SPEAKER_04: Alright, so we're gonna really talk about polity, how it is that the church is run, in addition to leadership roles.
SPEAKER_04: So let me start with leadership roles.
SPEAKER_04: That is like who has ministry in the church?
SPEAKER_04: And I have this really convenient diagram, and I want you to imagine that the actual piece of paper, this 8.5 by 11, that has no border, are all the lay people.
SPEAKER_04: That includes everybody here.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So what we say in the prayer book is that it the church is a ministry of lay people, some of whom are deacons, some of whom are priests, some of whom are bishops.
SPEAKER_04: But it's really important you hear it in that order.
SPEAKER_04: See, in the 28th prayer book, we said the Episcopal Church is a ministry of bishops, priests, deacons, and lay people.
SPEAKER_04: We got it wrong.
SPEAKER_04: The church is a ministry of everybody, some of whom are called to be deacons, some of whom are called to be priests, even fewer are called to be bishops.
SPEAKER_04: Okay?
SPEAKER_04: So maybe you're wondering, let me go from the inside, let me start at the beginning.
SPEAKER_04: What can lay people do in the church?
SPEAKER_04: Everything except sacraments.
SPEAKER_04: Now, there's a caveat.
SPEAKER_04: Lay people, we talked about sacraments last week, right?
SPEAKER_04: And we talked about the sacrament of unction, where you can anoint people with oil.
SPEAKER_04: Y'all can do that.
SPEAKER_04: You just can't bless the oil.
SPEAKER_04: But you can do that one.
SPEAKER_04: Otherwise, it's either a deacon, a priest, or a bishop doing the sacraments, right?
SPEAKER_04: So lay people can be readers.
SPEAKER_04: They can bring communion to people who are at home, who are in facilities.
SPEAKER_04: Lay people should pray for people.
SPEAKER_04: Lay people should serve, because this is not a ministry of priest to lay people.
SPEAKER_04: It's a ministry we're all called to with different aspects.
SPEAKER_04: Okay?
SPEAKER_04: Now, we say, and we talked about this last week, ordination is one of the sacraments, and some people, as lay leaders, are called to be deacons.
SPEAKER_04: What do deacons do?
SPEAKER_04: It's a mystery.
SPEAKER_04: What they're supposed to do is represent the voiceless to the church and the church to the voiceless.
SPEAKER_04: So that's their primary call, which means in general, the deacons I know who are really living into that call do Kairos prison ministry.
SPEAKER_04: They volunteer and they go and they build relationships to prisoners and their chaplains, right?
SPEAKER_04: They deal with migrant ministries.
SPEAKER_04: And they can do this for hire, like you can get paid, you can make a career of this, right?
SPEAKER_04: But that ain't why they're doing it.
SPEAKER_04: They have this call, frankly, to social justice, and when it works right, I think the church says, we really need you to wear a collar because you make the church look good.
SPEAKER_04: Your care for the voiceless and the powerless is exactly the kind of press the church needs, and we want folks to know you're doing it with our blessing and with our authority.
SPEAKER_04: So some people say, hey, I think I'm called to be a deacon.
SPEAKER_04: I was delighted at my last church that this guy did prison ministry because his father had been incarcerated.
SPEAKER_04: Even though he was very successful, he'd been incarcerated.
SPEAKER_04: So he just did this, and the bishop said, We need you to be a deacon.
SPEAKER_04: Like I don't I don't know if you've felt this, but we need people like you to wear the collar.
SPEAKER_04: And I'll tell you this the collar opens a lot of doors.
SPEAKER_04: Like I can go to hospital, and nurses will violate HIPAA like that.
SPEAKER_04: They will tell me what's going on because there's a sacred trust.
SPEAKER_04: They shouldn't, and it opens doors.
SPEAKER_04: And I'm grateful for that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Deacons.
SPEAKER_04: Now, what do deacons do in worship?
SPEAKER_04: They wear a sash, not a stole.
SPEAKER_04: Not because they're winning a beauty pageant, but let's think about that way.
SPEAKER_04: The most beautiful people serve others.
SPEAKER_04: They set the table, they read the gospel.
