Bishop's Address
from the
2002 Annual Convention of
the Diocese of Northern Michigan

Bishop James A. Kelsey's
October 19, 2002 address to the
Diocesan Convention 2002
Marquette, Michigan

God of Grace and Peace and Truth and Justice, come into our midst at this hour and move among us. Fill our hearts and minds and imagination, that we may remember who we are as your people and rejoice and serve you always with courage and vision and thanksgiving. Amen


Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.


That quote is one of our Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold's, favorite sayings. It comes from Rumi, that great Muslim mystic poet from Afghanistan (or what today is called Afghanistan). It was written in the 13th Century. A time, in that part of the world, which was marked by disaster and destruction resulting from the Mongol invasion. And I can see why someone like Frank Griswold, who lives every day in the midst of a cross-fire of radically different theologies and church practices would cling to the vision of a place - just any place which exists out there, beyond the present petty bickering which so threatens to undermine the great mission of this Church.

For some reason (probably some obvious reasons), in the House of Bishops, we are always talking about Reconciliation - "Waging Reconciliation", you'll remember, was the name of the Pastoral Letter written by the bishops just after September 11th, last year.

You and I are blessed, in this Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan because we don't seem to get tied in knots around such debates. At least, not in the way they so entrench the Church on the national & international scene. But we know that we do live as a part of this Church with all of its present-day struggles - and we do need to be faithfully present to that reality; and we do live in a world which is filled with conflict, with violence and uncertainty; a world which still this morning stands on the brink of war. It is indeed a world of snipers and falling sky-scrapers and bomb blasts, and kidnapings, and saber rattling, and that list goes on and on... And in each of our personal lives, of course, there are disruptions and conflicts and personal losses which also confront us in unsettling ways.

Living with such conflagration is a part of living out our days, it seems, and Rumi's vision of the field which is out there, beyond our personal, national, and international strife, beyond our personal, cultural, and inter-cultural ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing is really akin to the Judeo-Christian notion of Shalom - of the Kingdom, or the Realm of God promised in the end, to us all - to all of creation.

I am raising that vision again for us this morning, as we gather at this Annual meeting to celebrate, to reflect together, and to plan for our common life and mission, which we share so powerfully in this little diocese of ours. I am raising it because I would like to invite you, the next few minutes to look out beyond where we have been and where we are today out beyond to wherever it is that God is calling us, so that even as we do rehearse in some measure what we as the Church (as this diocese) are up to, we might hold before us as well the more important matters (as our Chaplain Kenneth Leech has reminded us) of what God is up to in our midst and in our world.

Believe it or not, this is my fourth Convention Address to you since I became bishop. Some of you may remember my first address, in 1999, in which I quoted from Ecclesiastes (and Pete Seeger):
To everything, (turn, turn, turn)
there is a season, (turn, turn, turn)
and a time for every purpose under heaven.

I called upon us to enter into our Evaluation 2000 with a spirit of enthusiasm and imagination, and in the spirit of that Year of Jubilee - which we were about to observe. And I told the story of Martin, a drifter who had landed in San Diego and who then lived homeless in the public park adjacent to the Episcopal Cathedral. This lost soul, who reminded us so powerfully of so many in our world, dare I say, even in our own communities, who carry such deep, personal need - the brokenness in life which Jim Hendricks spoke about yesterday afternoon and which we do hope to address through the work we envision for the Page Center for Spiritual Life. And I shared with you my own personal questions - questions which still haunt me today:

Who are we as a diocese?
Who are we, as the people of God?
What are we about?
What is God about, in our midst and in our world?
How do we touch the lives of the Martins in our towns & villages across this peninsula?
How do we touch the Martins in one another's hearts?
How do we learn to become ourselves?
To escape the destructive voices of our own past lives?
To find courage to seek companionship instead of each hiding out on our own?
To invite and welcome in others who are searching and yearning for what we have found together?


