The Rt. Reverend Samuel Johnson Howard
Eighth Bishop of Florida

To THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF FLORIDA

At The 163rd Annual Convention

May 5, 2006, Camp Weed and the Cerveny Conference Center, Live Oak

A little over two years ago I addressed this convention for the first time. I had been your Bishop for about 12 hours and here’s a little bit of what I said in that address:

“Our Capital Campaign for Camp Weed and the Cerveny Conference Center has successfully garnered your support. Grounds have been broken and structures for our new rooms, dining, and meeting areas are rising. One thing that should have been first has been left until last, however, that is, the construction of the youth pavilion–a structure dedicated entirely to the programs, the interests, and the activities of our youngest family members. It seems like our young people are always left for last, but we will not leave them to be last this time. We will build that Pavilion. Building the Youth Pavilion is not just about bricks and mortar; it’s about creating a focal point for Diocesan wide ministries to young people. It is about the commitment of this Diocese to bring those ministries to reality.”

As I greet you today, my dear friends and colleagues in ministry, I ask you to look around you. This youth pavilion, only a dream a little over two years ago, is now reality. The very first event to take place where you sit now occurred on April 1st. I tossed out the first “opening day Frisbee” in this place. In case you’re wondering how I did, it went high, wide, and right, and hit the wall over there. Just two weeks ago we dedicated and consecrated this building, which is named for two of the great priests of our diocese, Father Bob Snell and Father Barnum McCarty. I told the group assembled here that day that while it might have seemed to them that this building was being named after and honoring two of the retired priests of our Diocese, in actuality it was named after a pair of 18-year-old boys who worked at old Camp Weed, dug trenches, led programs, cleaned dishes, made beds, supervised campers, and who at Camp Weed first heard the call of Jesus Christ on their lives. And so, this is an appropriately named youth pavilion, which will serve all of us in this Diocese so well for many, many decades to come.

This space, in which you sit, isn’t just one more structure. It’s not just one more piece of glass, concrete, and steel. This building is the very icon of our Diocese, of a new spirit of collaboration and collegiality, a sign of the renewal of a commitment to mission and ministry and to changing the lives of those whom our Lord has called us to serve: the youngest, the oldest, the weakest, the poorest, the most vulnerable. We meet today in a structure, which is, for you and for me, symbolic of the renewal of our Diocese. The embodiment of a vision becoming a reality, of dreams coming to life, of ministry growing and becoming vital, vibrant and alive– leaving agendas behind and getting on with the work which our Lord has commanded us to do. This building is the symbol of who we are as a Diocese– a great missionary movement.

Ministry to our youth remains the number one priority of our Diocese. Coordinating, widening, and enriching that ministry remains our greatest challenge. It is the work of the youth ministers in our Diocese and the ministry of our clergy. Paul Van Brunt came to this Diocese three years ago to work directly with me as my assistant, but now, because his gifts and his experience bear most directly on youth ministry and are needed in that area, that is where he is assigned. Ministry to our young people, of course, remains principally the work of family, of parents, of grandparents, of friends. It is in the retelling of the stories of our faith in the home at the dinner table and at the bedside that most of us come to know and love Jesus. It is in the home that most of us learn to pray and to trust in a loving God. The magnificent youth programs and all that we envision are only there to support and to bolster the Christian family. Loving parents in a Christian home are still the best and irreplaceable first line of youth ministry.

One of the marks of a great missionary movement is commitment to education. We have so many excellent Episcopal schools in our Diocese; thirteen in all, which are an important part of youth ministry in our Diocese. They are educating and instilling Christian knowledge and Christian values in the youth of our Diocese. Over 3500 young people attend these schools where regular worship and instruction in our faith is an essential component of education. I am committed, along with the leadership of these schools and your Diocesan Board of Regents, which oversees the schools and their accreditation, to finding ways to coordinate even more closely, the ministry of church, school, and home. I’m committed, too, to our doing all we can to widen the community which our Episcopal schools serve. Our schools aren’t all white and they’re not just the domain of the well-to-do. Over a million-and-a-half dollars was awarded to students for need-based scholarships last year and together, we’re going to find ways to continue and to grow that figure so that no one will be denied an excellent Episcopal school education simply because he or she does not have the money to pay for it.

