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. |
|
IN MEMORIUM
The people will tell of their wisdom,
And the congregation will shew forth their praise Eccl. 41.15
‘A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.’ So said the great Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).
Dr. Johnson’s words rang through my mind when I read recently of the death of Walter Hooper (1931-2020). Walter Hooper was the great biographer and collector of the manuscripts and papers of C.S. Lewis. He entered hospital in December 2020 and there died having contracted Covid-19. I felt oddly ‘cheated’ that I did not know of Fr Hooper’s death until the start of summer. How many other things have I missed by the anxiety of Covid-19 and the distractions of putting things back together as the anxiety wanes?
I was not close to Walter Hooper, but his was an abiding presence throughout the thirty years I lived in Oxford. I was always comforted to see his genial face in a church service or lecture hall. Fr Hooper’s life-long dedication to making the works of C.S. Lewis available to an ever-widening audience is of immeasurable worth.
There were many tributes to Walter Hooper following his death. One especially is fixed in my mind. It is by his American friend and admirer, Lancia Smith. She writes about Fr Hooper’s strong influence on others:
What is most difficult to say about Walter is what we’ve lost in his departure. For now, we’ve lost touch and sight of our soft-spoken champion, our sweet friend. . . we’ve lost also a kind of fatherly covering, a generational banner over us. In this sense, we have become orphaned.
Walter was the patriarch of our tribe while he lived in a way no one else could be really . . .
Those words strike me with such force, especially: . . a generational banner over us... the patriarch of our tribe.
They strike home with me because they capture the sense of loss I have felt most recently, as have many others, on the death of another fine priest, Barnum McCarty (1930-2021). Jacksonville born and bred, Barnum was a faithful minister and leader in the Diocese of Florida and in the national Church.
I cannot think of my forty-six years in the ordained ministry except as having taken place under the fatherly covering of Barnum McCarty. A very goodly number of us in north Florida have viewed our life in the Church under Barnum’s ‘generational banner.’
Barnum was always grateful to the Diocese that through the generosity of Bishop Frank Juhan he was able to receive both his college and seminary education at Sewanee. As he tells it, he was headed to the Army after high school until the Bishop stepped in and re-directed him to Sewanee (following first a very good college-prep year at FSU). I always felt a bond with Barnum in this testimony. My education at Sewanee was made possible thanks to a scholarship from Bishop Juhan and the Jessie Ball duPont Foundation. And my seminary education at Virginia was made possible by the generous support of Juhan’s successor, Bishop Hamilton West.
‘If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone.’ That’s another wise word from Dr. Johnson on friendship.
When I returned to north Florida after many years away, in addition to the welcoming support of my family and Bishop John Howard, Barnum McCarty and Doug Milne stepped forward, it seemed almost immediately, to take me under the covering of their hospitality and friendship--- making a renewed friendship joined by a new friend. I have included in this July Newsletter a tribute to Barnum written by Doug Milne. Doug gave the tribute at the funeral for Barnum on June 22nd.
Elsewhere in this Newsletter, under the book review, I have stolen the opportunity to praise another friendship, and another dear friend now on another shore.
|
|
Yours, with every blessing,
Douglas Dupree
|
|
World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840 |
|
In your mercy, Lord, you called me
In your mercy, Lord, you called me,
taught my sin-filled heart and mind,
else this world had still enthralled me,
and to glory kept me blind.
Lord, I did not freely choose you
till by grace you set me free;
for my heart would still refuse you
had your love not chosen me.
Now my heart sets none above you,
for your grace alone I thirst,
knowing well, that if I love you, you,
O Lord, have loved me first.
Words by Josiah Conder, alt. Charles P. Price.
The hymn is by Josiah Conder (1789-1855), author of many popular hymns and the editor of both a literary magazine, The Eclectic Review, and an abolitionist newspaper, The Patriot. He was a founding member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1840.
His hymn is consonant with the beautiful passage from Ephesians 1 (read this month in church on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost) praising God’s prevenient grace:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will . . . Ephesians 1.3-5.
The hymn is actually a contemporary paraphrase of Conder’s original Tis not that I did choose thee’. The ‘alterer’ is Charles P. Price, sometime Preacher to the University of Harvard and sometime Professor of Systematic Theology at the Virginia Seminary.
|
|
Barnum McCarty Eulogy by Doug Milne
An address by Douglas (Doug) J. Milne, Esq at the funeral for Willis Barnum Coker McCarty (April 10, 1930 – May 30, 2021) at St Mark’s Church, Jacksonville on June 22, 2021.
