episcopal evolution

We have been on retreat with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the last three days. He spoke to the bishops in a series of five meditations on the meaning of the episcopacy. Some interesting things happened in my little life-world while I was moving through this retreat, walking back and forth from the University of Kent, where we are staying, and the cathedral where the retreat was held.

The receptionist at the college of the university where I’m staying gave me a large express mail package, and several letters. When I opened them in my room that evening I found dozens of cards with words of prayerful encouragement from cursillistas in the Diocese of California, and individual notes from clergy and lay people as well. Over these days I’ve been receiving numbers of email notes from people in the Diocese and elsewhere letting me know they are praying for me and all the bishops.

On one walk back from the cathedral I struck up a conversation with a man who was doing  yardwork.  He is a person who, in his profession, is doing work I think is highly valuable in helping us meet the environmental crisis, and who has a son who is in perhaps the most popular band in the world (hint in the audio link on the left). Several times in the conversation he stressed that he hoped the conference would go well, and said he would be thinking about us throughout.

As I got to the top of the hill where the university is I came on a landscape crew building a beautiful stone and turf labyrinth, oriented towards the cathedral, which could be seen in the distance. The head of the work crew and I talked about how Lauren Artress had begun the labyrinth movement, which has spread over the world, at Grace Cathedral in the Diocese of California. I thought, as I looked at the labyrinth in the making, and the cathedral beyond it how ministries in so many parts of the world have effects not only in the community where they are born, but far beyond.

All of these events helped me think about the great network of Christians, Anglicans and others, who are connected to the bishops gathered here. It is hard for me to comprehend this kind of spiritual connectivity, encompassing some 70 million Anglicans, and many others beyond our Communion (our Communion bishops, like the Lutherans, and representatives of many other Christian bodies arrived at the conference yesterday).

As we bishops direct our prayerful energies to building relationships between us, the people we represent are being drawn into greater communion. Work in companion dioceses preceded this conference, and I imagine it will continue in new, surprising, enhanced ways afterwards. New friendships are being made, and new ways of relating, new structures to bear the relationships are being made as well.

I think that a new phase for the exercise of episcopé will be for bishops to seek to connect the people of God more directly with one another, rather than through us. This is analogous to what happens in a parish when it moves from being a pastoral to a program style congregation.

In the pastoral congregation, most lines of activity center on the rector. In the program church, committees, ad hoc work groups, groups of both being and doing form without direct involvement of the rector – the lines become multi-focal rather than mono-focal. I think we are at the point of looking to see how the same could be true in a global body like the Anglican Communion. This would be a new role for bishops, and evolution of the meaning of episcopé.