That was in 1999, when I first asked those questions. By the time our Convention met a year later, we were in the final stages of our Evaluation 2000. And we were trying to get real, to face some sobering realities of declining numbers and institutional stress. It was such an interesting juxtaposition, because at the same time we were screwing up the courage to speak out loud about the institutional challenges we were facing, we were also reporting in about and celebrating a vast array of Jubilee Ministries - symbolized most powerfully by our group of twenty who had just returned from the mission trip to Honduras. We re-dedicated ourselves to a concentrated effort to build up our diocese, numerically & institutionally, yes, and also spiritually and in terms of personal commitment and corporate witness

In that address, I drew upon the gospel story of Jesus instructing his fishing disciples to push out into deeper waters. And I called upon us as a diocese to push out into the deeper waters of Christ's mission. Carmen Guerrero, our national church Jubilee Officer, was with us, and she inspired us with her words and encouragement. Also with us was Jackie Means, the national church director of prison ministries, who helped us remember how the prison industry in the U.P. has been growing faster than we might have imagined, and with her words, a new vision for ministry to and with inmates and their families began to come into focus for us. What fruits have come from that!

After that Convention, in 2000, our Diocesan Council and other diocesan leaders gathered to develop five-year goals and a strategy for pursuing them. They came out of the challenging learnings from our Evaluation 2000. Do you remember those goals?

That by 2005,
each congregation in our diocese will have grown
- in expressions of witness and social responsibility
- in local shared leadership
- in regional and ecumenical partnerships
- in average Sunday attendance
and - in pledge & plate income

By 2005,
the Diocese will have nurtured the gathering of at least one new worshiping community.

Each congregation will be a center
- for communicating the gospel to the world
- for communicating about the life & mission of their congregation
to the region, diocese, & their own community
and - for communicating about the life and mission of the diocese and the greater church to the members of their own congregation

And, finally, by 2005,
the Diocese will have grown in a shared commitment to financial stewardship
- increasing our giving beyond ourselves
- redesigning the 40% regional share plan to reflect a new diocesan culture and system which affirms generosity & openness about money
- developing a Planned Giving program in the diocese and having the compensation packages in the diocese reach median levels of the national church

Those were the five-year goals we set in 2000. Now it's two years down and three to go. So how are we doing? And how have we - and how has the world changed since that time, when those goals were set? Last year, when our Convention met at the House of Ludington in Escanaba, we were still in the shadow of the disastrous events of September 11th. In my address, I told of my own personal experiences in Manhattan on that fateful day, and together we tried to begin to imagine how to proclaim the gospel in a world which was so obviously engulfed by fear and violent terror. We called ourselves back to the task of re-claiming the Vision which rests at the heart of our faith, and which reminds us always, what we are about.

I recalled the same institutional challenges we were trying to address coming out of our Evaluation 2000 and the five year goals which resulted and I offered the suggestion that we not slip into a self-serving, church growth agenda which might serve the institution, but fail to advance the work we have been given to do in the Name of Jesus and in the Spirit of his Love. I offered this slogan: "Let's go at it through Mission". I suggested that instead of initiating a publicity promotional campaign for its own sake, we might focus instead on the gospel and our mission, proclaiming it through word and deed, and let our life and work together speak for itself. What publicity could be more compelling than having folks hear about the work we are doing with prisoners' families or through Anti-Racism training or work to assist victims of Domestic Violence or with the Medical Care Access Coalition? Let's get visible in our communities by making a difference in people's lives, I suggested. Not just by hanging new signs and planting new flowers.

That's what I was trying to say in my address at last year's convention, and I have to tell you that not everyone agreed. I got some feedback(!) Some felt that I was backing off from my energetic commitment to address the institutional challenges we are given to face. Some felt that our emphasis on Evangelism was going by the boards. It made for interesting conversation when Diocesan Council met for its annual goal setting workshop last November. And through the dynamic of this discussion, we came up with four Priorities for 2002. Our idea was that if we worked on these four things, it should move us along towards the five year goals we had set the year before.

Here is the statement we came up with:

"Our priority for 2002 is to develop and extend our Mission/Evangelism by:
1) building on our strengths as a ministering community
2) knowing who we are, focusing our vision, and communicating it effectively
3) becoming a community that values and practices the celebration of all people (demonstrating radical/full acceptance)
and 4) nurturing/developing our liturgical life"

These, we said, should be the main focus of our work together over the course of the year. So, I'd like to take a moment or two to reflect upon these past twelve months in light of these four priorities:

First: Building on our strengths as a ministering community: We made the focus of the MSTYC gathering (i.e. - the Ministry Support Team Yearly Conference) this year to be the development of the gifts of all in the community: Asset Based Community Development - is what our speaker, John McKnight calls it.