_______________________________________________________________________
We're all familiar with terms like: larger than life … hero … role model …to describe those who hold a very special place in our hearts. And they're usually, if we're lucky, there a long time. I had such luck, for which I am forever grateful. I thank the McCarty family for asking me to share about it today.
70 years ago, I was a not-very-talented member of third grade St. Marks boy’s choir. we went to the diocese's Camp Weed, then on the Gulf Coast near Carrabelle. It was there I first met the man whose life we celebrate today and who would surely be a significant influence on me the rest of my life.
Years earlier, Barnum had been recognized by the insightful Bishop Juhan as a remarkably talented person, one the farseeing bishop helped on his path to Episcopal ministry. Barnum was in college then, or maybe early seminary, and was working at the camp. I learned he had been a standout at east Jacksonville’s Jackson High School. He made an immediately favorable impression on me, even to the extent of idol like. And I never forgot it.
Years passed. By the time I got to high school, Barnum was the youth commissioner for the diocese, and the director at Camp Weed during some trying, and wonderful, times. The early impact he had on teenagers like me, and several others here today, lasted forever. They will agree. A highly skilled all-round high school and college athlete, excelling in football, baseball, and the classroom, Barnum also loved to sing and dance. His favorite college English professor called him a "hopeless romantic" to which Barnum, though hesitantly, pled guilty as charged. Last year on the event of his 90th birthday, Jackson coach Chris Foy gave me a football jersey with Barnum’s numerals to present him with the coach's message:
"Because of people like you, Barnum, I have the opportunity to help our great city. You left a legacy worth fighting for. It's an honor from one Tiger to another to wish you a happy 90th birthday".
Barnum’s life revolved around his, our, God, the Church, and his wonderful family. He was inextricably bound into and by each other. Betty Ann, Beth, Shannon, Sarah, Nick, Jim, Liz, and 5 wonderful grandchildren. One of whom we just heard from. These were the loves of his life. Every hour of every day.
We frequently travelled together, once for nearly 10 days, 40 years ago, to attend the Episcopal Church's General Convention. There we had meaningful conversation with George H. W. Bush and Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Barnum introduced me to the medicinal benefit of Beck's Beer. Those trips, whether fishing, learning, church purposes, or otherwise, and hours long one-on-one discussions, have never been anything but mind stretching, just as their memories will be. As I, that impressionable third grader, perceived on my first encounter with this man, he was a once in a lifetime sort of fellow, the likes of whom God gives us all the good fortune to get to know but a few times in our lives.
A great many of you were here when Barnum accepted the call to St. Marks in 1971. Pure serendipity. Grounded on the foundation established by two previous long-term ministers, Douglas Leatherbury and Robert Clingman, Barnum never slowed for the next 20 years. St. Marks experienced ups and downs to be sure (everyone in every place does) including unprecedented growth.
Barnum handled it all very well. He had the unique ability to draw the best out of people, making them feel more about themselves than they ever thought they were. He would look you in the eye and never waiver, as long as the conversation lasted. You were the only person on whom he was focused at the time.
We all learned from Barnum. Year after year. Our priorities, ambitions, sorrows, and happiness. Barnum was there with steadfast faith, love, consoling, praising, and caring.
Christian formation, plain old-fashioned fellowship, and learning, searching and finding. Barnum led them all. St. Marks softball, where he could be known to occasionally mix it up with competing players in the rough city church league.
Names like Prime Osborn, Gray Strum, Harry Kincaid, Jack Daniel, van Etten Bent, my father the earlier Doug Milne, Helen Adams, Bob Read, Jim Winston, Bob Snell, Harry Babbitt, Hank Haynes, Tommy Donahoo. The list of those whose lives Barnum came into and guide is endless. And timeless.
Among his great loves were his well-known and well-admired career in the Army National Guard, and … the game of handball.
For over 50 years, I was a regular handball opponent or teammate of Barnum. He had been the intramural handball champion at Sewanee and played and loved the game for virtually the rest of his life. He was really good. Just as he was in all things.
When you entered the court with him, all sense of pastoral care and compassion was left at the door. And that was a good thing. He was competitive with all the great players in town and around the state.
In handball, the rules and calls are based on the honor system. If an opposing player improperly blocks or hinders, the opponent can stop play and demand a play over. There were often, shall we say, differences of opinion about whether there was a legitimate hinder, or whether struck balls were in or out. Arguments were common.
But over those 50 years, I never saw Barnum enter any form of heated controversy about what he considered an incorrect call from an opponent. Rather, he would merely look the opponent in the eye, then point his index finger upward and simply say "He knows". Then play resumed.
We're all better because of Barnum. In so many ways, he affected each of us. And because of him, we'll never be the same.
