Years ago, while in seminary, I came across a statement from the late +Wes Frensdorff, former Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada, in which he made the distinction between a ‘ministering community’ and a ‘community gathered around a minister.’ What seems obvious now was nothing short of a Copernican revolution at the time – training, as I was, to assume a central, if not also somewhat salvific, role in the life of the Church, equipped with special knowledge, skills, authority, and responsibility to rescue the Church from her post-Christendom decline. Our task as clergy, it seemed, was to ‘make Church work,’ if by no other force than our strength of will. We were to do all things, to be all things, to desire all things, to suffer all things. And, for many of us, that kind of martyrdom was its own reward – a firm, consistent stroke of the ego amidst otherwise thankless, sometime hopeless, work.  

 

+Frensdorff had the guts to call BS. He knew, by faith (and a cursory reading of Scripture), that this unhealthy pattern was all wrong, and that it was deadly not only for clergy (especially those who relish the ‘special role’) but also for the Church. Instead, picking up on the ecclesial ‘abundance of gifts’ assumed by both Saint Paul and the late-great Roland Allen, +Frensdorff affirmed the ‘spontaneous growth of the Church’ when the Body trusts the Holy Spirit’s provision and guidance and when her gifts are affirmed, discerned, developed, and deployed for the life of the Church in service to the world.

 

I assure you, however, after seventeen years of ordained ministry, that ‘spontaneous growth’ is easier said than done, which is why I was so intrigued seven years ago to discover in Saint Mark’s Dean search profile that y’all seem to believe in that ‘spontaneous growth,’ as well, and that you not only aspire to it, but that you had, in 2013, made formal, public commitment to this understanding and practice of Church when you commissioned your first Shared Ministry Team on June 23^rd of that year. I would not be here had that not occurred. I am a Ministry Developer, committed to developing a ‘ministering community.’ And that’s just what I’ve aimed to do since I first arrived – to de-center the Dean and the Dean’s ministry and to re-center God and the community’s ministries. This re-ordering of focus and priorities lends itself to the long-term health, vitality, creativity, and sustainability of our entire enterprise. It says that God alone, and no single person or position, can save us. But that all of us, rightly ordered, joyful in our diversity, elastic in our unity, can faithfully follow wherever God may lead us now and next. With all of us engaged in ministry, we have nothing to fear should one minister rest and recover for awhile. We’re built for it.  

 

In addition to working with our Council to fund and build toward the long-term Staff and Ministry Team we need as the City’s Cathedral, I’ve also worked to bring second and third generation Shared Ministry folk alongside our first generation team, which included Dr. Helen Hansen (pastoral care coordinator), Deacon Lowell Johnson (pastoral care, community engagement), Deacon Terry Erickson (pastoral care, liturgy), Rev. Siri Hauge Hustad (liturgical coordinator), and Rev. Roger Franzen (formerly teacher, pastor). Our overall Ministry Team (both stipendiary and non-stipendiary) has grown to include two more individuals engaged in local discernment and formation, one individual engaged in regional discernment and formation, two candidates engaged in diocesan discernment and formation, and four new/returning individuals who will assume formal leadership within various Cathedral ministry areas beginning this fall. It’s to those four I now turn:

Jan comes to us as the lead pastor of Abbey Way, a faith community that “engage[s] in an intentional way of living a shared life in God that is grounded in an ordinary, purposeful engagement in life as it is…[b]uilt on the foundations of healthy spiritual relationships full of kinship and kindness, shared spiritual practices of prayer and reflection, and corporate rhythms of worship, study, retreat and service…” Jan, along with her husband, Bob, and the Abbey Way community will share Life with us here at Saint Mark’s beginning this fall, curating Sunday morning worship in the Whipple Chapel and sharing program, retreat, and service opportunities for all. Stay tuned for more information. Please welcome Pastor Jan and the Abbey Way community to Saint Mark’s!

After completing her Master of Arts in Ministry from Luther Seminary in Saint Paul just this month, Mary Beth will return to the Cathedral to serve in the areas of spiritual reflection, pastoral care, liturgy, and chaplaincy. Mary Beth, who was ordained to the transitional diaconate last June, will be ordained to the priesthood here on June 19^th. Mary Beth brings profound depth, insight, energy, and creativity to her Life with God, and will serve among us out of the clarity and compassion she has developed over a lifetime of exploring her own spiritual topography. Please welcome Mary Beth back to Saint Mark’s!

Last, but not least, just as people transfer in for a season of our life together, so, too, do some transfer out. This fall, two Cathedral members who are currently engaged in diocesan discernment and formation will take leave of the Cathedral for their first year of field work. Jay Phelan and Sarah Hoch, both of whom are currently Postulants who anticipate becoming Candidates this fall, will each engage a year of service learning within a different congregational setting for the 2021-2022 program year. They will retain their own personal roots here in this community, even as they expand the experience, the vision, and the horizon of their own development in ministry. Please join me in wishing them well and assuring them of your on-going prayers.

I pray, as Dean of this Cathedral, that the discernment and formation of these public ministries reminds us all, as baptized Christians, that we each have a personal vocation for which we’re responsible to discern and to form and to live. The Church’s formal processes for identifying and deploying ministry within the Church mustn’t be misunderstood as exhaustive, but exemplary – holding up for each of us the ways we’re called to serve in our own daily lives (deacons), the ways we’re called to unveil the holy in our own daily lives (priests), and the ways we’re called to cast vision and broaden the tent in our own daily lives (bishops). Remember and never forget: the Church is not an end in itself, but a participant in God’s saving love for the whole world. We gather together with strangers and friends, we transform our lives in light of the Gospel, and we’re quickly sent back out into the world ‘to love and to serve, with gladness and singleness of heart.’ And this slow, steady tidal flow never ends, it just unfolds. And we, each of us, cheer one another on, as we align our own deep gladness with the world’s deep hunger – claiming there our vocation, finding there our joy. May it be so for you, as it’s been for me: a true joy.

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole

body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified:

Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before

you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation

and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with

you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

On May 27^th, Bishop Loya announced the appointment of three Archdeacons to serve alongside him across the vast expanse of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota (ECMN). Among those three is our own Deacon Rena Turnham, to whom we offer our thanks and praise for her now six (6!) years of ministry here at Saint Mark’s. Rena will continue to serve among us, both as Deacon and as Community Engagement Coordinator. She will, from time to time, accompany Bishop Loya on pastoral visits and assist with programmatic support among the collegium of Deacons. Just as diaconal ministry is intrinsically attached to the Bishop, so too is Cathedral ministry. Therefore, it is our responsibility and privilege as the Cathedral to strengthen and to amplify this essential vocation among us, as it not only reveals but calls forth the servant ministry of all baptized Christians, without which we cannot rightly be recognized as ‘the Church.’

Archdeacon Turnham was kind enough – and brave enough – to agree to a brief interview.