SPEAKER_04: You'll notice we don't have anybody with a sash here, and that's because we only have one deacon in the whole convocation.
SPEAKER_04: That's 12 churches that go from Pearland down to Galveston, from Alvin to Laporte.
SPEAKER_04: There's only one, and I don't even know if they're active.
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna tell you we don't need deacons in worship.
SPEAKER_04: We need people to represent the love of God in places where we need the love of God represented.
SPEAKER_04: And that's what deacons do.
SPEAKER_04: Now, everybody who fits in one of these boxes starts as a deacon.
SPEAKER_04: So I was deaconed first.
SPEAKER_04: That was my first ordination.
SPEAKER_04: And then after a minimum of six months, people who are called to the priest box get a second ordination to become priest.
SPEAKER_04: What do priests do?
SPEAKER_04: Well, see, you notice they live in the deacon box too.
SPEAKER_04: So they're supposed to do all the stuff the deacon does, and then what we usually say is the priests do the ABCs.
SPEAKER_04: The priests absolve you.
SPEAKER_04: The priests bless you, the priests do communion.
SPEAKER_04: The deacons absolve us.
SPEAKER_04: The deacons bless us, and they can't do communion.
SPEAKER_04: Those sound like minor differences.
SPEAKER_04: You might be wondering, well, geez, if priests do all the stuff deacons do, why would anybody want to be a deacon when you could just be a priest?
SPEAKER_04: It isn't about what we want, it's where we perceive God's calling us, right?
SPEAKER_04: Why am I not a deacon?
SPEAKER_04: Because I'd be depressed.
SPEAKER_04: I've done social justice ministry, and at the end of great things, I'm like, but I could have done more.
SPEAKER_04: So I need, in my personality, the reconciliation of the sacraments.
SPEAKER_04: I need the Eucharist, I need to baptize, I need to hear your reconciliation and absolve you.
SPEAKER_04: I celebrate wedding.
SPEAKER_04: A deacon can do a wedding too.
SPEAKER_04: I should have said that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um with permission from their rector.
SPEAKER_04: I'll talk about that in a second.
SPEAKER_01: So do you uh if you are a deacon, then do you have you already gone to seminary or you go to seminary?
SPEAKER_04: Depends on your diocese.
SPEAKER_04: In this diocese, if you want to be a deacon, you need formal Christian education.
SPEAKER_04: The classical model for all of these ordinations is that you go to a residential seminary for three years.
SPEAKER_04: We have one in the Diocese of Texas.
SPEAKER_04: It's in Austin, it's called Seminary of the Southwest.
SPEAKER_04: So you spend three years, and typically you're in a degree that's called a Master's of Divinity.
SPEAKER_04: That's a professional degree.
SPEAKER_04: So it has academic courses, but it's meant to be practical, and it always includes an internship.
SPEAKER_04: Everywhere you go in the country, an MDiv has that.
SPEAKER_04: Deacons might get away, I don't mean get away, but they might get away with a Master of Arts and Religion or a Master of Sacred Theology.
SPEAKER_04: But in general, we want in the Episcopal Church, and let's be honest, we're a white-collar church.
SPEAKER_04: We really are proud of education in our church.
SPEAKER_04: We want to send our clergy to be, well, religious professionals.
SPEAKER_04: Not to lord it over you, but so we can spend our time sharing with you what we've studied and learned.
SPEAKER_04: Including deacons, because deacons are going to teach.
SPEAKER_04: And deacons, my opinion, need to say, hey, we're not like doing this stuff to be nice.
SPEAKER_04: We're doing this stuff because the risen Lord compels us to do it.
SPEAKER_04: So sometimes we can say, Well, you know, if they'd made better decisions, those poor people wouldn't be poor.
SPEAKER_04: And the deacon needs to be able to say, do not despise the poor for their poverty, which comes out of the Psalms.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So when you see somebody in the Episcopal Church with a collar, trust that they're educated.
SPEAKER_04: Not that they know more than you, but they know different things from you.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: And I went to seminary because you weren't going to go.
SPEAKER_04: So I did it for you, and my opportunity is to share the TLDR with you.
SPEAKER_04: Some people say, where'd you get that idea?