The final thing I want to share with you, as I think about that index finger pointing to the sky, is that I am absolutely certain I am going to see Barnum again. And for that, I give thanks to our God, about whom Barnum taught us all so very, very much.
And I thank you.
|
|
As a young Curate, the Rector of my church gave me many words of practical wisdom. Some I took to heart and found a blessing; others I forgot or ignored--- often to my own peril. One word that served me well, ‘Douglas, never offend the women of the church: this church runs on their wisdom, experience and dedication’. He was referring to the great number of wonderfully loyal women members but he might also have been describing the small but dedicated office staff who advanced the mission of the church.
This is all to say the church secretary or administrator is a most vital member of the church staff--- in some churches the only staff apart from the priest: a most valuable person. There is an organization in the Diocese of Florida that serves to support and honor our church secretaries and administrators. It is called POST which stands for Professional Office Staff Together.
In 1987, the precursor of POST was founded by Connie Brantley, Bishop Frank Cerveny’s secretary. Connie envisioned an annual conference for parish secretaries to get together—away from the office—for continuing education, fellowship, spiritual renewal, sharing ideas, fun and relaxation. It was called PST: Parish Secretaries Together. On August 9, 1999, the name was changed to POST by vote of those attending the conference together that year. They adopted also the following mission statement:
P.O.S.T. is an organization dedicated to spiritual growth, education, networking and empowerment of its members to strengthen the vision and mission of the Diocese of Florida.
Over the last twenty years POST has held a three-day summer conference at Camp Weed and the Cerveny Conference Center. Again, in the words of its leadership:
This conference is geared to minister to the whole person. Special speakers are selected to provide continuing education on a variety of subjects including work-related issues and training, computer skills, health and safety issues, financial concerns and much more.
During 2020 in the midst of Covid-19, POST met by Zoom. The attendance was robust as everyone was thankful indeed to re-convene.
This summer, on August 2, 2021, POST will hold a one-day meeting at Camp Weed as a step forward towards the annual three-day conference retreat. The theme is: ‘We can make our plans . . . but the Lord determines our steps . . .’ The retreat chaplain and keynote speaker will be the Rev. Deacon Sarah Minton of All Saints’ Church, Jacksonville. Secretaries and administrators may register using this link: https://campweed.campbrainregistration.com The cost for meals and everything included on the Monday is $28. Partial scholarships are available. Contact Vickie Haskew: vhaskew@diocesefl.org or Sue Engemann: sengemann@diocesefl.org for scholarships or for any other information.
Vickie Haskew, Executive Assistant to the Bishop, came to the Diocese in 1998. This year’s POST gathering will be Vickie’s 20th year guiding the organization. Vickie recollects many splendid gatherings of POST and guest speakers to the gathering who were truly inspirational. She was particularly taken by the presentation made by Sterling Henderson, a founder of Grace Mission in Tallahassee, who spoke in 2001 addressing the theme 2001: A Grace Odyssey. Another memorable occasion was provided by Fr Donavan Cain, Rector of All Saints’, Jacksonville. He and his wife Audrey and family provided a memorable evening of blue grass music to grace the POST banquet in 2016. Looking to the future, Vickie hopes that the steering of POST will gather more shared leadership with members representing more strongly the regions in the Diocesan structure.
Supporting Vickie in steering POST is Sue Engemann, the Diocesan Office Administrator and Administrative Assistant to the Canon Theologian. Sue came to the Diocesan Office in 2016 after many years of administrative service at St Mark’s, Jacksonville; Grace, Orange Park; St Mary’s, Green Cove Springs and the Cathedral. Sue is strong on the continuing education component of POST. She sees POST as a vital support for the secretary or administrator in one’s local church. She says:
With smaller staffs these days, the parish administrators are asked to do more and more, and many times without the tools needed. We know that POST can provide some of those tools, and that frees up the clergy to do what they are called to do.
As for the future, Sue writes:
In recent years, we have focused more on education – specifically targeting those tasks that are required by the national and diocesan offices, such as Parochial and annual reports, human resource procedures, communications, and record and data base management, and I would like to continue with that. I would like to see this work recognized by our clergy as an important part of their staff’s development and to encourage them to support the organization.
|
|
Darryl Tookes (pictured right) in concert at POST retreat 2019. A member of St. Michael and All Angels, Tallahassee, the composer and world-renown musician performed a song he wrote, I'll Sing of Love, for Presiding Bishop Curry when he visited the Diocese of Florida.
|
|
|
Anglers 101: July at Camp Weed |
|
A mid-July summer day of clear blue sky was the perfect occasion for a day of fishing lessons for 11-14 year-old campers at Camp Weed. Dick Michaelson and David Lambert from First Coast Fly Fishing Club in Jacksonville came over to Camp to teach the eager young anglers. Rumor has it that David used to teach the Orvis Master course or certified the Master Casters for Orvis—but maybe both.