All of the wonderful things we’re talking about and that we’ll celebrate here together in the next 24 hours are the gifts of God. In these and so many other ways, we are richly blessed today in this, our Diocese. Each one of us would acknowledge that the last two years have been a difficult time in our life together. Many of our brothers and sisters have chosen to walk apart from you and me, and not to share in ministries, which are our God-given legacy in this wonderful Diocese. Nearly 30 of our clergy, priests, and deacons have left the Episcopal Diocese of Florida. Too many of the lay people in their churches have left also. Our commitment, yours and mine, to remain an orthodox Windsor Diocese has not been acceptable to them. A number of them, in defiance of the Windsor Report, have affiliated with foreign Dioceses—have brought, in fact, an alien and new innovation into northern Florida: Governance by foreign, non-American prelates with titles such as “Archbishop,” a title, which is alien and unknown to the Episcopal Church and to the traditions of our diocese. Our response, yours and mine, has been the appropriate one: love. Sometimes tough love, it’s true, but love nonetheless and God is rewarding the love, the patience, and forbearance, which we are showing. A good friend of mine refers to the approach we have taken as “gentle rain.” The “gentle rain” is the water of our baptisms into the death of our Lord and his resurrection, and over the past two years we have become, perhaps more than ever, truly the Body of Christ in this time and place.

I think of St. Bartholomew’s in High Springs where a return to gospel ministry is resulting in new vision and in growth, and now in dreams of new construction to better enable ministry in the middle of an old and lovely southern town.

I think of St. John’s in Tallahassee, divided last October, but now together in mission and ministry; over 1000 in church at Christmas and Easter, a budget strong enough to support real resource ministry and commitment to leaving the old agendas of the past behind to celebrate the love, the generosity of spirit, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think of Advent Tallahassee, too, and how it’s set off on a new course of commitment to the very best traditions of our Diocese and of our heritage as Florida Episcopalians. Good things are happening there and the strength and the vitality of that great neighborhood parish and the school, which is an important part of it, are beginning to shine through in marvelous ways.

I think too, of the new San Pablo Campus of Christ Church Ponte Vedra, formerly known as Calvary Church where numbers are worshipping, serving, and giving as they have not for years now. Not just members from Christ Church, but also new people from the neighborhood and from the apartments around the church. New people who weren’t going to church anywhere before, but who are now finding a warm, congenial, and spirit-filled church home.

I think, especially this afternoon, of Grace Church Orange Park; once more a church of this Diocese under the leadership of Father Barnum McCarty and a small and gifted group of lay leaders. Grace is living up to its name. It will, I am convinced, once more be one of the leading parishes of this Diocese in short order.

We still face difficulties in a few parts of our Diocese. The former leadership of Redeemer Jacksonville is occupying the church premises and refuses to permit Episcopal leadership, worship, and ministry to begin there. According to what I read, the Bishop of another Diocese on another continent now claims that property as his and not yours. Likewise, the clergy and lay leaders of All Souls Jacksonville and St. James Mission in Macclenny are claiming the property of your Diocese on behalf of foreign Dioceses and Archbishops. We are dealing with these issues carefully and charitably. The gentle rain continues to fall and God willing, long before we meet again at convention, these issues will have been satisfactorily resolved and new life, mission, and ministry will have begun in these churches.

There are other problems and issues which confront us as a Diocese, as well. I know that many of you, perhaps all, have read about allegations of sexual misconduct by a clergyman now deceased for a number of years which are alleged to have occurred at one of our parishes which has been closed now for over 30 years. There is also one new allegation of sexual misconduct by a priest of our Diocese. All I can say about any of these matters today is that the charges are being dealt with pastorally, they are being dealt with fairly, and they are being dealt with in a spirit of Christian charity for all those involved.

Right now, we’re preparing for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which will occur in Columbus, Ohio during mid June. Your deputies have been meeting and preparing, praying together for wisdom, for discernment, as they get ready for the convention. Prior to that convention, there will be a meeting here at Camp Weed so that your deputies may hear your opinions about the issues, which will be before them at convention. Following convention we will all meet again region by region to discuss what happens in Columbus. I have been preparing, too, for that convention, though my own work has often been quiet and behind-the-scenes, usually in one-on-one conversations with my colleagues in the House of Bishops, letting them know a bit of what the last three years have been like here at the Diocese of Florida and encouraging them to show restraint and to remain prayerfully cautious as they come to General Convention. I’ve been saying to them and to others for months now that I have three objectives, three wishes, when it comes to our General Convention this summer. First, I want there to be no controversial vote regarding consent to the election of any Bishop. Second, I pray that we will not even discuss potential rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. Third, we must prayerfully elect a new presiding Bishop who is committed to being truly inclusive, who acknowledges this Diocese and its Bishop, you and me, as full partners in the Episcopal Church and who behaves accordingly. We need a new presiding Bishop who’s willing to follow the good example of the Diocese of Florida and put agenda aside, and return the Episcopal Church to its historic role as a great missionary movement, domestic and foreign, and to its God-given role as the middle way, the via media, the church at the very center of civic and spiritual life in America. Add to those three wishes, an appropriate response to the Windsor Report; a response which builds on the work begun by me and some of my fellow bishops last year when we drafted the Camp Allen Covenant, and I will consider General Convention 2006 to have been successful.