SPEAKER_04: Well, I read nine books, and they were so boring.
SPEAKER_04: And each one had one sentence.
SPEAKER_04: And I spent all that time to give you nine sentences, right?
SPEAKER_04: That's how I see it.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: Now, um, so that's the ministry of the priesthood: justice and reconciliation and regular nourishment.
SPEAKER_04: Okay?
SPEAKER_04: And then the smallest box is that some priests are called to be bishops.
SPEAKER_04: And bishops are not our rulers, God is our sovereign.
SPEAKER_04: Bishops, I'll tell you more about the government in just a second.
SPEAKER_04: The real things the bishops do that I can't do are confirmation and ordination.
SPEAKER_04: So the bishops make priests and deacons, and they make other bishops, and the bishops do confirmation.
SPEAKER_04: I'm going to recommend you for confirmation, and Hector's going to bless you all, but I can't do the right myself.
SPEAKER_04: Now, uh, so does that sort of make sense?
SPEAKER_04: One of the ways we think about bishops, honestly, are being people who set a vision and have controls on clergy.
SPEAKER_04: We have five bishops in this diocese.
SPEAKER_04: Three have real authority, and two work on behalf of the bishop with the authority.
SPEAKER_04: So Hector and Brian cannot vote in anything.
SPEAKER_04: They don't have vote.
SPEAKER_04: They have voice at the House of Bishops, but they don't have vote.
SPEAKER_04: And who are they, who do they obey?
SPEAKER_04: Andy Doyle, diocesan bishop.
SPEAKER_04: So when Hector comes here, he's the one who will be doing confirmation, renewal, reception.
SPEAKER_04: Hector only exists at the pleasure of Andy Doyle.
SPEAKER_04: So he's an extension of Andy's ministry, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: If Andy retires, if Andy gets tired of Hector, he's done.
SPEAKER_04: We have two other bishops who are called suffragans, and of course, like suffrage means to vote, right?
SPEAKER_04: That's Kay and Jeff.
SPEAKER_04: They vote at the House of Bishops.
SPEAKER_04: Andy can't fire them because they were elected by the diocese, but Andy's the governor and they're the deputies.
SPEAKER_04: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: And this brings me to how the church is structured in these roles.
SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_05: Uh just a question.
SPEAKER_05: So back to the two bishops that are like delegated that people or they work on behalf of the bishop.
SPEAKER_04: They're called bishop assistants.
SPEAKER_05: So when they're here doing blessings, is that like blessings that have been delegated by Andy, or are they able to like do it sort of themselves?
SPEAKER_05: That question makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: It's such a great question, and the answer is yes to both.
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
SPEAKER_04: Because having been not or not just ordained, but consecrated a bishop, they have all the rights and privileges of bishops as long as they're in good standing with the national church.
SPEAKER_04: That said, if they did a thing in Andy's diocese he didn't like, there could be repercussions.
SPEAKER_04: So it's meant to work sort of together.
SPEAKER_04: Now, what I want you to know, uh anybody been Methodist before?
SPEAKER_04: So in the Methodist Church, that's how the Church of England is structured.
SPEAKER_04: Who we came from.
SPEAKER_04: In the Methodist Church, there's a bishop and there's a district superintendent, and then the elders, that's what they call their priests, the elders are appointed on theoretically a rotational basis.
SPEAKER_04: Like an appointment supposed to last a maximum of five years, but truth be told, in the Methodist Church, if you're big enough and have enough money, you can keep your elder if you like them.
SPEAKER_04: But supposed to be rotational, there's no tenure in the Methodist Church.
SPEAKER_04: That's how the Church of England works.
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, the Archbishop of Canterbury, first woman ever.
SPEAKER_04: She wasn't elected, she was appointed by the head of the Anglican communion, who is the king.
SPEAKER_04: So we say that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of the church.
SPEAKER_04: The head of the church is the king.
SPEAKER_04: He and our king, and he isn't the head of our church, but we're in communion with him.
SPEAKER_04: Remember, we had the revolution, we broke away.
SPEAKER_04: Now, uh, that system of appointing bishops, that's how the Romans do it.
SPEAKER_04: They're appointed.
SPEAKER_04: In the Anglican church, they're appointed by the king.
