Ordained Life; Watch Your Step[Deacons, Priests, & Bishops]
"May we give some advice?" Steps Towards A Guaranteed Disaster!
The following is a series of messages written by the Very Rev. Paul Tunkle, Rector of St. James Episcopal Church (ECUSA) in Alexandria, Louisiana, Dean of the Alexandria Convocation of the Diocese of Western Louisiana, and Chaplain to the Bishop Coadjutor Election Committee for the Diocese of Western Louisiana. They are short enough to be reproduced here and I found them helpful and challenging. While I'm not sure of Dean Tunkle's theological position (he may be very evangelical and Reformed or he may be a Liberal) and while I am aware that some here will disagree with at least one thing that he mentions, I found them to be personally edifying not only in choosing a Bishop, but for all ordained servants. I hope that you will too.
[Copied from “co-anglican list serve.]
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August 24, 2001
The First Step to Guaranteed Disaster
in Ordained Life
Understand that without your personal 24-hour efforts, the Kingdom of God will go directly down the drain.
In 1936 psychiatrist Rollo May gave us a name for an old pathology: The Messiah Complex. He described the hero who "fixes" others, works over-long hours, and skips vacations. The hero wears the painful smile of martyrdom, and sets an example followed too often by American parishioners, which says that slavery to one's work is a virtue. The byproduct of this kind of leadership is what therapists call an "infantilized" membership, by which is meant, those who become like infants, unable to initiate or maintain the church's ministries on their own. After all, if mother always tied your shoes, why should you learn to tie them?
If ordained leaders believe that they must work from before dawn to after dark, then they must present themselves as indispensable, never allowing the development of leadership in anyone other than themselves. After all, presentation is everything!
The demands on the work of a Bishop are enormous. However, the Kingdom of God is not well served by those who cannot model healthy behavior for us all. When Jesus was pressed by the crowds, he would often go off by himself to pray. We can open a spiritual door for our whole diocese if we allow and enable our new Bishop to take time for solitude and prayer, not apart from the duties of the office, but as an integral part of them. Retreats, a well reasoned sabbatical policy, and consent and approval of good delegation and staffing will permit our new Bishop to seek out the presence of God in solitude and prayer. We will all be the beneficiaries of such an arrangement.
I suggest each of us go to a place of solitude and prayer, and ask ourselves how we are doing with time apart for God's Holy Spirit to renew us. And let us in love remember that our new Bishop needs this as much as we do.
Keep praying.
Paul+
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September 4, 2001
The Second Step to Guaranteed
Disaster in Ordained Life
Understand that God never calls God's servants to smaller situations, lesser salaries, or obscure causes.
The important thing here is to define bigger as better. No matter how unsuited a person may be to a prestigious position, that person will understand it as "a good fit." Now it may be that the upward move actually is a good fit for their talents, but they don't want to look into that too closely. They do not want to ask themselves if they would be happy doing the proposed work, if their family would flourish under these new conditions, or even if their gifts would be used in a fuller way. Rather, they ask if this is an upward move. They always tell inquirers that the move they are considering has "wider opportunities for service," no matter what the work. Presentation is everything.
Thirty years ago a book became popular which was entitled, "Small is Beautiful." In the Church, we too often adopt the values of our culture. Corporate globalism states emphatically that the bigger it is, the better it is. Individuals assign their self worth to their income level and lifestyle. Achievements of academic, financial, athletic and professional success tend to be all caught up with personal self esteem. Yet in the Church, we have a savior who called twelve followers. We have many parishes in Western Louisiana composed of the faithful few, who carry out vital and significant ministries.
Our new Bishop would do well to remember that in the ancient Church, the first step in choosing a new Bishop was to make inquiry of a candidate. The expectation was that the candidate was to say, "I do not desire nor want to be Bishop." Only then would the candidacy move forward. Should the desire be great, the candidate might be considered less than desirable. The Apostle Paul writes, "Let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought." Are the potential candidates for Bishop listening?
Keep praying.
Paul+
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September 10, 2001
The Third Step to Guaranteed
Disaster in Ordained Life
At all times and in every circumstance, maintains a calm and all-knowing posture. If ordained leaders ever find themselves in deep personal trouble, they should NOT seek help. It shows a lack of omnipotence. Jesus could afford to take on human flesh, but they cannot. They must always seem to be so spiritual that the normal cracks we all have never seem to show up in them. Remember, presentation is everything.