My work has been relational and as I said, often one-on-one, in small groups of other bishops. I am learning this: Our Diocese is increasingly respected among the wider church and that our commitment to a steady and to a reasoned course has gained us a large measure of credibility and influence in the counsels of the Episcopal Church. We are going to continue on the course we have been traveling as a Diocese; to the right of center, but to the left of the ditch. That being said, I must share with you my thoughts that reform is needed in the systems and structures of our church. The Episcopal Church has become top heavy and bureaucratic in many ways, and our next presiding bishop will need to take a careful look at how we do business. One of my roles over the past few months has been to meet quietly with each of the candidates for presiding bishop and as I do so, to encourage them, if they’re elected, to not simply accept old ways of doing business. When I think of what it costs for General Convention meeting for 10 days every three years, when I think of how that money could be used to directly share the gospel and to do ministry, I grow more and more concerned. As most all of you have learned by now, I’m not a technologically savvy person. Computers and internet are not my world as most of you who send E-mails to me know, but in 2006 there has to be a better way of doing business than the way our church often chooses to do it. My proposal, which I make only half jokingly, is that instead of General Convention meeting for 10 days every three years, we should be meeting for three days every 10 years.

Speaking of conventions, I know that almost all of us are unhappy with the timing of our Diocesan Convention and the multiple problems in terms of scheduling, meeting canonical requirements and so forth that a May convention has led to for the past couple of years. Please remember, that we did this for the first time last year because we conducted a convocation to consider the ramifications of the Windsor Report during the January time that had been previously set for convention. Acknowledging now that we need to take a careful look at our convention, its timing, and its format, I’m appointing a blue-ribbon panel of Diocesan leaders, lay, and clergy, to look at the question of scheduling and format, and to report back to me with recommendations before the end of this summer. Our 2007 convention will once more be here in this space at Camp Weed. Long before then, we will have settled timing, format, and other issues surrounding convention. Hopefully, those issues will have been satisfied to meet the needs of the Diocese as a whole.

One thing that I have learned as your Bishop is that times like this need to be times for teaching and need to be times for studying. I am hopeful that as we do that together, good fruit has been borne. I enjoy teaching the Bible and I try to begin every clergy conference with a Bible study and to make teaching a class a part of many of my visitations. I hope you have realized that my preaching when I’m in your pulpits is always biblical and connected to the lessons for that day and I pray that it has made a difference. One theme which has become an important of my message throughout our Diocese has been the value of God-given relationships, of our relationship to God, that great vertical relationship of life, knowing God as he is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, of understanding our relationship to our neighbors of caring and loving our neighbor as ourselves and also our relationship with ourselves; understanding who we are as individuals and especially who we are vis-à-vis God in our relationship with him, our relationship to the world around us, to the air, to the water, to the natural environment; plants, animals, ecology, all of creation, into which God has placed us and over which he has made us not owners, but stewards. The message of those relationships, especially our relationship to God and to neighbor; relational theology, is important to us as a church and especially important to our Diocese at this time. To the extent that we understand ourselves as lone rangers, to the extent that we feel free to come and go as we like, to dine at the great theological cafeteria of the 21st century, and to make our religious choices out there rather than to remain anchored, and loyal, and together, I believe that we fail in our attempts to remain faithful to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I’ve preached on many Sundays now, about our Lord’s Great Commandment. I’ll bet you’ve heard me do it. Every Sunday has been different and yet everyone has been the same in its message: that Jesus responded to that trick question about what the greatest commandment was by saying that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. A simple answer and yet one which you and I are absolutely unable without the grace of God and Jesus Christ to perform. Also a commandment, which incidentally we can never be sure that we’re obeying at any given moment because just when we believe we are loving the Lord our God with everything we have, everything we are, with all of our strength in that moment, it disappears and we love not him, but ourselves whom we believe to be doing such a good job of loving. So Jesus, in his grace-filled manner gives you and me, as he always does, an out; another way, a test, a check, a barometer, a gauge so that we can know whether, in fact, we are loving God as we should. He does this when he tells us that there is a second part of the law. There is a second law inextricably bound to the first, which is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus has told us who our neighbor is, not just the person sitting next to us at convention, not just the folks back home in church, but people around the world, people in the Seychelles Islands, in Cuba, people everywhere whom we are to love and to care for. He is letting us know that if, in fact, we are loving our neighbor as we should, and if we are loving our neighbor in the name of Christ, then we are loving God as we should.