SPEAKER_04: We decided when they had the revolutionary American Revolution, we didn't want appointing.
SPEAKER_04: We didn't want all the power in one box.
SPEAKER_04: We wanted not a democracy, but a republic.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: Everybody's clear we don't have a democracy, right?
SPEAKER_04: We have a republic in this country.
SPEAKER_04: And what do you know?
SPEAKER_04: The government of the Episcopal Church sounds a lot like the government of the United States, because the same people made both up.
SPEAKER_04: So here's how it works in the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_04: We have somebody called the presiding bishop.
SPEAKER_04: They're elected by their peers, bishops, and they have very little say over what happens in any diocese.
SPEAKER_04: So there's a bunch of dioceses in Texas.
SPEAKER_04: We've got how many, Courtney?
SPEAKER_04: Five?
SPEAKER_04: We've got Diocese of Texas, Diocese of Dallas, West Texas, Northwest Texas.
SPEAKER_04: Is that what's just that four?
unknown: Just four now.
SPEAKER_04: So we got four, but the way you want to think about a diocese is like a state.
SPEAKER_04: Who's in charge of a state?
SPEAKER_04: A governor, and that's the diocesan bishop.
SPEAKER_04: The diocesan bishop is elected at a council that includes all the lay people and all the clergy, and every diocese has to have one of those every year, where they hear, here's our budget for the state, which is like the diocese, right?
SPEAKER_04: And here are the people the bishop is appointing because she or he is allowed to just appoint them.
SPEAKER_04: Here are the people we need to elect to be on executive board or standing committee, right?
SPEAKER_04: So the bishop can't just do anything they want, nor can the governor.
SPEAKER_04: Some gov, you know, governor can do some things, governor needs permission to do other things, right?
SPEAKER_04: Kind of like the diocese.
SPEAKER_04: It's a little interesting that in the Episcopal Church, the diocesan bishop is the diocese.
SPEAKER_04: That's a little confusing.
SPEAKER_04: Andy wears the seal of the diocese, which is shaped like an eye.
SPEAKER_04: Back in the Middle Ages, right?
SPEAKER_04: If you were a knight, you had a shield.
SPEAKER_04: To differentiate us from warrior classes, we got the double shield, like the eyeball.
SPEAKER_04: He wears that ring because he waxed seals, ordinations.
SPEAKER_04: Old school, old fashioned.
SPEAKER_04: When Andy Doyle goes to Hong Kong for the House of Bishops, the Diocese of Texas just went to Hong Kong.
SPEAKER_04: All the property of the diocese belongs to the bishop.
SPEAKER_04: Not personally, but in his office.
SPEAKER_04: This one's so big, right?
SPEAKER_04: He set up a corporation to manage that.
SPEAKER_04: So he's divested some of his direct liability by signing the deeds.
SPEAKER_04: But he holds the deed to our church, which we built and paid for.
SPEAKER_04: But the diocese holds that deed, right?
SPEAKER_04: Because every church is an extension of the bishop's ministry.
SPEAKER_04: So what can the bishop do?
SPEAKER_04: About anything they want, except break the law.
SPEAKER_04: What if they break the law?
SPEAKER_04: Well, it's really clear that if the bishop racks up some DWIs, they're going to prison.
SPEAKER_04: Really hard to exercise your ministry in prison.
SPEAKER_04: So likely that will be the end of it.
SPEAKER_04: And they have to be tried by an ecclesiastical court of their peers according to canon law.
SPEAKER_04: So there's the bishop diocesan.
SPEAKER_04: Under the bishop diocesan and the government, we have two kinds of churches: a parish, we're a parish, and a mission.
SPEAKER_04: What's the difference?
SPEAKER_04: Well, a parish typically pays all of their own expenses, their lights.
SPEAKER_04: We don't pay property tax, right?
SPEAKER_04: But we pay our light bill, we pay salaries to our staff, and we pay something called a diocesan assessment.
SPEAKER_04: That is like we pay, well, it's roughly 10% of our annual budget, we send straight to the diocese to fund diocesan ministries, to fund things like, well, the bishop's salary and the bishop's secretary's salary, but also to pay for things like the salary of people who work at St.
