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By Bishop Todd Townshend

Last year in this moment, I gave you a four word summary of the “bishop’s charge”: stay close to Jesus. Turning to Grace means to stay close to Jesus. The Risen Christ, Jesus, is present and active and moving in our midst and in the world around us and, as we recognize that movement, we go with the flow of grace wherever we find it.

So, we stay close to it. Stay attuned to it. It makes for a wonderful, meaningful life, being part of a community of disciples. Thanks be to God for this life we share in our church.

Keeping with patterns I’ve used in previous Synods, we’ll take a look at three key resource areas and then to speak a bit about a focus for the next year.

Three key resource areas: People, Property, and Planning.

  1. People:

Every baptized person has a vocation—it comes from God through your baptism—and together we are the church. The ministry of all baptized people continues to be the most important resource to be developed in the church. This Synod has a focus on stewardship because that is the response of a disciple. Stewardship is the response of the disciple to the flow of gifts from God—making us stewards of God’s grace. We rightly have a focus on becoming a learning church, a just church, a diverse church—but we cannot forget that beneath it all, the foundation of it all, is the reality that our whole life revolves around this one crucial thing: our response to the gifts of God. Our stewardship of the gift.

This is a massive time of change. Sometimes the change seems to be happening in slow motion. It takes years to see the realities and come to know the contours of the new terrain we enter. Yet, compared to the eras of stability in Christian history, things are actually changing very quickly. We live in a much different worlds than our grandparents lived in. Some things are very different now. And some things are exactly the same. The gift is the same. It is new every morning, but it comes from the same source and it has the same end. God, the Holy Trinity.

With these same gifts, still being poured out, extravagantly given by God, we continually seek to be good stewards of our human resources for this time. In this generation, we are celebrating elders—listening to them. And, at the same time, we are combining this with the work of renewing leadership by recognizing and calling out new gifts for service and new responsibilities within our network of parishes.

Last evening at the opening worship service of Synod, we celebrated two women who are Indigenous elders and faithful servants of Jesus. We commissioned four Territorial/Area Archdeacons who will share episcope (oversight and support) with me as your Bishop. These six people are signs to us of the goodness of God. Each unique in their own gifting and each giving of themselves for our common good. I am very grateful for them and those who have served before them. Just as I am grateful for every one of you.

This diocese consists of about 140 active parish communities, some of which have several locations and congregation. There is no diocese in Canada that has a higher bishop-to-congregation ratio. (140:1. The next highest would be about 100:1and a mid-sized diocese would be 30:1 or 40:1.) That changes how you go about things. For us, the challenge is being good stewards of so many good gifts! Without these area archdeacons, I would not have the capacity to accomplish all of the work I am to do—it would be impossible to do well or effectively. It would be poor stewardship. With them, however, and with ALL the other regional and parish leaders, nourished by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, this network of churches called Huron thrives and grows in its faithfulness. We thrive—and will continue to thrive and grow in new ways—as we follow the flow of grace. It requires courage and involves hard work. Some of work is repair, mending, healing. Some of it is cultivating, nourishing, guiding. Some of is correcting, or re-setting, or reorganizing, but most of it is simply connecting these wonderful communities together in Christ. I’m deeply honoured to be part of it.

I found a word recently that I want to learn more about. It is an Anishinaabe word. It may be a way to describe the work we do together in this time. I don’t think we have anything in English that does the same thing so I hope we can share this word and its meaning for a while. The root word is Aanikaw. Aanikaw refers to the act of binding or joining. Root words go with other word-meanings to create another word. Aanikoobijagan is the word for “great-grandparent” or “ancestor”. But it is also the word for “great-grandchild” or “descendant”.  So, the word used to describe the person three generations before you and three generations after you is the same word. It connects seven generations, including you. (see “Becoming Kin”, Patty Krawec, 2022, p.150) With this word in mind, we can see threads that connect us with three generations before us - and three generations after us, binding us all together. Then we look to those around us, knowing that we are bound together in Christ, and we see that we are part of a strong web of people, mutual relationships, life-giving connections.

We can also see that we can think backward and forward at the same time. This is one of the ways that God holds the world together. We are all kin. Our work is to join and connect people, so that we recognize our God-given kinship. Our work is about joining and connecting people, one to another and all to God in Christ.

  1. The second key resource area is Property:

Land and property are gifts too. Resources. We receive them as an inheritance. They are contested resources, in some cases. It is not always clear that these resources came into our hands without having been taken away from others, often generations ago. It is not always clear that, if not for the church’s massive societal influence in years gone by, some of these lands and properties would never have come into our “possession”. So, it is very important that we steward these resources in the most truthful, generous, and healing way that we can. In many cases, Anglicans in Huron are faithful in this challenge. We cherish our “church homes”, we are good stewards of them, but we don’t cling to them when the time is right to let go and pass them along. As a diocese, we continue to take seriously the stewardship challenge and opportunity of our inherited land and property.