The Commission on Ministry this past year has gone through a major re-structuring and re-vitalization: supporting Commissionings of new Ministry Support Team members at All Saints, Newberry last weekend and Trinity, Gladstone tomorrow. Affirmation Weekends recently held in Iron Mountain & Escanaba. Discovery Sessions - the first step in gathering together Covenant Groups which have taken place in Iron River and Menominee, are underway in Negaunee, and will be starting this spring in Manistique. St. Paul's in Marquette, following a creative time while Mark Engle was away on sabbatical, is now exploring a possible new shape for their shared ministry and St. James in the Soo is also looking at new possibilities.

This afternoon, you will be hearing a report about LifeCycles, the greatly revised & improved formation process for our Covenant Groups which has become an international partnership involving Wyoming, Nevada, New England, and a number of pilot communities including Wales in the United Kingdom. Linda Grenz, of LeaderResources, which publishes the Journey to Adulthood materials, and previously published the Year of Jubilee manual for the national church serves as our consultant & publisher for the project. This has become a chief focus for the work of our Ministry Development Coordinator, Kevin Thew Forrester and involves a team of educators & ministry developers from around the diocese.

The Commission on Ministry has also developed a model for Continuing Education (or "Ongoing Learning" as we prefer to call it) for all in our diocese who are ordained and for members of Ministry Support Teams and, in fact, for all of us in our shared, mutual ministry. We have been part of a national pilot project in these efforts, and what has taken shape here will contribute to new national church canons which are being written as Continuing Education requirements for all Episcopal clergy.

Our visions for the development of the Page Center for Spiritual Life, of course, also relate directly to our renewed emphasis on education and spiritual formation for all.

The Commission on Ministry has also been taking initiative to strengthen the diaconate throughout the diocese. We have numerous deacons in congregations throughout the diocese which have Ministry Support Teams, but none yet in other congregations of the diocese. My personal vision is that every congregation in the diocese could and should have multiple deacons as a living reminder of the serving ministry of Christ to which we all are called. To this end, I serve as the Bishop representative to the board of directors for the North American Association for the Diaconate and we have developed a PowerPoint presentation on the history and traditions of deacons in the Episcopal Church which will be featured at the diocesan Diaconal Ministry Conference to be held at St Paul's in Marquette next weekend.

Building on our strengths as ministering communities has taken many forms over this past year. St. James the Less in Harvey (affectionately known as Little Jimmy's) and St. Mark's in Crystal Falls both celebrated their Centennials in 2002. Wonderful celebrations!

And as Mary and I have traveled around the diocese, we have been truly impressed with the variety of ministries we see to & with our young people. This past year, I know, there have been workshops and conferences on this topic in several congregations & regions of the diocese. Mary and I have seen the fruits of these efforts. You'd be amazed how many young people are being presented for Confirmation & Re-Affirmation in congregation after congregation throughout the U.P. these days. And, of course, our summer camps are growing again, and our Happenings continue, our Winter Youth Rally was a real success this year, and last summer, we sent five youth with two adult sponsors to Wyoming for the triennial Episcopal Youth Event - EYE. Kevin Thew Forrester & Russ Murphy recently returned from a conference in Oregon where they learned about a movement to develop rites of passage for young men. Something we may be hearing more about over the coming year.

And for young adults, the EACW (the Episcopal Association for College Work) in Houghton is doing some major re-visioning and long range planning. In the Marquette area, the Dead Saints Society continues to meet on a monthly basis for the twenty-something crowd.

There are plans underway for other workshops over the coming months, including a Stewardship workshop in the South Central Region In the area of communications, I want to say how grateful and impressed I've been with the work of our new Communications Committee. Rïse Thew Forrester, Barbara Susan, Jane Cisluycis, Val Gonzalez-Murphy, Marcia Pruner, Claudia Nadeau, and Bob Foster (who has done such creative things with press releases & feature stories in the local Iron Mountain press). This group has really developed the Church in Hiawathaland and our Web Site and they're working on a number of other communications-related projects as well.

But, even as we seek to improve how we communicate, there's a prior question we need to ask: what is it we're communicating? It's in that first part of this second priority: knowing who we are & focusing our vision. In my opinion, the most important work done in this arena has come out of the Page Center Development group. You heard their presentation yesterday afternoon. Let me repeat for you the vision which they (which we) have articulated for that Center. You see, in my opinion, it might just as well serve as a vision statement for the entire diocese:

We envision a world in which all people live together in peace and in harmony with all of creation, where all can contribute and the gifts of all are joyfully received, nurtured, and supported, where our diversity is celebrated in community, and every human being is recognized as having eternal significance.