SPEAKER_04: Vincent's house.
SPEAKER_04: That's a ministry of the diocese.
SPEAKER_04: So when you're able to kind of do that with some regularity financially, you get to be a parish and the priest who is.
SPEAKER_04: It sounds funny, but let's just go ahead and lean into this.
SPEAKER_04: We're a hierarchical church in government.
SPEAKER_04: The priest over a parish is called a rector.
SPEAKER_04: That's me.
SPEAKER_04: And guess what rector means?
SPEAKER_04: It means I'm right.
SPEAKER_04: Talk about hierarchy.
SPEAKER_04: In the absence of the bishop, I'm right.
SPEAKER_04: So if somebody says, why are we veiling the cross?
SPEAKER_04: It's not Lent.
SPEAKER_04: We shouldn't do that.
SPEAKER_04: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_04: Well, we sure can, because the rector said we're doing it.
SPEAKER_04: It's not meant to be exercised over people, but if push comes to show, that's how it goes, right?
SPEAKER_04: A rector has tenure.
SPEAKER_04: So what do you do if you don't like your rector?
SPEAKER_04: You hope they leave.
SPEAKER_04: Can you make them leave?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: You can't.
SPEAKER_04: Can the bishop make me leave?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: Unless I commit a crime.
SPEAKER_04: So you gotta be careful who you call as your priest.
SPEAKER_04: Let's just say that.
SPEAKER_04: How's your rector?
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: And I also represent the bishop in his absence, which sort of means, right, if somebody comes on the property I don't like, I can call the police and say they're trespassing or move them.
SPEAKER_04: And the police, sorry, have to obey because I'm sort of the absentee landlord for the bishop.
SPEAKER_04: When we carry this power heavily, it's bad for everybody.
SPEAKER_04: Right.
SPEAKER_04: But I just want to tell you this is kind of how we've how we've arrived.
SPEAKER_04: The rector can hire, with the bishop's permission, another priest to be an associate.
SPEAKER_04: That's Sean.
SPEAKER_04: Sean does not have tenure.
SPEAKER_04: And in fact, if like I went somewhere else, Sean probably be leaving too.
SPEAKER_04: Not to go with me, right?
SPEAKER_04: But needs the bishop's permission to stay in place.
SPEAKER_04: And if I have tenure, he doesn't.
SPEAKER_04: So he works at the pleasure of the record.
SPEAKER_04: Well, till I turn 72 or till I terminate it myself.
SPEAKER_04: So you can't make me stay and you can't make me leave.
SPEAKER_04: You can make it so unpleasant I want to leave.
SPEAKER_04: If we're not doing well, you can trim my salary till I choose to go, right?
SPEAKER_04: Although you can't just trim it willy-nilly because that sets a dangerous precedent, right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'll tell you the church I grew up in.
SPEAKER_04: If I preached a sermon, I I could be fired that same day if they didn't like it.
SPEAKER_04: So what's the tenure system protect my conscience?
SPEAKER_04: Intellectual freedom.
SPEAKER_04: And it also protects me not visiting sick people, which is too bad, right?
SPEAKER_04: But we've we've decided to err on protecting the conscience of the priest.
SPEAKER_04: Everything's got pros and cons.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But you can be like there are like Title IV, you're gonna talk about it.
SPEAKER_04: If I commit a crime, I mean, listen, I told you last time I'm ordained by God, not by the bishop, and yet the bishop can say, you can't serve sacraments in my diocese, and all of a sudden I'm unemployable.
SPEAKER_04: So how do I lose my ability to exercise my priesthood?
SPEAKER_04: Uh I steal money, I have an affair, I get a DWI, some other crime in which I'm incarcerated, right?
SPEAKER_04: There's a provision called conduct unbecoming a clergy person.
SPEAKER_04: I don't think that means running around without a shirt.
SPEAKER_04: I do that often in this neighborhood, and I have not had an ecclesiastical council.
SPEAKER_04: But even in that case, it's not only the bishop, there's a disciplined committee and they vote.
SPEAKER_04: And like I get a case.
SPEAKER_04: I'll tell you in general, we're guilty until we're proven innocent.