What does that mean to you and me in our Diocese right now? It means that we are to reach out to the hurting and to the dispossessed in our own midst. It means that we are to honor our own tradition by spending resources and improving our best efforts to rebuild those parishes and missions in our own Diocese which are now striving to re-enter the mainstream of our Episcopal tradition. It means building up our relationships with those who care for the poorest and the weakest, and the most vulnerable in our midst, supporting Grace Mission in Tallahassee, supporting St. Mary’s in Jacksonville, encouraging and partnering with FreshMinistries and its ground-breaking outreach to the urban poor. It means building up our already-strong tradition of prison ministries, an area in which the Diocese of Florida is in the vanguard. We have three priests of our Diocese whose ministry is exclusively behind bars and who have a growing number of prison congregations within their care. We have an active and alive Kairos Community in which the ministry of the laity also goes into our prisons, and several lay chaplains who act as ministers, and as advisors, and as counselors, and prayer partners to those who are in prison and now.

Camp St. Elizabeth will take place right here at Camp Weed and in this facility. At Camp St. Elizabeth, the children of those who are incarcerated will share in the same wonderful and life-giving camp experiences as other children of our Diocese enjoy. This is true gospel ministry. This is loving neighbor as self. This is what it means to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. It means devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to that vision we share of rural health clinics attached to our churches in our poorest and most rural areas, developing systems of community referral and truly making them incarnate, that sign each of us passes on the way church every Sunday, which tells us that, “the Episcopal Church welcomes you.”

Above all, loving our neighbor means evangelism; filling our pews, planting new churches, bringing all who do not know Him into the loving embrace of Him who defines love. Who have you invited to church lately? What is your church doing to care for visitors and for newcomers? Do you have a plan for evangelism in your parish or your mission? We cannot be the great missionary movement God has called us to be without these simple things: inviting people to church, caring for them when they come, and having a plan to incorporate and make them a part of our church, of our Diocese, and of this Christian family.

Loving our neighbor means, too, reaching beyond the borders of our Diocese to Cuba where more of us than ever before are committed to companion ministry and where a good and godly man, Miguel Tomayo is Bishop and where his wife, Marta, one of the great hosts of the western hemisphere, is deacon. A pattern seems to be developing in which Obispo Miguel is with us every other year for our convention and I’m in Havana for his synod in the alternate years. God willing, it is a pattern which will continue and which will encourage all of us in much more ministry, giving, and encouragement between our two Dioceses. One of the gifts we have received from Cuba as a result of my being at the synod last year is an ongoing and strong relationship with Bishop William Godfrey and his Diocese in Peru. Bishop Godfrey and Bishop Tomayo are old friends. They worked together in Uruguay for years before Bishop Godfrey moved to Peru and Bishop Tomayo became Bishop of both Uruguay and Cuba. Now, Bishop Godfrey has been with us several times; once as chaplain of this convention a year ago and again just a couple of months ago to lead our annual Lenten Clergy Retreat. Our dear brother, Bishop Santosh Murray of the Seychelles is with us today, formerly rector of St. Phillips Jacksonville, truly a man of God called to the missionary field, truly a son, a member of this Diocese, and truly a great leader in the church of the subcontinent, making us aware of missionary ministry in new ways in that part of the world and calling us to give more and more of ourselves in support of the Anglican Church in that part of the world.

I ask you this today: is God calling us to share of ourselves, to love our neighbor as ourselves in other companion relationships? Are there ways in which our love and care for our Cuban brothers and sisters can grown stronger if we also begin, more formally, to have relationships with another Diocese or perhaps with two other Dioceses? For those of you who say that there aren’t enough resources to go around then let me remind you of Christian marriage and the love within it. Let me remind you that the more you give love away the more it increases. Let me remind you of that Christian marriage and how it is that no parent ever came to love his first child less because his second one has been born. Likewise, no church has ever suffered because God has called it to share its love with more and more of the world. Sharing our love only blesses us the more.