With the help of some resources and consultants, we have developed several major projects and we have initiated several more. We see some church lands being redeveloped and reused: for housing, for community hubs, for places where the arts can be developed and performed, and for service to those in most need. The space we are in right now (St. Paul’s Cathedral, London) is a good example. Spaces are being reimagined, and partnerships are being formed.

I don’t need to look far in my calendar to see some other examples. Tomorrow afternoon I will join the people of Florence and others in Kent to deconsecrate the old church building. They have, in their own words, “given up their beautiful, historic, neo-gothic, ruinously expensive church building in order to be a church that is the people.” They still have a beautiful hall across the road where they worship and do significant outreach. And they meet in other places where they can grow spiritually. This is a small community that is learning, they are looking outside of themselves, and they are open to change. They are a model for a new way to look at rural ministry.

The following Sunday, I will join the people of St. James, Ingersoll for a consecration. For more than 190 years the people of St. James have been the Anglican presence in Ingersoll witnessing to the goodness of God in Christ. Long before the pandemic they moved on from their very large stone church to consolidate resources, and they have been gathering since then in temporary rented space. They have now renovated a large downtown storefront building for their new home. While supported by very faithful clergy, this has been led by a remarkable group of lay people who know that their life together is crucial for the town of Ingersoll.

This will not the first consecration service I’ve been honored to lead. All Saints Waterloo, in large urban environment, had the vision to redevelop their property to incorporate the Sidewalk Centre to serve their neighbourhood. Over at Holy Saviour, Waterloo, a different kind of redevelopment has been carried out with fantastic results. We are changing how we use our church buildings.

The Diocese of Huron and Holy Trinity St. Stephen’s Memorial, London, are entering into a “joint venture” relationship with an organization that will rebuild their site with a new structure in which the church will operate and in which people will find much-needed new homes.

Several of the churches in Sarnia are consolidating their gifts in a new way. They have come through a year of discernment and have chosen to repurpose two of the church sites, one for affordable housing, and come together into the downtown church site. We are on the verge of choosing a new name for this new parish community.

 I could go on. Our diocese is marshalling gifts and resources in strategic and creative ways, and this is challenging but really important work. Thank you to all who are courageously and faithfully undertaking this task. We are consolidating, tending and tilling, pruning and growing, and it is good.

  1. The third area of focus for resources is Planning:

Of course, last year we launched our Diocesan Plan, “Turning to Grace” which was developed from the wisdom and love of this diocese. I am gratified to see all the creative ways in which the vision and language in the plan has come alive in your communities—each in its own unique way. There will be some presentations later in Synod that will give glimpses into some of the ways this is happening, so I won’t say too much about the plan here—except to say that it is ongoing, seems to be generating good stuff, and we will keep assessing a supporting as much as possible.

So, finally, what will be “the charge” for you to go home with this year?

Here are the “short form” summaries of the charge from the past six years:

  1. Remember who we are and what we (2020)

  2. Live in community by yielding to the life of the Spirit (2021)

  3. Expect to meet the Risen Jesus along the way (2022)

  4. Be ready to sing the Lord’s song in a strange new land (2023)

  5. Continually turn to the God of Grace (2024)

  6. Cultivate a life of faithful stewardship and generosity (2025)

This year’s charge is to focus on stewardship—and to do this by focussing first on “the gift”. I am encouraging you to make the next twelve months a cultivation of a life of stewardship and generosity in community—to develop a comprehensive year-round stewardship plan for engagement. There are so many great resources to support you and guide you in this and we be eager to provide them to you. Some congregations are doing this quite well and we can learn from them. Some are in a lull and stewardship has lost its place at the centre of who we are and what we do. Others have never really tried it in a comprehensive way. I am here to learn from you and to help you.

Just to get us started on this, here is a key thought adapted from the opening of the book, “Generosity, Stewardship and Abundance” (Lovett Weems Jr., and Ann Michel). “Sustaining our faith institutions is critically important work but it is not an end in itself. God’s purpose in calling us to lives of faithful stewardship and generosity isn’t merely to sustain the church. In fact, it’s the other way around.” We sustain the church so that lives of faith and generosity can be made possible.

The continued existence of the church is important, essential, so that a powerful, transformative gift can be given: how to live human life in right relation to one another, to other creatures, to possessions, and most importantly, to God. We want to be responsible, joyful stewards of God’s generosity. We are stewards not just of money, or land, or budgets and buildings. We are the people God will use to counter the greed and scarcity, to transform and reconcile peoples and communities, and to live and share in the abundant life that God intends for all people, all of creation. We are the stewards of the promise of Jesus and his resurrection life.

In an era of rampant consumerism, unbridled greed, and increasing income inequality outside our doors, and across the globe, God’s gift of the message regrading generosity, abundance and faithful stewardship is a unique and beautiful opportunity. When we meet this opportunity well, the goodness of God wells up within us and overflows to the benefit of the broader community and world. In short, we don’t encourage generosity and stewardship in order to sustain the church, we sustain the church so that we can preach generosity and stewardship for the sake of the world that God so loves. It is an urgent and compelling and exciting call.  

+ Todd

(Photos: Charlotte Poolton)