Volume 3, Number 3 June/July 2010
Reflections on Sabbatical Let me first reiterate my thanks to the Diocese of Missouri, the Diocesan Council, and the Standing Committee for making the months of March and April available to me as time away, sabbatical, and to the staff in my office for tending to the logistics of diocesan life. Re-entry into my day-to-day ministry has been smooth and uneventful, I am glad to say, which has everything to do with the people of this diocese and their gifts. I had promised to lay before you some reflections and learnings from my time away—and here they are. There is a personal quality to every one of them, but the trajectory is toward the communal. • I treasure the ministry entrusted to me. This insight arose at about the six-week point when I found myself turning toward my return with anticipation. The work which I get to do as Bishop of Missouri is endlessly fascinating. I find it both satisfying—and often indescribably difficult. These qualities are not mutually exclusive; they encompass the sort of language which many theologians use to describe vocation. I realize that there is no other work about which to pine away. And it is not being a bishop in the abstract which makes this ministry such a sweet spot in my life. It is the specifics inherent in being Bishop of Missouri: this geography, these congregations, these people, these challenges and opportunities. I realize that I do not want a theoretically perfect diocese, as if such a thing were possible. I am deeply satisfied with the diocese where I am blessed to live and serve. • We may be living through an epochal shift. And this may be the case in the world even more so than in the Church. Let me make a disclaimer: sometimes the tone used in describing such things lies between melodrama and cataclysm. I am not interested in taking such a tone. I have had the sense for twenty plus years that things cannot be the same, in the Church and in the world. But two streams converged during this sabbatical to cement such understanding in my mind. First, in March the House of Bishops heard presentations from Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass about “the great emergence.” (Google it.) In Tickle’s own words, “Every 500 years or so, the church—and the world—experience huge social, political, economic, and cultural shifts.” These two believe that we are now living through such a world-turning time, not least because of the revolution in electronic communication. Now, I cherish my skepticism about some of the details of their work, but I also believe that they are onto something crucial. We cannot recreate the Church or the world of the 1950s, or even of the 1990s.
by the Right Reverend
Wayne Smith
The second stream bore into my awareness from some reading I did about global climate change—hardly new information for me or for anyone else paying attention. But for the first time the consequences of this change have become crystal clear in my mind. The beautiful fragility of Padre Island, one of the low-lying barrier islands of the Gulf Coast, provided the backdrop for my reading. With rising sea levels, the island could be inundated within one hundred years. I read a series of essays in The Economist, and I read Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, by Bill McKibben, all of which points toward planet Earth having past the tipping point in climate change. And there is the homework and consultation I have been doing on this issue with the House of Bishops Theology Committee, on which I serve, which suggest that the Church has been largely silent on this crucial matter of the Christian moral life. This must change, and you should expect to hear more from me about Christian discipleship in the face of climate change: If all the data are truth, how then shall we live? • The ordained life is full of blessing—and stress. Again, this is another point which is not a new learning. Current literature on the practice of ministry addresses this matter as one requiring careful attention by anyone engaged in the pastoral life. I was not prepared, however, for the level of tiredness I discovered in myself once I got to the beach. I am grateful for the rest I found there and also for the time and space to uncover my own weariness. I write these words not for the sake of self-pity, or eliciting pity from anyone else. I write them for purposes of consciousness-raising and for the sake of the clergy of this diocese. As recently as the 1960s, pastoral ministry was a high-status, low-stress vocation. A couple of generations later those qualifiers have flipped, and most of the ordained now experience their vocation as highstress, low-status. With the gradual demise of Christendom in recent decades and the lower regard for religious institutions and even distrust of them, the culture no longer by default will see to the “care and feeding” of clergy. It is instead up to the people of our parishes to take up this task—and to do so intentionally, and with understanding. Deal compassionately and gently with your clergy. This is no comprehensive list of “what-I-learned-on-sabbatical,” but these are the highlights. Much of what came to me is more subtle and intuitive in nature. And some insights are emerging as I continue re-entry. This time away has been extraordinarily valuable to me personally, and I hope that by extension it will prove itself of use to our entire diocesan community.