Volume 20, July 27, 2020
From the Rector
The Bishop’s Institute for Ministry and Leadership was established in 2015 in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida to provide opportunities to develop lay and clergy leadership in the Diocese; to prepare candidates for ordination to the vocational diaconate and the local priesthood; to prepare candidates for licensed lay ministries and to be a focus for the continuing education for laity and clergy alike.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place . . . .
the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. (From Acts 2.)

In the June issue I relayed a homely story of a Welsh girl living in London who went to great lengths every Sunday to find a service in Welsh. When challenged about all the effort to achieve this, she replied, ‘It is in Welsh that the Lord speaks to me’.

In the same spirit of Pentecost, the Lord not only speaks to each of us in a way we can discern his voice and his truth, but we are also able to picture Him after a fashion that allows us to draw near to Him in love and fellowship. The New Testament does not record any description of what Jesus looked like physically. As Joan Taylor rightly notes in her book What Did Jesus Look Like? :

He [Jesus] walks, talks, heals, touches, drinks, eats, performs miracles, gets seized, spat on, beaten, whipped and crucified, and he rises from the dead, but we do not have him visually described.

As another art historian has noted, as the Son of God, we can picture Christ in different ways as imagination and reflection on the Gospel message leads us. As the Son of Man he was historically Jewish, and it was with Middle-Eastern features that the earliest Byzantine icons depict him.

Acknowledging that we lack a physical description of Jesus in the New Testament, there is yet a description of him that colors my thought. In the liturgy of Holy Week each year we recollect the passion of Jesus by reciting the 53 rd chapter of Isaiah in which the Suffering Servant is physically described thus in verse 2:

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

From this liturgical association of the Lord to Isaiah’s Suffering Servant there arose a tradition in the Church quite early on that holds Jesus was physically unremarkable and lacking in all ‘comeliness’. I find that tradition to weigh in as an almost constant factor in any new reflection I may make as to physical images and icons of Jesus.  
 
As a boy I attended Sunday school in a cinder block building sparsely furnished with small chairs for the children and a larger one for the teacher. Behind the teacher on the wall was a picture of Jesus. It was a copy of a 1940 painting by Warner Sallman that must have adorned almost every Protestant Sunday School classroom in America. Here Jesus appears serious, neat, blue-eyed and handsome. It was this image that was given to every American serviceman and woman during the Second World War. As I grew up, was educated and moved here and there, many new and diverse images of Jesus have crossed my mind and moved my heart.

As I write, I am thinking about you reading this and wondering: ‘What is the most memorable, or durable, or inspiring image of Jesus that speaks to your heart and mind?’ I would love to know.

One final thought for reflection on how we might imagine our Lord. As Christians we claim that he was ‘one of us’ and that he shared with us, our humanity (save for sin). He was one of us yet different—fully and truly human and fully and truly divine. The gifted Anglican theologian of the last century, Austin Farrer, wrote this of our Lord:

The very action of Jesus is divine action—It is what God does about the salvation of the world. In the common case of a good human life, humanity supplies the pattern, and God the grace. In Jesus, divine redemptive action supplies the pattern, and manhood the medium or instrument. A good man helped by Grace may do human things divinely. Christ did divine things humanly.

Yours sincerely,

Douglas Dupree
Detail of Le Christ Ressuscitè window (early 16 th  c.) in Auch Cathedral.
Madonna with Child, with Christ Wearing Prison Stripes

In October 2015 I was given a Romanian icon of Mary holding the infant Jesus in her arms. An Oxford friend of many years, Dr Alexandru Popescu, a Romanian psychiatrist and an Orthodox deacon, commissioned the icon to be written (painted) as a gift he might present to me as I started my life and work in north Florida. It was not finished in time to give me before I moved permanently to Florida so Bishop and Marie Howard kindly brought it to me from Alex after meeting and visiting with him on a Fall trip to England that year.

The original of my icon was a Madonna and Child, painted in the early 1960s by Father Arsenie Boca in the St Elefterie Church in Bucharest. Father Arsenie is revered in the contemporary Romanian Orthodox Church as a saint. Alex Popescu would have called him one of Romania’s ‘living martyrs’.