What a trap! We know that from time to time we all need help. We are human, finite, fragile creations of a divine, infinite, powerful God. We make the mistake of Adam when we try to be like God. That's not the purpose for which we were created. We are created to love, worship and serve God. Jesus showed us an all too human incarnation of God, which included times of suffering, doubt, despair, sorrow, loneliness and self-questioning. If this could be the experience of our Savior, is it not reasonable to expect his followers to share them with him. And ordained leaders know how difficult is can be to acknowledge their humanness when those around them want to diminish this central reality and create a projected powerful leader in its place.
We hope that when we ask our new Bishop, "How are you?’ that we will be willing to receive an answer which is less that, "Fine." We hope our new Bishop can come among us humans and we one with us. The pointy hat doesn't take away the angst of being. Our new Bishop will need our support when times of trouble come, and they will. Cracks and flaws are to be expected, honored and seen as signs of our brokenness and our common need for God's healing grace.
Keep praying.
Paul+
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September 24, 2001
The Fourth Step to Guaranteed Disaster in Ordained Life
As regards the parish people, it is useful to adopt an US and THEM attitude. The whole idea of community has drawbacks. It is not, of course, as if ordained leaders want to cast members in the role of enemy; that would be going too far. Instead, they define them as "the problem." There are a dozen ways to keep them at bay. God forbid clergy should love them; they'll eat the clergy up if they let them in. This is, after all, a battle, and the ordained person must win it. Clergy must let everyone know that they are in charge and give no ground; even if they discover that they are wrong. Presentation is everything.
In the marriage vows of the Book of Common Prayer, a prayer petition speaks to this. "Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other's forgiveness and yours." It affirms that in a covenant relationship, there will be hurt, and the need for confession, forgiveness and reconciliation. The relationship between clergy and those they serve is also covenantal. And this covenant theology extend to the relationship between a Bishop and a Diocese. It is a mutual ministry. When we reflect upon the enormous power vested in a Bishop, we can be assured that there will come a time when that Bishop will exercise that power in a way which does not meet with our approval. That's when we need God's help. The human tendency is to criticize behind the back and to triangulate with others. Many clergy will emotionally isolate themselves from those they serve, simply as a means to survive in a context that has the potential to turn cruel and judgmental. Our calling, like that of a marriage, is to work through the hard ties, relying on mutual respect and the grace of God. Many in the time of Jesus turned away from him because they disagreed with his words and actions. At his crucifixion, few remained in support. Let's move toward a loving covenant with our new Bishop, and be ready to hear and speak often the grace filled words, "Please forgive me."
Keep praying.
Paul+
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October 2, 2001
The Fifth Step to Guaranteed Disaster in Ordained Life
Realize that when you do God's work, you have the perfect reason for avoiding intimacy with family and friends.
Think of it. Were clergy to actually spend time with these people they might see the clergy for who they are, as less than perfect. They might even make demands. Clergy might try saying something like this, "I'd rather be with you but God's work calls." The beauty of this ploy is that the other person has no defense against it. Of course ordained persons want to seem to be available. As has been pointed out, presentation is everything. I heard a sermon many years ago about the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The preacher made an allegory of this, and suggested that Jerusalem represented our immediate families. As the Gospel spreads, we must not lose sight of the place where we began. Here is a question, which begs an adequate answer. Ask a clergy spouse, "Who is your priest?" Don't they deserve one? And it cannot be their spouse who is in Holy Orders. That just won't work. Clergy family members have all sorts of stories to tell about the long days and nights, the lack of appreciation, the selfless giving that only they know about, and the sacrifices which family members make to facilitate the ministry of a clergy person. Bob Dylan wrote these words in a song, "Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked." No one knows us like our families. They see through pretension and title, to the real person. So why would clergy avoid such intimate relationships? Perhaps because they cannot face the person apart from the role. How can we expect our new Bishop to lead us into intimacy with God and one another if the Bishop does not experience this? The well being of the Bishop's family is the well being of the Bishop. When a family suffers, so does the clergy person and those they serve. Let us remember, when we make requests and demands of our new Bishop, that their family also has needs, and that all requires balance. I've never met anyone who wanted to be a Bishop's spouse.
The Very Rev. Paul Tunkle is rector of St. James', Alexandria and dean of the Alexandria Convocation
Keep praying.
Paul+
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October 15, 2001
The Sixth Step to Guaranteed Disaster in Ordained Life
Do not engage in private prayer.