I don't know about you, but for me, that really works. And I think one reason is that it's talking less about us as the Church and more about the rest of the world - and what God is up to (as Ken, again, has put it). As far as I'm concerned, if we could test everything we do as a diocese and as individual people of faith against that vision statement - we'd go along way towards re-discovering the mission which has called us together in the first place. I'll be interested to hear from others around the diocese to see how this statement resonates with you.


Of course, each community of faith has to keep on working at its own articulation of who we are and what we are about. This is work we all have to do. But think about what it means to be the kind of community which is totally dedicated towards peace-making and the encouragement & development of everyone's gifts, and the celebration of diversity and the honoring of the dignity and eternal significance of every human being.

Think about how we've approached these very things as a diocese - as a community of faith. In fact, this also relates to the third priority: that of becoming a community that values and practices the celebration of all people; demonstrating radical or full acceptance.

This year, our excellent Justice & Peace Committee has continued the Anti-Racism Workshops which were mandated by General Convention in 2000 for all leaders in the Episcopal Church. At our MSTYC Conference last spring, we had as our guests Dr. Mohey Mowafy (a Muslim professor at NMU) and Dr. Michael Grossman (a Jewish pediatrician from Negaunee) who helped us explore our interfaith roots & relationships. Several congregations around the diocese this year gathered for multiple sessions on "Understanding Islam" such an important work - especially following September 11th of last year.

Later this afternoon, we will hear a report by Kay Payant about our efforts in prison ministry, especially the hospitality ministry we've offered for families of inmates, visiting from the lower peninsula, and, of course, our ecumenical partnership with Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics to offer the first annual Camp New Day UP a summer camp program for children who have parents or other relatives in prison.

We'll also hear a report from the Medical Care Access Coalition, a remarkable, ecumenical and community-wide ministry which seeks to address the needs of the uninsured in our own towns and villages

There are several I know throughout the diocese who are a part of the Coalitions Against Domestic Violence, and our Jubilee Center, the Keweenaw Family Resource Center in Houghton continues to set the bar for programs to support children at risk. Our Trust Association, even while struggling with the declining market and diminishing returns is renewing its efforts to promote principles for socially responsible investing and is taking initiative to develop a wider coalition of dioceses to do the same.

A few minutes ago, I mentioned the mission trip to Honduras in October of 2000. Since then, some from our diocese have returned to San Pedro Sula several times, and some have traveled to Belize, Mexico, and Equador. Gail Baravetto, our Episcopal Relief & Development coordinator, has spearheaded a campaign to support Jorge Portillo, an adolescent who is returning to the United States for more surgery for his fragile heart condition.

Mary Kelsey serves on the Board for Our Little Roses, the Home for Girls in San Pedro Sula, where what is literally life-saving work goes on every day. This year, she traveled there with Linda Piper & Peggy Padilla and she's already planning for another group to go in 2003. She's always looking for sponsors for the girls who live there.

As we saw yesterday afternoon through her moving slide presentation, Margaret Sottile traveled to South Africa this past year to learn about ministries with children who are victims of poverty and AIDS. Jane Cisluycis is our new diocesan liaison with the international Jerusalem 2000 initiative to support people of all faiths and traditions in Palestine. Joyce Menard has been our United Thank Offering coordinator, and Marion Luckey has traveled around the world as a part of this ministry. Teena Maki is our Church Periodical Club coordinator. Leon Jarvis is Chaplain to patients of all denominations and faith groups at Marquette General Hospital. Trinity, Gladstone continues its remarkable After School program, and its other several outreach ministries. St. Luke's on the Trail, on Sugar Island, has raised literally thousands of dollars for the local food bank and other human need. This past summer, St. Peter's by the Sea in Eagle Harbor burned a votive candle on the altar every Sunday as a special intention for peace in the world. And the list goes on and on.

If I didn't mention your community by name, you know I could have. We are all going about this same business - each in our own way. In my opinion, we really do know what we are about, as the Church.