The original icon covers the entire ceiling of the apse high above the high altar in St Elefterie. The remarkable and unique feature of this icon is that the Christ child is dressed in the stripped prison uniform that many Christian dissidents wore when incarcerated by the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausecu. The State police may not have recognized the pale stripes of Jesus’ garment but anyone who had suffered at their hands would have recognized immediately the identity of the garment. Father Arsenie spent many years himself in prison or under house arrest and was eventually stripped of his right to function as a priest. So he turned to writing icons and decorating churches. The State spied on him his entire adult life and the state police kept an open file on him right up to his death a month before Ceausecu was toppled.
From left to right: Bishop Howard, Canon Bruce Kinsey, Chaplain of Balliol College, Dr Alex Popescu with the icon of Christ in stripped prison uniform and Marie Howard.
NB During the long, hard decades of Communism, a remarkable charity called the Keston Institute investigated the religious persecution of Christians in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. Alex Popescu wrote a fine paper for Keston Institute on the witness and work of Fr Arsenie Boca and translated some of the over 800 ‘sayings’ or spiritual meditations by Father Arsenie. If anyone would like an email attachment of Alex Popescu’s article, send me your email address to ddupree@diocesefl.org and I will forward it to you.

After His Own Heart
It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well-trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their own time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership.

The central question is, are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look upon God’s beauty, to touch God‘s incarnate Word and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness? ....

Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them.

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership.

Discerning God's Will
The Rev. Dr Jerry Smith, Rector of Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, Tallahassee and a senior priest in the Diocese of Florida and sometime professor on the faculty of Trinity School for Ministry offers insights he has gained about leadership in the Church and legitimate discernment among the community of vestry members. He also introduces us to a very important book by Ruth Haley Barton.



Shortly after ordination it became clear to me that the seminary equipped me with some skills necessary to a reasonably good presbyter but seemed to ignore other areas entirely.
I could conjugate a Greek verb and understand the intent of the rubrics. I was able to handle myself reasonably well in the pulpit, and pick up the nuances of a spirit duplicator (eventually to be replaced by a ‘Gestetner’, which now dates me terribly, in preparation of Sunday bulletins.

I could exegete scripture and argue for God but no one ever determined whether I was capable of actually leading a group of people in a congregation to Christ or unto maturity in Christ.

My ordination exams evidenced my ability to interpret the epistle to the Romans but not whether I could assist a vestry to reach a decision.

It soon became apparent that other clergy felt this way as well and the market became saturated with secular leadership material with a gospel twist. Steven Covey sanctified by a few biblical texts seemed to suffice for a season.

An occasional scholar attempted to interpret Moses leadership skills or, Laurie Beth Jones sold millions of copies of Jesus in Blue Jeans , trying to make a case that the principle of His leadership could be duplicated by my peers.

All were really giving readers an “add water and stir” recipe for making biblical leaders.

Frankly I didn’t find any that really satisfied so I enrolled in a local university and earned a master’s degree in leadership and curriculum development which although helpful, proved vastly inadequate.

All of the above proved useful and certainly more than sufficient in the local Anglican parish but all seemed (and I use this term cautiously) empty. In the end it all tasted like an attempt to compete with the secular models of successful Fortune 500 CEOs.

Was this the way God really wanted the church led? Was I guilty of using a cultural standard to define success? What was the difference between reading Lee Iacocca or John Maxwell besides the God vocabulary of the latter?

Obviously, I was not the only person struggling.

Terry Fullam (of Miracle in Darien fame) began to talk about leadership by consensus and introduced the concept of legitimate discernment among the community of vestry leaders.

His teaching began to introduce a partnership between priest and vestry that had been formerly segregated with the secular/sacred divide. You have all heard the narrative, clergy deal with the spiritual matters of the parish and vestry the secular. And the divide must not be crossed, unless of course the rector wants a new parking sport or has an idea that comes with a price tag and then it was far too easy to use God language to convince the vestry that it was the right decision.

Fullam and many since him began to argue that leadership had a mutual responsibility to discern God directive for a local parish.

Of course this came with the underlying understanding that God actually has a plan for the local parish. A plan that consisted of being more than simply a chaplaincy to the members, as important as that is.

If the church is the Bride of Christ and (according to St Paul) coworkers with Him so that God might “make His appeal” through us (see 2 Corinthians 5) then there needs to be an urgency on the part of the leadership, to be determining how that was to unfold.

This is the very place where Ruth Haley Barton begins to become important.