Public prayer is fine, but private prayer can be painful, and who needs that? Speaking to God can be revealing and is likely to expose a person's lack of familiarity with the One to whom they speak. After all, doesn't it count that clergy have said at least ten public prayers this very week? As regards the Daily Office, clergy will find it an advantage to say they "do" it. Reading the Office is fine so long as they mindlessly move through the prayers. To actually develop an intimate relationship with God, one in which they feel accompanied, would make them vulnerable, and they might lose control of the "image." The disadvantage of private prayer is that when
anyone addresses God, "presentation" is everything.
In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus teaches us, "When you pray, go into your closet and close the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you." Private prayer is a great challenge. My wife, Judy, used to call the Book of Common Prayer, "The Book of Canned Prayers." She would press me to pray using my own expression. Not for public liturgies, but for more intimate family gatherings. When I pray the Daily Office, I pause and open myself to God in non-structured prayer time. This is often the most taxing and most valuable part of my personal devotional time. Recently I sought out some time for quiet prayer in the Chapel of St. James. I lit some incense and opened my Daily Office Book. As I read through I took my time and allowed the beauty of the words and the setting to sink in deeply. During a time of great peace, the smoke alarm went off, and I had to rush to the office. "Don't send the Fire Department! I'm just trying to say my prayers." Being with God in quiet and privacy is essential for a wholistic life in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit sometimes whispers, and without quiet, we may miss her subtle blessings. In our time of peace and quietness, when all is still and we are in God's Holy presence, let us open our hearts to God, and humbly ask for a Bishop who will be a person of prayer, who will support each of us in our own vocation of prayer and praise.
Keep praying.
Paul+
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"If we would 'hold fast to what is good,' we must never tolerate or countenance any doctrine which is not the pure doctrine of Christ's gospel. There is a hatred which is downright charity --that is, the hatred of erroneous doctrine. There is an intolerance which is downright praiseworthy -- that is, the intolerance of false teaching from the pulpit. Who would ever think of tolerating a little poison given to him day by day. If men come among us who do not preach 'all the counsel of God,' who do not preach of Christ, and sin, and holiness, of ruin, and redemption, and regeneration, and do not preach of these things in a scriptural way, we ought to cease to hear them."
--The Rt. Rev. J.C. Ryle, D.D., Knots Untied
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An Account of the Conversion of J.C. Ryle
An excerpt from,
John Charles Ryle: Evangelical Bishop; Peter Toon & Michael Smout; Reiner Publications, Swengel, PA USA; (1976); page 26
“…..But two years before his conversion in 1837, a minor incident brought momentum to an inexorable process.
Ryle was out shooting with his old Eton friend, Algernon Coote, and some others. In the course of the day, he swore in the hearing of Coote's father, a keen Christian, who rebuked him sharply. Ryle never swore again. This incident led to a lifelong friendship with Algernon Coote, of whom Ryle wrote: 'he was the first person who ever told me to think, repent and pray.' Although he did not become a Christian forthwith, he was very much aware that his own standard of life and that of the Christians he knew were in sharp contrast. Thus when the summer of 1837 came and with it Ryle's conversion, the foundations had been laid. Just before he was due to take his final examinations, he became very ill with inflammation of the chest. The tutor's report on his year's work simply states 'Aeger' ('sick'). But he was able to go through with the examinations, and for this he credits Bible reading and prayer. His illness gave him more time to think, and the more he thought the more he realised Jesus Christ was not at the center of his life.
Then one Sunday afternoon, he happened to go to a service in one of the parish churches. He remembered nothing particular about it, not even the sermon. But he did respond to the manner in which the second lesson was read -by someone whose name he never knew. The passage was from the second chapter of Ephesians and when the eighth verse was reached, the reader laid emphasis on it with a short pause between each clause. Thus Ryle heard: 'By grace are ye saved - through faith - and that not of yourselves - it is the gift of God.'
The same truth which had so transformed Luther in his discovery of justification of faith now had like effect upon Ryle. By the grace of God, he had become a Christian. Henceforth, he would be doughtily upholding Reformation principles. “
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Bishops and The Church
[This article originally appeared in ‘From The Rector’, a monthly column in the November, 1997 edition of St. Stephen’s Witness, newsletter of St. Stephen’s Anglican Catholic Church, Athens, Georgia USA. Its author, the Very Rev. Mark Haverland, holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University.]