Certainly, God is calling us in this Diocese to continue reaching out to our neighbors on the Gulf Coast, especially those who suffered so in the wake of Hurricane Katrina this past fall. Dozens of us have traveled to Mississippi to work. Thousands of us have given generously to support the efforts of recovery, rescue, and rebuilding in that part of the world. I believe that God is calling us in this Diocese to take on even more of this ministry and to begin to explore how our relationships with the Diocese of Louisiana and Mississippi and with parishes in those Dioceses can grow even closer.

So how is now, that you and I can begin the tough work of loving our God so completely and loving our neighbor even more dearly as we love ourselves? What are we to do? How are we to fulfill our roles in this great missionary movement? First, let me say that leadership is the means by which we will accomplish these goals. Stronger, more gifted, better trained leaders. More devoted, self-sacrificing, and loving leaders. Our Diocese is only going to be as strong and our ministries will only be as good as the quality of our leadership. We are encouraging strong lay leadership in a number of ways. One notable success has been our annual Vestry and Wardens Conference, which we have held for several years now here at Camp Weed. That conference provides a time for the exchange of ideas, for exploring mutual concerns, and for all of us to get to know each other and the churches we serve better. It is also a time when our consciousness that for us Episcopalians, the Diocese really is the fundamental unit of the church, can be explored, studied, and lived out.

We desperately need and we’re encouraging, strong clergy leadership too. I’m proud of our successes in locating and deploying the very best clergy for the parishes and missions of our Dioceses over the last two years. In the years to come, we will focus even more on recruitment of the best clergy to fill the pulpits and stand at the altars of our churches. The collaboration between search committees, vestries, and your Diocese has been superb. As that collaborative spirit grows the result will be the recruitment and deployment of the very best clergy leadership here in our Diocese.

How our clergy live and how they work and pray, and play with one another is important too. I’m committed to providing more and more of those opportunities, regular meetings for study and for work, but also regular meetings of our clergy for retreat and for reflection, and maybe even for some play.

Obviously, one important component for finding strong leadership for our churches has to do with our own discernment process in the mentoring, education, and placement of those called to ordained ministry within our Diocese. For the past year-and-a-half, that process has been on hiatus while our Commission on Ministry has reformed and reviewed our ordination process. I’m pleased to announce to you today that our ordination and discernment process is now reopened and that information will shortly be coming to you regarding our new ordination process in the Diocese of Florida. I am particularly grateful to all of the members of the Commission on Ministry for their hard work, prayer, and dedication in this task.

As I conclude my remarks to you this afternoon, let me share with you some concluding thoughts regarding the life of our Diocese. These thoughts are somewhat tentative, but nonetheless important, I believe, as you and I continue to forge strong relationships in ministry. Perhaps what I’m about to say will give you some perspective of where I see us headed as a Diocese, some perspective regarding a vision for our future.

I’m beginning to understand that my Episcopate, my time as your Bishop, will consist of three stages. The first stage is now coming to an end. That is the stage of consolidation and of winnowing out. We see now that many of those who have not wanted to be a part of our life together have left or are leaving. This is a painful stage for all of us in the Diocese; painful for those who have chosen to walk apart from us, painful for each of us personally. At the end of the day, however, at the end of this stage, we will be, yes, a bit smaller, but we will also be a lot more unified, a lot more collegial, and I believe that we will be well poised and ready to move on to the second stage.

The second portion of my Episcopate, perhaps another three or four years beyond the end of the stage that I think we see concluding now, is going to be a period of regrouping, of finding new leadership for many of our parishes and Dioceses and institutions, a period of really hard work while we prepare for the future. Can we locate, can we recruit the very best new clergy to provide leadership for our future? Will our new discernment process yield the very best in terms of those entering the process for ordination? Can we encourage and nurture the strongest in lay leadership for our Diocese, its commissions, its committees, its parishes? Finally, can we locate the resources which we will need in order to bring all of these things to fruition? Those will be our challenges during this, the next period of our lives together, the period of exploration, of finding, and of growth. If we succeed in that second period of my Episcopate then the third period of our life together, ever how many years God may give us together, will be one of unparalleled growth and unimaginable evangelism. It will be the realization of our Diocese as a truly great missionary movement. The third period of our life together will be one in which we begin to touch the lives of others in unexpected and miraculous ways. It is God, ultimately, who is in charge of our church and of our lives together. He loves us, he will care for us, he will tend us, and he will nurture us.

I do not have the words to tell you how honored I am to have been called by God to take on the role of Bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida. I am looking forward to the future of our lives together and I am excited as we look forward, together, to all that lies in store for you and for me, The Diocese of Florida, this great missionary movement.

Thank you and may God bless you and this, our church family.