Episcopal Press and News
Fort Worth Episcopalians tell council of effort to mend their diocese, welcome all
Episcopal News Service. February 18, 2011 [021811-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
While much reconciliation and renewal work has been accomplished among Episcopalians in the Diocese of Fort Worth, the Executive Council heard Feb. 17 that much more work remains to be done.
Members of the council's Governance and Administration for Mission committee learned about the efforts to rebuild the diocese from Victoria Prescott, senior warden at the Episcopal Church in Parker County community; Walt Cabe, St. Alban's senior warden; and diocesan Provisional Bishop Wallis Ohl.
That evening, the entire council attended a reception with Fort Worth Episcopalians at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in its meeting place at Theater Arlington in Arlington, Texas. Council members heard about the mission and ministry of the continuing diocese during one-on-one conversations and also at presentations made during dinner that evening at the Arlington Museum of Art near the theater.
GAM committee members heard that clergy, laity and congregations who did not "carry the banner" of former diocesan Bishop Jack Iker and other leaders of the diocese were, in Ohl's word, "isolated and shunned as much as possible."
Council member and Fort Worth lay leader Katie Sherrod told GAM that "we were described by Jack Iker as self-appointed vigilantes."
"The word vigilante in Spanish means witness and so we owned it proudly," she said.
The council decided to meet Feb. 16-18 in Fort Worth to show its support for the Episcopalians who remained after former diocesan leaders left the Episcopal Church in November 2008, realigning with the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. The continuing diocese reorganized in February 2009, electing then-Diocese of Kentucky Bishop Edwin F. (Ted) Gulick Jr. as its provisional bishop. The diocese in November 2009 elected Ohl, retired bishop of the Diocese of Northwest Texas, to succeed Gulick.
The Episcopal Church and the continuing Fort Worth diocese have sued the former diocesan leaders in the Texas courts, seeking recovery of property and other assets.
Both Prescott and Cabe were founding members of the Steering Committee North Texas Episcopalians, which organized in March 2008 in anticipation of the diocesan split and had the aim of holding together Episcopalians who wanted to remain in the church until a reorganizing convention could happen.
Ohl told the GAM committee that Gulick "did an extraordinary job" of "binding up the gashes that had been left in hearts and souls" because of the split. When Ohl came to the diocese, he said, he saw the need for more organization and training for clergy and lay people who had no experience in congregational or diocesan leadership because they opposed Iker and the other leaders.
All three noted what Prescott called the "legacy of clericalism" in the diocese that she said had resulted in a denigration of lay ministry. "For so many decades, if you felt a spiritual quickening it meant you go to Holy Orders," she said. "It's going to take a long time to deprogram that" and develop deeper lay ministry and leadership.
Now, Ohl said, "we're building up the ministry of all the baptized, not just clergy," often with the help of people from other dioceses who have conducted training workshops in Fort Worth.
At the same time, she and Ohl suggested that the diocese needs a balance of clergy from within the diocese and from the wider church. There are some people moving through the ordination whose earlier efforts were stymied because they did not support the direction of the former leaders or because Iker refused to ordain women.
Ohl added that clergy from elsewhere constantly offer to help the diocese, but that it cannot afford to pay them at the moment. "When the time comes, when all the litigation is over and we're awarded the buildings, we're going to need some clergy" to help congregations reform, he said.
Meanwhile, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth is working with the diocese to develop an Anglican studies program, Ohl said. There is an effort underway to endow a chair for the program that would be named for retired Diocese of Northwest Texas Bishop Sam Hulsey.
St. Alban's is one of 20 congregations in the reorganized diocese and Ohl said that each one has people -- he called them "refugees" -- who were members of congregations where the majority of members and clergy chose to depart. They worship in homes, women's clubs, space rented from other churches and in unusual places such as Theater Arlington where the set on the stage changes every five weeks. It reminded the St. Alban's members of the permanence of the worshipping community in the midst of the constant changes in their lives, the Rev. Melanie Barnett Wright, priest in charge, told the council as she stood on a chair in the theater's lobby. On Sundays the lobby becomes the place for adult Sunday school and coffee hour, she said.
Cabe said there are also "dozens of people" who remain in congregations that are loyal to the Southern Cone-connected diocese because they "stayed with the building," but "who say we're just waiting for you to come back."
Prescott told the story of a 90-year-old hoping for the property litigation to be settled so that she can eventually be buried out of the church she had belonged to since she was a toddler. "When you hear the pain in her voice you realize that it goes so much deeper than a political stance," she said.
In some instances, there have been joint funerals with Anglican and Episcopal clergy to accommodate those divisions, Cabe said.
During both sessions, Fort Worth Episcopalians reiterated their desire to welcome everyone, including those who left in the split. Sherrod admitted that it can be hard "trying to see the beloved in those faces" because of all that was said and done at the time.
The financial health of the reorganized diocese is such that this year it will give between 32 percent and 33 percent of its income to help fund the work of the wider Episcopal Church, Ohl said. The current churchwide budget asks the 110 dioceses to contribute 21 percent of diocesan income this year and 19 percent in 2012.
"We will be at least 20 percent for 2012, I guarantee it," Ohl told the committee, adding that diocesan members are committed to the plan because of the financial assistance the wider church gave remaining Episcopalians and because the former leadership refused to support the Episcopal Church financially.
During the evening gathering, Ohl announced that the diocese was rising to his six-week-old challenge to raise $11,000 for the church's effort to help the Diocese of Haiti rebuild. He predicted that the goal would be met or surpassed by Ash Wednesday March 9.
Asked how the council can help the diocese, Ohl said, "Probably the best thing you can do is sing our song and say that this is a healthy place."