A ‘Church’ may be simply defined as a body of Christians gathered around a bishop in the Apostolic Succession. Whatever the English Reformation got right or wrong, it never abandoned the office of bishop or the requirement that every deacon, priest, or bishop must be ordained by a bishop in the Apostolic Succession: ‘[N]o man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, in this Church, or suffered to execute any of the said Functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the Form hereafter following, or hath had Episcopal Consecration or Ordination.’ (Preface to The Ordinal, BCP, p. 529) However the Church of England and her daughter Churches viewed themselves, they never allowed convert clergy from Protestant bodies without the Apostolic Succession to function as clergy without ordination by bishops, nor did they ever require or permit convert clergy from the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches, which do have the Apostolic Succession, to be re-ordained.
There has long been a debate in Anglican circles about just how necessary bishops are for the Church. Latin tags have marked the lines of debate. Some have argued that bishops are of the esse (the very being or essence) of the Church, so that without bishops there is no true Church at all. Others argued that bishops were of the bene esse (the well-being) of the Church, so that without bishops the Church would not be healthy but might still exist. Still others held bishops to be of the plene esse (the fullness of being), so that without bishops the Church would exist but not as fully as it might with them. In other words, some held bishops to be absolutely essential, others held them to be very important, others held them to be rather a good idea.
For many years the dominate view was that stated by Richard Hooker, the great Elizabethan theologian. Hooker said that if bishops were not instituted by God the Son (through his selection of the apostles) they were in any case instituted by God the Holy Ghost (through the early Church). He did not hold that Christian bodies without bishops were no Churches at all, but that they had lost something desirable and important. As time went on, however, Anglicans were more and more inclined to see bishops as essential.
Whatever private theological opinions have held, however, the practice of the church has been unvarying: non-episcopal ordinations were never accepted, while episcopal ordinations always were. The exact status of non-episcopal Churches does not have to be settled. God (the Son or Holy Spirit, to follow Hooker) tells us that we must keep to bishops and ordinations by bishops only. God does not require our help in judging others who disagree with this view, unless those others wish to join us or be recognized by us in some way.
The Apostolic Succession has several components. The first is the ‘tactile’ or physical succession. That is, our bishops are always consecrated by others who are bishops, who in turn were consecrated by bishops. This succession goes back to the apostles. This tactile succession distinguishes the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and historic Anglican Churches from almost all other Christian bodies. Methodist ordinations, for instance, ultimately go back to John Wesley, who was a church of England priest, not a bishop, and to Thomas Coke, who was made a ‘Superintendent’ or ‘bishop’ by Wesley.
However, the tactile or physical succession of consecrations is, while necessary, not sufficient by itself to ensure the preservation of the Apostolic Succession. The physical laying on of hands by a bishop is not magic. There are two other aspects of the Apostolic Succession in particular which must also be maintained.
One of these is the succession of office. In The Ordinal printed with the Prayer Book there is a requirement for the reading of ‘Testimonials’ (p. 552). These testimonials include certification that the man has been elected to a particular diocese or office as bishop. Bishops are not consecrated into a void but into a particular office, to be bishop of a particular Church or body of Christians in a particular place. So when The Ordinal speaks of ‘the Office whereunto he is called’ (p. 553), ‘this Office” (p. 553, emphasis added), it means not just the general order of bishops but the particular office in question. This particular diocese or office in turn has a succession. So bishop Smith is consecrated by bishops in a succession, but also is normally consecrated to be bishop of a diocese which also has a succession or list of former bishops.
The third aspect of succession in addition to the tactile succession and the succession of office is the succession of faith. That is, bishops not only are consecrated by other bishops for an office held by former bishops, they also are to teach and defend and preserve the faith of those former bishops which in turn was built on the faith of the apostles ‘once delivered to the saints’ (St. Jude 3). Of course it is desirable if the individual bishops are learned and understand clearly that faith and believe it firmly with a strong, individual belief. However, what primarily is in question here is the public teaching of the bishops. There have been many bishops throughout history who privately held erroneous or very inadequate ideas about matters of doctrine or morals. But of more importance is the creed and official teaching of the bishops, whatever their private errors. When a Church departs from the apostolic faith, or when it tolerates official, publicly stated error in important matters on the part of its bishops, then the Apostolic Succession is threatened, even if the line of consecrations (tactile succession) and office remain intact. Again, it is for God ultimately to judge in such cases. It is very hard to say where the Apostolic Succession has definitely ceased to be. But in the case of serious and official theological error the universal Church may say that it no longer is able to guarantee that the Apostolic Succession is intact, and then we no longer can be sure that the body in question is a true Church.
© Copyright 1996 by the Very Rev. Mark Haverland. All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution for non-commercial purposes only.
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