Instruction began in the broad field across from Juhan Dining Hall. Thomas Frazer, Director of Camp Weed, started things off by showing how to rig a fly rod from scratch. David taught the “pick up, lay down” cast and then the campers were organized into smaller groups of 3-5 in which David, Dick and Thomas worked with individuals before moving to the lake for some fishing. Thomas reports that his group caught a blue gill, a bass and a fathead minnow.
|
|
Our guest quiz-setter for this month is the Rev. Abi Moon, Interim Rector, St John’s, Tallahassee. Her questions center on the history of St John’s, Tallahassee. Episcopal Services began in Tallahassee in 1827 in the Territorial Capitol building. The incorporation of St. John’s Episcopal Church followed in 1829.
Allison +
Quiz Questions
1. Name the St. John’s rector who was called “Parson.”
a. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
b. “To tell of Thy loving kindness early in the morning and of Thy truth in the night season.”
c. “Holy, Holy, Holy”
3. What is the name of the list that designates St. John’s as an historic site and in what year was St. John’s placed on the list?
4. What St. John’s rector served as both rector and Bishop of Florida at the same time?
5. When was the first female elected to the St. John’s vestry? What was her name?
6. In what year did the first St. John’s church burn?
7. The pulpit was given in memory of Mrs. Mary Bloxham. Who was her husband?
8. List the woods that used in our hand carved reredos.
9. Who are the royalty in the St. John’s Cemetery and to what well known persons were they related?
10. What present day Episcopal church was first a mission of St. John’s?
|
|
BOOK REVIEW
One Word of Truth:
The Cold War Memoir of Michael Bourdeaux
and Keston College
by Michael Bourdeaux
|
For some twenty years I was Executive Secretary to a charitable organization called The Oxford Theological Exchange Programme (OTEP). The aim of the charity was to provide scholarships to theologians, seminarians and church leaders from the former Soviet bloc countries to study at Oxford to enable them to rebuild churches and seminaries in their countries.
The Chairman of OTEP for many of my years with the charity was a remarkable Anglican priest called Canon Michael Bourdeaux. Michael Bourdeaux had studied Russian language and literature at Cambridge and found his life’s vocation in 1969 by founding Keston College, an institution dedicated to the study of religion in communist countries. It provided information about churches and the pressures and threats facing Christians there.
One Word of Truth was published in 2019 to mark the 50th year of Keston Institute and the many years it had served as ‘a voice to the voiceless’ by collecting and archiving the testimonies of the many Christians and others persecuted behind the Iron Curtain.
Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet double agent who once worked for the KGB and escaped to the West in the trunk of a car, claimed that Keston Institute was No 2 in the hierarchy of KGB hates---- the first being Amnesty International. Michael retired from Keston in 1999. Since 2007, the Keston Institute’s archive and library have been under the care of the Keston Center at Baylor University, Texas.
Michael Bourdeaux died during Holy Week 2021. His legacy is great in the contemporary annals of those who have fought for religious liberty. It is too long to print here but click below for a moving excerpt from One Word of Truth. The incident it records strikes me as providential. Any of our fine church bookstores in the Diocese will gladly order you a copy or you can find it on Amazon.
|
Michael Bourdeaux receiving the Templeton Prize from Prince Philip in 1984. |
BE OUR VOICE
In 1964 Michael Bordeaux made a visit to Moscow that would prove seminal to the founding of Keston College.
Shortly before leaving he received a letter from his old mentor and professor Nicholas Zernov. The professor enclosed a photocopy of documents he had received from Moscow. They were detailed accounts, in semi- legible and uneducated hands, of Soviet cruelty at the Pochaev monastery in Ukraine. There had been repeated attempts to close it down. The authors were believers who worshiped in the monastery, one the mother of a monk who had been subject to psychiatric abuse, incarceration in the local asylum and the inflection of mind-bending drugs by injection. The ‘illness’ was belief in Christ.
On arrival in Moscow, Michael asked his friends there if they knew of similar attacks in other places throughout the provinces. He told them about the documents he had received. One of his contacts replied, ‘Provincial areas—what do you mean? It’s happening right here in Moscow. ‘You only have to go to the Church of St Peter and St Paul—or rather the remains of it—to see what these barbarians are doing. They blew it up a couple of weeks ago on the pretext they wanted to extend the Moscow Metro beneath it. Go and see for yourself’.