SPEAKER_04: But that's that but there is a there's a trust.
SPEAKER_04: Sounds like the Constitution, right?
SPEAKER_04: Because we thought that up too.
SPEAKER_04: What about a mission?
SPEAKER_04: A mission could be a church plant.
SPEAKER_04: It could be a place that's paying its own bills, but it's not quite paying a diocesan assessment, right?
SPEAKER_04: So they don't get a rector, they get a vicar.
SPEAKER_04: The vicar is appointed by the bishop and can be removed according to the bishop's will.
SPEAKER_04: Rarely does the bishop just say, you're stuck with this person.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, you like them, too bad, I'm taking them away.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, usually we exercise these things.
SPEAKER_04: But in terms of like the way the letter is written, that's how missions work.
SPEAKER_04: Some places are always going to be missions.
SPEAKER_04: Lord of the streets will always be a mission, because guess who their congregation's made up?
SPEAKER_04: Homeless people, right?
SPEAKER_04: So they're going to be a mission, and they've got a vicar, and usually, as long as the vicar is like keeping their nose clean, it's going to be fine.
SPEAKER_04: And Brad's been great there, right?
SPEAKER_04: So that's one of our probably perpetual missions.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes a parish will become a mission and then become a parish.
SPEAKER_04: Like you can go up and down according to demographic shifts.
SPEAKER_04: That can happen.
SPEAKER_04: Scary to become a mission if you like your priest, because that means you can't control whether they stay.
SPEAKER_04: Although, you don't like your rector and you become a mission, they're not a rector anymore.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So there's some thought.
SPEAKER_04: A parish like ours has a vestry.
SPEAKER_04: A mission has a bishop's committee who advises the bishop as to the finances and the missional nature of the place.
SPEAKER_04: Our vestry, their role as sort of a board of directors, is to vest their rector.
SPEAKER_04: Like I wear a vest mint, the vestry is meant to vest me.
SPEAKER_04: So if you think that a board of directors is there to control the priest, you've got it wrong.
SPEAKER_04: The vestry is to support the priest in their ministry, and boy, when it doesn't go well, it gets ugly.
SPEAKER_04: And I'm going to say about 25 years ago at St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas, it got real ugly.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know that any of you were here.
SPEAKER_04: It got so ugly that members of the vestry would wait, say every vestry meeting we have at St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas, longtime tradition, we start with communion.
SPEAKER_04: And there was so much enmity between the rector and members of the church that some of the vestry would wait till communion was over to come into the meeting because they weren't going to have it from their own priest.
SPEAKER_04: Andy Doyle was canon to the ordinary.
SPEAKER_04: I'll talk about that in a second.
SPEAKER_04: And he came down and said, Vestry, you're all fired.
SPEAKER_04: The bishop has fired you.
SPEAKER_04: And we had to elect a new vestry.
SPEAKER_04: Why?
SPEAKER_04: When you won't take the sacrament from your own priest, there's something wrong.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So we've known dysfunction here.
SPEAKER_04: I like to think we've learned from.
SPEAKER_04: How do you elect the uh vestry?
SPEAKER_04: So glad you asked.
SPEAKER_04: The way we elect the vestry is every year, and it'll happen at the end of January, we have what's called the annual meeting.
SPEAKER_04: Now, here's where we're a Republican democracy.
SPEAKER_04: Um I can make any budget I want.
SPEAKER_04: The congregation and the vestry both have to pass it for it to be a thing.
SPEAKER_04: So at the annual meeting, we will pass a budget.
SPEAKER_04: We will also elect members to the vestry.
SPEAKER_04: Now, in the past, it's been open elections.
SPEAKER_04: Like here's five people and you need to vote for four.
SPEAKER_04: And probably for 12 years we haven't done that way because boy, it sure reminds me of middle school, five people running for four, and you were willing to serve your church and you lost.
SPEAKER_04: That's not a great feeling.
SPEAKER_04: So typically the way we've done it here is the outgoing vestry members nominate folks who are willing to serve, and we elect a slate.
SPEAKER_04: There's no rule in the canons how we do it, but they're elected.
SPEAKER_04: Elected to do what?
