MY FRIENDS IN CHRIST, ON THIS OCCASION OF THE ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SECOND REGULAR SYNOD OF THE DIOCESE OF SPRINGFIELD, I HAVE THE DISTINCT PRIVILEGE TO ADDRESS YOU AS YOUR BISHOP IN THE EIGHTH YEAR OF THIS EPISCOPATE IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.  AMEN.

On behalf of our gracious and hard working hosts, Father Bettmann and the combined congregations of Christ Church, Collinsville, and Holy Cross, Fairview Heights, I welcome each of you as we assemble to do the work of the annual Regular Synod of this Diocese.  I welcome especially our very special quests, the Right Reverend Rufus T. Brome, Bishop of Barbados -- our companion diocese, and his lovely wife, Marva.  Bishop and Mrs. Brome, please stand that we might honor you.  (Applause)  Thank you for coming to be with us.

I welcome those among us who have been ordained since the beginning of our last Synod, and I would ask them to stand as I call their names: the Rev. Thomas Anthony Davis, Deacon in Charge of St. John’s, Centralia and St. Thomas’, Salem; the Rev. James Wesley Harris, Vicar of St. Thomas’, Glen Carbon; and the Rev. Steven Tanner Thorp, assigned as Supply Priest out of St. Christopher's, Rantoul.  And I welcome the Rev. Robert Reed VanDeusen, from the Diocese of Southwest Florida, assigned as Missioner in the Hale Deanery Team Ministry.  Please stand, Fr. Bob so can give you an appropriate welcome, too.

Now, I want to pause for a moment of silence, as we remember two of our clergy who died this last year.  They are the Rev. Lucien Larivee, Priest Associate at Emmanuel, Champaign, and the Rev. Edward Holt, Rector of St. John’s, Decatur.  We are the richer for their witness and fellowship, and we thank God for them.  Yet, we feel diminished as a result of their deaths, and we grieve along with their families.  May they rest in peace and may all who grieve know God’s most gracious consolation.

(SILENCE) –

Let us pray.  Almighty God, we remember this day before You today Your faithful servants, Lucian Larivee, Priest, and Edward Holt, Priest; and we pray that having opened to them the gates of larger life, You will receive them more and more into Your joyful service, that, with all who have faithfully served You in the past, they may share in the eternal victory of Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Thank you.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take time right here to thank the people of this Diocese for their patience and support of my Naval Reserve ministry.  As you know, I retired from the Navy on 3 September 1999, after 27 years and three days of service.  Over the last year particularly, that work took me away from the Diocese and my wife, Melinda, for an inordinate amount of time.  I did appreciate the opportunity to serve our great country in that capacity.  I do believe I have been a better priest and am a better bishop as a result of that experience.  However, I am aware that a good amount of sacrifice has been required from a lot of people in addition to mine.  I just want to be sure my family and you know that I am most appreciative of the empowering support that is always required if these kinds of ventures are to be positive.  And I want you to know I’m home now for good, and loving every minute of it.

I consider it a great blessing to share this ministry with each and every clergy and lay person in this Diocese.  Your commitment and the good work you do is inspiring.  It needs to be, because the challenges we face are formidable.  When I came to the Diocese of Springfield, the record showed 7,414 baptized members in this Diocese.  As of December 31, 1998, it said there were 6,842, a decrease of 572.  Now I suppose we could take some comfort in the fact that some dioceses have lost more members, or that the statistics indicate we grew some from the prior year (by 37 members to be exact, if the numbers in the 1998 Diocesan Journal are correct).  Although any gain should not be discounted, it would be very inappropriate and premature to think we’ve turned the corner, and we don’t have to be concerned about it any more.  My ministry philosophy affirms we are to tend and serve the sheep, not count them.  But numbers can be a significant indicator.

I do believe God has great plans for us, and is trying to lead us in profound ways into magnificent ministry as His Church.  There are a good many signs wonderful things are happening.  I believe those signs witness to a renewal in our ministry direction.  Vision 2000 was developed and adopted and is being implemented.  It emphasizes worship, evangelism, stewardship, Christian education, pastoral care and social service while targeting youth ministry and clergy wellness. In addition, funding of diocesan missions has significantly increased.  Construction of a new facility for St. Michael’s, O’Fallon, is well underway.  A new facility in Harrisburg has been purchased for St. Stephen’s Church.  St. Thomas’, Glen Carbon, was completely renovated and expanded.  St. Luke’s, Springfield, has been remodeled and additional land and a parish house has been procured.  The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Springfield, is undergoing expansion and renovation of it’s educational, multipurpose and office spaces.  And an outdoor ministry pavilion is in the works at the Church of the Redeemer, Cairo.

All these things are indicative of a significant stirring in the ministry of this Diocese and I could enumerate for at least an hour on the new ministry initiatives taking place in our parishes.  For all of this, you have my gratitude as well as my admiration and support.