We are a diocese filled with people who are engaged in witness - in mission and ministry to those most in need. Working together for peace and justice in every way imaginable. And in this, we are reaching out to form partnerships with others whenever & wherever possible. Partners with other Christian denominations, with other faith groups, with community service groups, with institutions and agencies, when possible, and with other Episcopal & Anglican dioceses as well

We've had a number of visits with our Companion Diocese, as you saw in the report yesterday afternoon. We are also in closer partnership with the other Episcopal Dioceses in the state of Michigan including our annual AMEN Conference (AMEN - standing for All Michigan Episcopal Network) and we continue our partnership with the Living Stones dioceses, through Sindicators, and the Ministry Developers Collaborative. We've continued to welcome visitors to the diocese who want to learn about mutual ministry; visitors from throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

You see - in so many ways, we are engaged in these ministries which value and celebrate all people - all people, whatever their circumstance in life.

And so, we come to the fourth and final priority in the list produced by Diocesan Council last November: that of nurturing and developing our liturgical life. Indeed, we have come to understand that the ground and foundation of all that we do, of all these things I have been rehearsing and rehashing, is our life of prayer. Because we know that the way we gather and the way we sing praises and lift our petitions and thanksgivings; all of these things truly set the table for the banquet we share, and to which we so wish to invite new friends to join us. Many congregations throughout the diocese have been working hard on this. Again, we've held numerous workshops and conferences on church music. Louis Weil is coming to the ECW Winter Gathering this February to help us look more deeply into our liturgical life - and I'll tell you, that will be one not to miss.

St. John's in Munising has stunned and inspired us all with a radical renovation of their worship space now perfectly suited for the ministering community it is. If you haven't seen it yet, I wish for you an early opportunity to do so. Impressive and provocative and truly, as I've said, inspiring.

The South Central Region will be holding a preaching workshop in the new year. I am hopeful that this will be the first of a series of such offerings throughout the diocese. As Manuel Padilla reminds us, from his learnings through his D-Min studies at Seabury-Western, three common features of congregations which are growing are: good preaching, effective pastoral, or mutual care, and dynamic outreach. How can we help these three receive special focus and attention over the coming year?

And, while I am mentioning liturgy, I'd like to take note of the Taize worship and singing which we experienced last night and which has been featured in Marquette County and on Mackinac Island over the course of this past year, offering an alternative to many who find it hard to connect with the more structured format of our usual liturgies.

In all of these ways, and more, we have sought to emphasize the four priorities which Council identified last November. Now, where do we go from here?

In a few minutes, we will be turning our attention to the long range factors in our financial planning. It's a conversation which has been forced upon us by realities in the general economy and also by the eventual consequences of the struggles we've had in the arena of numerical growth. These are not always fun discussions, but it's just very important that we involve as many in our diocesan family as possible in facing the issues we've been given to deal with. I can tell you that it would be possible to get a little down about the challenges we face as an institution. But, after all I have just described - all that is going on in our midst, and in our communities, because of our life & ministry together - how could you stay down very long?

And, you see, this, too, brings us back to Rumi: and to that poem I quoted at the start of this address:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

Out beyond all of these factors which would threaten to undo us as a diocese there is indeed a field where we might discover again who we are and what we are about as a diocese. And more importantly we might discover, or have some glimpse of what God is up to in this creation. Rumi's field lies out beyond the pettiness of our immediate concerns. Together, my friends, you and I are being called beyond the madness of this oft-times violent, warring world. We are being called beyond the fear of terrorism and injustice and random violence and all the rest. We are being called beyond the institutional pressures which may weigh upon us as a diocese. We are being called to the vision of that place where life comes together into a meaningful, perfect whole, where we might come again to ourselves, and re-member (or perhaps realize for the first time, really) what God is doing here and now.

One of my favorite quotes is from John Knox, and it goes like this:
"The Church is a fellowship in the Love of God which is called to be an ever-widening sphere in an ever-deepening reconciliation."

You see, for me, that means breaking out of the shell we have been living in. It means reaching beyond the borders and the boundaries of the familiar & the routine.

"The Church is a fellowship in the Love of God which is called to be an ever-widening sphere in an ever-deepening reconciliation."

It means being less concerned about what makes us Episcopalians, and more concerned about how we are participating in God's never ending stream of love, of healing, of peace & harmony with all of creation, of justice, of respecting the dignity of every human being. It means going out from here, being of one heart and of one mind, working together as enthusiastically about one another's projects as our own so that, together, we might become an ever-widening sphere in an ever-deepening reconciliation, always keeping the vision of the field, out there, which is beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, beyond the pettiness of the moment, beyond all that would threaten to divide us, or to undo us. May God go with us, and may we go with God. AMEN.