the demographics of his Diocese. A few of the parishes that remain in N. VA are very informed to what’s happened at GC09 and supportive of its outcomes. The rest of the diocese doesn’t really care what the Diocese does, as long as they are left alone by the diocese to their Sunday routines. The letter is largely content free just in case someone just figured out how to use the internet. Sadly, this letter is probably what the clergy will pass onto the parishes, if asked a pesky question about “How did things go at GC”?
A dishonour to the Diocese in deed and word; truth will out.