In the introduction to her book Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups she unnerves the reader with these words:

This approach to leadership presents unique challenges because it requires us to move beyond reliance on human thinking and strategizing to a place of deep listening and response to the Spirit of God within and among us (p. 11).

Experience as a Deacon at St. John's
By the Rev. Deacon Joseph Bakker
St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, proudly and publicly declares: “Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, St. John’s welcomes you”.  By faithfully embracing this statement in the life of the church, St. John’s has created a wonderful environment for the support of my diaconal ministries in pastoral care and prison outreach.   The love and support the clergy and staff and congregation through prayers, notes of encouragement, kinds words, generous contributions to the Deacon’s Discretionary Fund, and appropriate mirth, have been the hallmarks of that support. 

My preparation for the diaconate and early days as a deacon were not without stumbles, fumbles, and bumbles - in Clinical Pastoral Education class I was overwhelmed as I served as a volunteer chaplain at the hospital and hospice; I spilled wine and dropped wafers at the altar; forgot my glasses and terribly misread the Gospel; preaching proved to be much more of a struggle than I could have imagined; resolution of issues and inertia I faced as I interacted closely with homeless persons and ex-prisoners was stifling at times. But God is in the business of redemption, and in His faithfulness, He sent Archdeacon Jeanie Beyer, Deacon Marsha Holmes, the St. John’s clergy, congregation and staff, and a discerning wife to the rescue. They all with loving reassurance, helped to place me back on the right path whenever I was off trajectory in my journey.

My challenge was to do my best, by God’s grace, to respond to such loving care and support with at least similar care and support to those to whom I was to minister.  How well have I done? I am not sure how, or even if, one should ever measure how well one is carrying out one’s ministry to the poor, the weak, the needy and the prisoner; however, I do feel that the call to serve others is also a call to get closer to God Himself. As such, in my more reflective moments I found myself thinking, not about the influence of my service to others, but rather about whether or not the exercise of my diaconal ministry was having a transformative effect in my own life. Was my mind being renewed?  How well was the fruit of the Holy Spirit being manifested in my own life? As I exercised my diaconal ministry in prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, in our congregation and community, by phone and in person, was I becoming a bit more patient and kinder? Was I experiencing more joy and peace in my life? Was I becoming more generous and faithful? Was I demonstrating more humility and exercising more self-control? I really wanted to know. Thankfully, the Good Lord has reserved such an important evaluation for Himself. Nevertheless, I think he has given me a few signposts along the way, especially through prison ministry.

July Quiz
By the Rev. Canon Dr. Allison Defoor

Justice is in the air, and as Christians we are not strangers to these issues. Jesus began (Luke 4) and ended (Matt. 25) his three year ministry on Earth pointedly addressing the issues of prisoners. Perhaps this is because he knew that we would all be, in some way, prisoners ourselves of something, and He wanted to show us the Way out. The Psalms, too, sing of Justice. 

The Diocese of Florida and her churches have a long record of involvement in this area, and this will be the subject of this month’s quiz, and perhaps next month’s as well. 

Also, this column appears to be becoming a regular, so your author implores anyone with a trivia question suggestion about their local parish, or the Diocese generally to submit it to adefoor@diocesefl.org
Thanks, Allison+


Questions

1) The Diocese of Florida has regular services in how many prisons in North Florida?

A) 4
B) 6
C) 8
D) 15

2) In the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s the Episcopal Governor of which state called the Episcopal Governor of Florida to ask if he would “Kindly get my Mother out of jail” in St. Augustine following her arrest for her activism?

A) Illinois 
B) Massachusetts
C) New York
D) Maryland

3) When tall President Abraham Lincoln first met the short and fiery activist Harriett Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin he asked her if she was “the little lady who started this great big war?” After the Civil War, Stowe wintered for decades in North Florida and attended which Episcopal Church?

4) The groundbreaking bus strike in Tallahassee in 1956 was led by students from Florida A & M University in Tallahassee. Which church was the covert meeting place for visiting Civil Rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, and Ralph Abernathy?

5) In response to the urban issues of the 1960’s, Jacksonville developed numerous strategies at the levels of government, and society. Among the strategies of the Church was the development of housing in downtown Jacksonville, which is today coming back as a housing center. Which church put up three housing towers as part of this innovative effort, and as a result lost their dean to Trinity Church in New York, America’s leading parish?