Michael set off in a taxi to find the church. He found the remains of it—half hidden behind a rough barricade surrounding the site. Walking around it he encountered two elderly Russian women endeavoring also to peer through the barricade. Here is Michael’s word account of his encounter with the babushki from One Word of Truth:
Trip to Moscow in 1964
‘But why did you come to Moscow now? [one of the women asked Michael.]
’‘I received some documents –they were letters from Ukraine describing the terrible things happening to a monastery.
’‘Which one?’
‘Pochaev.’
‘What were the documents?’
‘They were written by two women, Feodosia Varavvaand and Yefrosinia Shchur, mother of Anatoli, one of the monks...’
Their faces turned white. There was a stunned silence, then a cry, muffled in tears. ‘We wrote those documents. I’m Feodosia and this is Yefrosinia.’...
’What do you want me to do with them? What can I do for you?’ I asked.
The reply was instantaneous and decisive: ‘Take the documents back, then be our voice and speak for us’.
Michael concludes, giving us an insight into one of the incidents that ignited his life’s work of being a ‘voice for the voiceless’ in the closing decades of the Cold War:
Here was the kernel, in words loud and clear, as to how I should go about my future work and what its essence must be. A hard struggle would lie ahead, with many years of further preparation before I could even properly begin. And yet the objective was unambiguous. My task was not to give my own interpretation: I simply had to speak as a medium for the voice which I had heard so decisively and which I must find ways of continuing to hear.’
|
The Archdeacons Corner
The Canon of Holy Scripture
Or
How Did We Get the Bible?
One of the greatest joys for any deacon is the reading of Holy Scripture. A vital part of every service. All Episcopal deacons are charged with studying the Bible. The bishop makes this charge during their ordination:
As a deacon in the Church, you are to study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model your life upon them. (BCP 543)
The question always comes up “how did these books became canonized, and who made that decision”?
Let’s start at the beginning. Long before there was an Old or New Testament there was an oral history of the people of Israel. This history was handed down through stories and songs (think of Psalms). Biblical scholars believe that the Torah (earliest Hebrew tradition) was a product of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), based on earlier writings and those oral traditions, and that it was completed during the post-Exilic period (5th century BCE), as a first “Hebrew Bible”.
We call those writings the Old Testament. That Old Testament (Torah) is referred to today by the Jewish people as the TANAKH, an acronym made up of the initial consonants.
Much like the Hebrew tradition, early Christian teaching started with oral traditions, letters from the Apostles (Paul, John, and Peter) and early Gospel writing by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
In the First Century, Marcion of Sinope tried and failed to canonize a “New Testament”. However, Marcion excluded any reference to the Torah, and was deemed a heretic (Marcion, also held early Gnostic views). The earliest Christians were still predominantly Jewish and still held to Torah traditions. During that same period Irenaeus, Bishop of Laudanum, uses or cites twenty-one (21) books as scripture, instead of the twenty-seven (27) we use today. These books would eventually become part of the New Testament.
By about the Second or early Third Century the Muratorian fragment (170 CE) listed a set of Christian writings. This early (unknown originator) list would set the basis for what would become the New Testament. It included four gospels and argued against objections to them. The Early Church had plenty of writings and many writings were accepted by almost all Christian authorities by the middle of the second century, however there was still not a canonized set of scriptures.
The next two (200) hundred years followed a similar process of acceptance and rejection of writings throughout the entire Church. Most often writings were excluded rather than included, as approved reading. Numerous of these excluded or heretical writings were the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and 1st Clement to name a few.
At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE the Church worked to become of one mind regarding Scripture. Further an agreed upon list was clearly necessary to fulfill Constantine's commission in 331 CE for fifty (50) copies of the Bible for the Church at Constantinople. However, no concrete evidence exists to indicate that this was to be the formal canon.
In his Easter letter of 367 CE, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of books that would formally become the New Testament canon. Athanasius used the word canonized in regarding to them. The first council that accepted this canon may have been at the Synod of Hippo Regis in North Africa in 393 CE though no record exists.
The last book to be universally accepted was the Book of Revelation. By the Fifth Century, both the Western and Eastern churches agreed on the matter of the New Testament canon. The Council of Trent of 1546 CE reaffirmed that finalization for Roman Catholicism in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563 CE) finalized what would become canon, and ultimately handed down to modern Episcopalians.
For me the entire Bible, its importance, and canonization are best summed up in our Book of Common Prayer, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.”
Praying that our Lord finds you and yours well,
(The Ven.) Mark Richardson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
