Episcopal Press and News
WESTERN KANSAS: Convention hears challenge, criticism
Episcopal News Service. November 9, 2007 [110907-02]
Saying it is time to move beyond long-standing attitudes of maintenance and mere survival, Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas Bishop James M. Adams Jr. has challenged the people of the diocese to make the growth of mission, ministry and membership their top priority.
"I know the time is short," Adams said in his address to the opening Eucharist at the 37th annual convention, held October 26-27 in Colby. "But we do not have years to think about it anymore. The time is now. Will we do this? The answer is yours to give.
"I pray (your answer) is to take the time to grow Western Kansas into a full-functioning member of the worldwide church, beginning now, by paying full attention to the needs and resources of Western Kansas first."
Adams, who was making his sixth address as diocesan bishop, put special emphasis on continuing to support and expand the Western Kansas Growth Fund, which, after the loss in 2006 of a grant from an Episcopal Church organization, has been used to help fund the diocesan budget. Use of money from the growth fund, along with major budget cuts in many areas, was necessary "just to stay close to even," Adams said.
The Domestic Missionary Partnership (DMP) no longer provides dioceses with base-budget support. That decision, Adams told the convention, cost the diocese almost $60,000.
The DMP was formed in 1997 by several of the member dioceses of the former Coalition 14, which had its roots in the early 1970s when dioceses supported by the Episcopal Church banded together to change the way funds were distributed. DMP's current members are the dioceses of Alaska, Arizona, Eastern Oregon, Eau Claire, Idaho, Mississippi, Navajoland Area Mission, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, and Western Kansas.
"Except for a check once a year, which we no longer receive, I have yet to figure out what else the national church has done for Western Kansas, since it has never helped [the diocese] more than that which would allow it to survive and, at times, barely that," Adams said. "When made a diocese, Western Kansas was neither given the population nor the resources to grow as a diocese."
Adams called upon the bishop's committees and vestries of every congregation in the diocese to focus their energies on strategies to make their congregations, and thus the diocese, not just viable but vital. He asked each of those various local bodies to provide to him with strategic plans by the end of January.
Adams told the convention that the proper role of the national church was largely misunderstood, as was the relationship between dioceses and the provincial body known as the Episcopal Church.
"There is no national church," he said. "The basic unit is the individual diocese and its bishop," Adams said.
In other business, the convention:
- voted to donate money collected in the offering at its Holy Eucharist, which along with a contribution from Adams totaled $1,000, to the Free Church of the Annunciation in New Orleans;
- held elections for various diocesan bodies and the 76th General Convention; and
- learned that the United Thank Offering fall ingathering had yielded $3,723.94, with more to come and that auctions at convention to benefit Our Little Roses Mission in Honduras had raised $1,998.