The biggest challenges we immediately face, I identify as two fold.  The first is the solidarity of our Diocese and congregations.  Episcopalians as a whole have a reputation of being less than regular in their worship.  We too often act as if corporate worship is a parade that comes around every week.  If we miss one week it’s no big deal.  We’ll be able to catch the next one, if we need it.  That’s light years away from the understanding that every baptized person is an indispensable member of the Body of Christ, and we all need to gather at least weekly not only for what we can received but also for what we can give.  Whenever we absent ourselves from corporate worship, we, as individuals, and the larger Body, are diminished.  Faithfulness demands we be faithful in corporate worship, even as we are part and parcel of the Communion of Saints.  Corporate worship connects us with the larger Church, the Body of Christ, from which flows any and all Christian identity.  To absent ourselves from regular weekly worship, betrays our heritage and squanders our inheritance.  Perhaps more than thing else we must be faithful in corporate worship, along with personal devotions, mediations and Bible study, while encouraging others in the same.

In the same way, as clergy leaders in this Diocese there are some important requirements for effective witness.  Recently we had an ordination, in which only about ten diocesan clergy participated.  I was embarrassed for us when a priest not canonically resident asked me how many clergy we had in the Diocese of Springfield.  He then reflected negatively on the poor turn out.  It continues to occur to me that if the person being ordained were our brother or sister, we no doubt would be there.  What we need to understand in no uncertain terms is that the person being ordained IS our brother or our sister, and we need to be present in order to support that ministry as well as to affirm the substance of our own vocation.  In addition to ordinations, our presence as clergy is required at the following: our annual pre-Lenten retreat, the Holy Tuesday collegial Eucharist at which we reaffirm our ordination vows, periodical deanery and diocesan clergy gatherings, deanery and synod meetings and celebrations of New Ministries.  We are not a congregational Church.  We are members of the Church Catholic and it is high time we, as clergy, set the most positive example of that reality.

My hope for this Diocese is that we will allow God, Himself, to mold us into a dynamic instrument for accomplishing the work of His Kingdom.  My hope for this Diocese requires that we allow God to grow us into a loving, redeeming fellowship of people, united by baptism and Christian fellowship to discern and pursue God’s will for us.  In order for that to happen, we must as individuals and as a group be faithfully committed to worship, Christian education, stewardship, evangelism, pastoral care and social service.  These are interdependent as well as primary aspects of what it means to be called a Christian and to have a ministry that is of Christ. We often hear about how important evangelism is and how poorly Episcopalians do it.  That is an important clue that something significant is out of sync.  Evangelism is central to the Christian Faith.  In addition, the essence of evangelism would seem to be a natural response of any lively faith given the reality that human beings tend to share everything that is important to them when the circumstance is deemed appropriate for sharing.  Why is it, then, that we tend not to share our faith?  I think it is primarily because too many of us simply do not feel comfortable taking about it.  We’re not comfortable taking about it, because we don’t feel we know very much about it (which tends to be true), and we’re not comfortable taking about things of which we know very little.  So evangelism is immediately dependent on Christian education, as are the other previously delineated aspects of our faith.  Effective worship at a minimum embodies evangelism, stewardship, Christian education and pastoral care while inspiring social service.  I think you probably get the point, and I need not labor it further.

The other immediate and critical challenge we are facing is obtaining competent clergy leadership for our congregations.  Currently, we have eight congregations seeking permanent clergy leadership.  At least one of which is having severe difficulty procuring even a supply priest.  It is obvious clergy are not standing in line to come to southern Illinois.  Rather recently I thought we had three positive leads for a person to succeed Fr. John Wall in the ministry which yokes Effingham, Olney, and Robinson.  All of them fizzled out.  One person came for a visit, and having seen the situation, cancelled the appointment we had made because he didn’t want to waste his time or mine.  Obviously a number of people don’t have the same affection we have for the Diocese of Springfield.  That being the case, it’s just as well they don’t come here.  If they did it’d probably be a disaster.  One thing I’ve learned in the past seven years is that a vacancy is preferred to an inappropriate match!  Nevertheless, something need to be done and rather quickly.

The good news is that we have some outstanding candidates in training, but that is of no assistance now.  Therefore, I ask you and the other members of your congregations to assist first by joining me in praying daily that God will send faithful clergy to serve in this Diocese.  Secondly, I ask your assistance in identifying suitable clergy who might be interested in coming to minister with us and to us in the Diocese of Springfield.  I would be interested in any and all recommendations, suggestions or ideas.

In the meantime, I call on each of you to join me in rededicating ourselves to the principles of our faith.  By the grace of God let us continue to strive to put Him first in our lives, that He might use us more and more in the revitalization of His Church in the Diocese of Springfield.

There is no more important work than this.  If we don’t do it, who will?  So, as I’ve said before, let us then be about it, united in the same love and power by which Christ conquered death on our behalf, so that we might have life eternal in communion with the Holy and Blessed Trinity and all the saints.

NOW UNTO GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON AND GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT BE ASCRIBED AS IS MOST JUSTLY DUE, ALL MIGHT, POWER, MAJESTY, DOMINION AND GLORY NOW AND FOREVER.  AMEN.

PRAYER ATTRIBUTED TO

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

AT THE OUTSET OF HIS EXPLORATION OF

THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Let us Pray.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves; when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little; when we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the Waters of Life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

We ask you push back the horizons of our hopes, and to push us in the future with strength, courage, hope and love.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray.  Amen.