Central Texas Conference Episcopal Address given by Bishop Mike Lowry
June 6, 2016
PART IV – “A Time for Courageous Leadership”
Leadership development for both lay and clergy remains and must remain a top priority. To this end two years ago we brought in Dr. Kevin Walters to buttress our development of a new generation of lay leaders. The Vital Leadership Academy as noted is already making a difference. Soon Dr. Walters along with our Lay Leadership Council will be rolling out a new Lay Servant Ministry program. We are indebted to our Lay Leader Kim Simpson for her pioneering efforts along with Dr. Walters.
Mr. Jeff Roper has been hired as the Associate Director for Leadership Development freeing Dr. Georgia Adamson to focus on the task of Assistant to the Bishop. It is my hope that you as a Conference will approve the splitting of those two positions, which was the original intent in the Exodus Project at its inception. We did not do so because of budget considerations. I am pleased and proud to say that we are now able to add the position of Leadership Development on a half-time basis in a way that is budget neutral; that is to say, it will not increase our apportionment one dollar. [This action was approved.]
Jeff brings a wealth of superb senior leadership to us from Alcon Labs. Already he is helping us to develop a system of clergy leadership development which we call LASP. LASP stands for Learning Agility Sustained Performance. This will enable us to significantly retool as we engage the post-Christendom environment we live in.
Concomitant with the LASP system of clergy training and assessment is what we are tentatively calling SPKP which stands for Sustained Performance Kingdom Potential. It is potentially a way of helping churches assess the degree they are will to step up to higher mission and ministry to which the sovereign Lord is calling them and us together to engage in. Laity let me put this plainly. We cannot hold clergy accountable unless churches are themselves open to such accountability.
It will take us awhile to figure all this out. We will go through field testing and pilot project in some districts. It will be threatening to all of us. Changes will need to be made. But it also has the courageous possibility to help us step into the brave new world of church the Lord is calling us to.
There is a famous speech taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which addresses to our situation.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”[1]
These are tough times for the church. There is no way around it. It is harder to be a pastor today than at any time in my 41 years in ministry (thirty of which have been spent as a pastor of a local church). Easy answers do not apply. Complexity is the nature of the situation. It takes nerve to stand for Christ in today’s environment. Courage is not a nice bonus in a pastor but a necessity. Lay leadership demands discernment and uncommon wisdom linked with the fortitude to navigate the storm.
Ross Douthat in his engaging book Bad Religion reminds us of Christian reality in the following quote.
“In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterston describes what he calls the “five deaths of the faith” – the moments in Western history when Christianity seemed doomed to either perish entirely or else fade to the margins of a post-Christian civilizations. It would have been natural for the faith to decline and fall with the Roman Empire, or to disappear gradually after the armies of Islam conquered its ancient heartland in the Near East and North Africa. It would have been predictable if Christianity had dissolved along with feudalism when the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, or if it had vanished with the ancient regimes of Europe amid the turmoil of the age of revolutions. And it would have been completely understandable if the faith had gradually waned during the long nineteenth century, when it was dismissed by Marx, challenged by Darwin, denounced by Nietzsche, and explained away by Freud.
But in each of these cases, an age of crisis was swiftly followed by an era of renewal, in which forces threatening the faith either receded or were discredited and Christianity itself revived. Time and again, Chesterston noted, “the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs.” But each time, “it was the dog that died.”[2]
It is not Demosthenes speaking to us[3]; still less Shakespeare. It is Jesus, the sovereign Lord of the both the church and universe. More importantly it is Christ himself who calls and commands. Do you recall the verse I opened this address with? “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”[4]
Friends, the risen Christ stands this day and says again to us, let us march! So it is, so it is. Fear not! It’s time to march!
[1] Brutus; Julius Caesar, Act 4 Scene 3
[2] Ross Douthat, Bad Religion, pg. 277-278
[3] “When Cicero spoke we said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke we said, ‘Let us march.’”
[4] Acts 1:8