The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago will take a “sabbath time” in 2010 from receiving new people who feel called to holy orders. The Rt. Rev Jeffrey D. Lee, Bishop of Chicago since February 2008, said he noticed early in his work that the diocese’s Commission on Ministry was exceptionally busy.
“We have 40-plus people at various stages of the process. That’s a lot of folks,” Bishop Lee told The Living Church.
The sabbath time will not interrupt the progress of anyone already accepted into the diocese’s discernment program.
The bishop has asked the Rev. Sam Portaro, former chaplain at the University of Chicago, to serve as a coach to the Commission on Ministry during the sabbath year. The program was last revised in the mid-1990s, the bishop said.
Bishop Lee is a member of the Chicago Consultation. Marilyn McCord Adams was the keynote speaker at the Chicago Consultation’s inaugural event. She said[blockquote]Likewise, sex-and-gender liberals have no interest in excommunicating sex-and-gender conservatives or in denying them the institutional access that all members of TEC/CoE enjoy. But in the name of faithfulness to the Gospel, sex-and-gender liberals cannot extend toleration to allowing sex-and-gender conservatives to set institutional policy no matter what. [/blockquote]
So, do I correctly interpret this to mean they have more priests than viable congregations? All dressed up and no where to go …
[blockquote] “God calls to ministry, of course, but the Church calls to holy orders. Sometimes we get that right and, God knows, sometimes we don’t,” Bishop Lee said.[/blockquote]
Now [b]this[/b] would be a good quote to ponder over on a Monday. I can’t recall the last time TEC admitting to “getting” an ordination wrong.
[blockquote] The revised program likely will place greater emphasis on what sort of ordained people the diocese needs. The diocese, for instance, wants people with entrepreneurial and congregational-development skills who can be flexible about their sources of income. [/blockquote]
Translation: Our ASA numbers are blummeting and our pledge, plate, endowment incomes are headed the same way. So we need gentleman (and lady) priests who can pump attendance back up and can live off of mommy and daddy’s trust fund.
[blockquote] “God calls to ministry, of course, but the Church calls to holy orders. Sometimes we get that right and, God knows, sometimes we don’t,†Bishop Lee said. [/blockquote]
Translation: How did that dad gum Mark Lawrence slip through the net?
[blockquote] The bishop added that the new process likely will give him a more active role in meeting nominees early on and monitoring their progress through discernment. [/blockquote]
Translation: It is my fudiciary responsiblity to make sure that another dad gum Mark Lawrence does not make it through the process.
I don’t mean to be flippant, but I think this is the funniest thing I’ve read all day. God will still call people to ministry, maybe even in the diocese of Chicago, but the DoC is not going to participate for a while? How does this jive with “being open to the Spirit” and seeing what “new thing” God is doing?
“The diocese, for instance, wants people with entrepreneurial and congregational-development skills who can be flexible about their sources of income.”
In all seriousness, I take this to mean that if one wants to be ordained in this process, one must have one of the following:
1. A spouse (presumably a spouse to whom one is happily married) who can provide the great bulk of the household income for the indefinite future.
2. A lay calling one can pursue to provide a substantial portion of one’s support. This lay calling should also involve relatively flexible time obligations, so that the clergy person can have time to deal with pastoral emergencies, unusual time demands throughout the liturgical year (such as Holy Week), etc.
3. Independent money, either in the form of family patrimony, pension benefits from an earlier occupation, or accumulated income.
4. The willingness to cobble together a full time income by filling two or more cures simultaneoously–yoked congregations, parish ministry supplemented by a part-time institutional chaplaincy or teaching position, etc. In a time when getting a single cure can be difficult, getting multiple cures simultaneously would seem to be more difficult in geometric proportions.
The bottom line of the above admonition is that one should not enter this process if one wishes to live on a single income that comes from one cure. With the exception of option #4 above, this constraint tends to favor older candidates, who may have accumulated income and pensions from prior jobs, and women who may be comfortable providing a “second” income to their families (I am fully aware that there are also male clergy whose wives make substantially more than they do, but this seems to be the minority situation). The one group whose entry into the priesthood is not encouraged by this admonition concerning income is young people, who have not had the time to accumulate income to subsidize their time in orders, have not worked long enough to qualify for a pension, and who may have not “paired up” with someone willing or able to support their ordained ministry to the extent of providing most of the household income.
It sounds very sensible to me – we all know clergy only work on Sundays, and a real job during the week will keep them away from the blogs and out of mischief…
[blockquote]The revised program likely will place greater emphasis on what sort of ordained people the diocese needs. The diocese, for instance, wants people with entrepreneurial and congregational-development skills who can be flexible about their sources of income.[/blockquote]
Entrepreneurs? Excuse me… but aren’t priests called to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments? We are called to be preachers, teachers and pastors. The gifts and graces for ordained ministry should first and foremost be about faithfulness to Jesus Christ, not propping up dying congregations nor the preservation of an institution.
[blockquote]”It may seem a subtle shift, but it isn’t, for it involves the community in discernment long before a person’s call is clarified and put forward,” Fr. Portaro said. “In my own campus ministry experience, our interns and peer ministers—all students—were invited to participate; at the end of each academic year, I and our student community leaders reflected on who among us had evidenced gifts we could and should encourage. We found this much healthier than an open application process, though we always considered those who self-nominated. It’s just that that wasn’t the first most frequently used portal.”[/blockquote]
So… instead of self nomination/discernment it becomes a popularity contest among peers? Is that really a “much healthier” discernment?