SPEAKER_04: The vestry's job, as I mentioned, is to support the rector, and the things that they control are the purse only.
SPEAKER_04: I control the property, the vestry controls the purse.
SPEAKER_04: So if I say, hey guys, I really think we need money to build a statue of a golden bucky beaver.
SPEAKER_04: That's not in the budget.
SPEAKER_04: Then I'm going to the vestry for that.
SPEAKER_04: And hopefully they'll say no.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm just hoping they'd say no, right?
SPEAKER_04: Stranger things have happened, but not here.
SPEAKER_04: So, so um, and how's the vestry supposed to work?
SPEAKER_04: Remember, we're a Republican democracy, so the vestries don't interview their constituents.
SPEAKER_04: Vestry members vote their conscience before God.
SPEAKER_04: You're electing people to vote their conscience on your behalf.
SPEAKER_04: You may not like how they vote, which means think who you're electing, right, when we elect that slate.
SPEAKER_04: A vestry term tends to be three years.
SPEAKER_04: The vestry has officer positions like a clerk who not only takes minutes at the meetings but signs diocesan documents.
SPEAKER_04: We have a treasurer, you don't have to be on the vestry to be the treasurer, and our treasurer isn't, which I love because we can keep them for more than three years.
SPEAKER_04: Which means there's continuity.
SPEAKER_04: How do we protect that continuity?
SPEAKER_04: We have an audit every year.
SPEAKER_04: So we those are our checks and balances.
SPEAKER_04: We have a junior warden who at some churches is in charge of the facilities, but I don't know anybody wanting to do that except Herb Meyer, so he's just the facility chair and he's not on the vestry.
SPEAKER_04: Helps that he's been the senior warden like three times.
SPEAKER_04: Um but Herb does this fantastically.
SPEAKER_04: So you've heard me say it from up front, we don't have a parish administrator.
SPEAKER_04: We decided we'd rather spend the money on mission.
SPEAKER_04: So we have volunteers maintain our fire system and our HVAC and our odds and ends.
SPEAKER_04: We don't employ someone to do it, volunteers do that.
SPEAKER_04: And then we have somebody called the senior warden who's like the chair of the board.
SPEAKER_04: The rector picks the senior warden, the vestry elects the junior warden.
SPEAKER_04: If I get hit by a car or go to jail, the senior warden is the fiduciary responsibility of the church in absence of the bishop and the rector.
SPEAKER_04: Which means, right, while I'm on vacation or something, John McFather's in charge of St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas, not Sean Steele.
SPEAKER_04: St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas Vestry is a really nice place.
SPEAKER_04: In ten and a half years, I've had two uncomfortable meetings, and it's not because we didn't get along with each other, it's because we had strong feelings about what we needed to do.
SPEAKER_04: When we closed the school, it was not one of those meetings.
SPEAKER_04: It was thoughtful and painful, and we didn't fight.
SPEAKER_04: So we've had two tough meetings in ten and a half years.
SPEAKER_04: So what Rini says is vestry, on vestry, fun is one of our core values, damn it.
SPEAKER_04: And uh we have sort of decided that vestry is a fun time.
SPEAKER_04: We don't just talk about the purse, we talk about mission.
SPEAKER_04: And one of the things that Hal gave us being on Vestry is that each vestry person writes a report on an area of ministry prior to the meeting so that we can stay updated.
SPEAKER_04: And what do you know?
SPEAKER_04: That makes the meetings last less than an hour.
SPEAKER_04: What kind of stuff do we do as a vestry beyond the budget?
SPEAKER_04: Um, we talk about should we have one service on the 21st or should we keep two?
SPEAKER_04: So the vestrying gets to be a sounding word.
SPEAKER_04: We're having one at nine o'clock.
SPEAKER_04: 21st of December when we turn 60, and then we're having brunch.
SPEAKER_04: We thought it'd be nice for both congregations to worship as one and have a meal together.
SPEAKER_04: Because we won't be 60 again, right?
SPEAKER_04: So we talked through that.
SPEAKER_04: We talk about whether or not we want to lease building space to ministries like the sanctuary foster care.
SPEAKER_04: Do we want to do that?
SPEAKER_04: Let's think, let's think through it.
SPEAKER_04: We talk about things like do we want to name these rooms after former parishioners so that we know what room we're talking about, finally?
SPEAKER_04: Yes, we do, and you'll see those unroll soon.
SPEAKER_04: Um those are the kinds of things.
SPEAKER_04: We celebrate things that are going on, we talk about what we need to be doing.
SPEAKER_04: Last thing we do at the annual meeting is that every year we have a diocesan council, which is sort of like the opportunity to have a referendum on the diocesan budget and any canons to the church.
SPEAKER_04: So it's kind of like the House of Representatives getting together to think about the state's laws.
SPEAKER_04: We get to send four people and we have to pay for them to go too.
SPEAKER_04: So we build that into our budget because we have to, we don't have a choice.
SPEAKER_04: And at the annual meeting, we elect four people.
SPEAKER_04: They could be on the vestry, they don't have to be.
SPEAKER_04: Usually they're willing to go, which is like that really dials down who's willing to go, uh, and spend a day, I mean, doing church politics, which is not like glad-handing, but it's voting for people to be on the executive board, hearing the diocesan budget.
SPEAKER_04: It's a day away from your family, and and hey, you get to meet people, but it's a day.
SPEAKER_04: So annual meeting does those three things, and that's what the lay folks do.
SPEAKER_04: Now, who gets a vote?
SPEAKER_04: Technically, it's members.
SPEAKER_04: But members according to how.
SPEAKER_04: Remember, as I've told you at St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas, we've got two ways of doing membership.
SPEAKER_04: We've got people who have moved their letter from another church and they exist in the church roles.
SPEAKER_04: And we've got uh people who made a pledge.
SPEAKER_04: Which one's more important to me?
SPEAKER_04: Your pledge.
SPEAKER_04: Because it means you're saying I'm gonna be involved, whether you give money or not.
SPEAKER_04: I'm I am I am part of this community.
SPEAKER_04: Do you have to be confirmed to vote?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: Do you have to be confirmed to be on the vestry?
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_04: Do you have to be confirmed to be a deacon or priest?
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: So the only privilege confirmation gives you is if you're seeking holy orders, which is a reminder.
SPEAKER_04: This is a thing you don't have to do, but hopefully will convey some grace to you.
SPEAKER_04: Having thought about where you want your life to go and getting the bishop's blessing, not approval, his blessing on, hey, here's the faith in me and here's how I want to live it out.
SPEAKER_04: I hope your eyes haven't completely glazed over.
SPEAKER_04: Questions about how we do this as a like a government, yeah, please.
SPEAKER_04: So here's an important thing to say is we have a lot of vocabulary that our Roman Catholics brothers and sisters have, and we use those words differently.
SPEAKER_04: So if you're a Catholic priest, people probably call you their vicar.
SPEAKER_04: In the Church of England, everybody's a vicar because they're all assigned to a parish, which is not just a church, a geography.
SPEAKER_04: They're assigned by their bishop.
SPEAKER_04: Rector is unique to the Episcopal Church because I've got tenure.
SPEAKER_04: The bishop didn't appoint me.
SPEAKER_04: A group of representatives from St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas said, we'll search for our next rector.
SPEAKER_04: The bishop said, Here's three names you could start with.
SPEAKER_04: Our search committee said, thanks, and we're going to look on our own.
SPEAKER_04: Because they can.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: Lord have mercy.
SPEAKER_04: They picked me, and um, the bishop has to give his blessing on the call, so the bishop has veto power, but um the bishop can't force a rector call.
SPEAKER_04: So the call committee serves the vestry and says, we'll give you a recommendation.
SPEAKER_04: They recommend to the vestry, here's who we think ought to be our next rector.
SPEAKER_04: The vestry can approve or deny, right?
SPEAKER_04: And then the vestry issues a call to us.
SPEAKER_04: Call is a fancy word that comes down to contract, right?
SPEAKER_04: It's a contract that has lots of provisions in it as to how much time off I get on vacation, how much time I get on continuing education, is my mileage reimbursed?
SPEAKER_04: Does the church pay my phone bill?
SPEAKER_04: Is the church going to pay my moving costs?
SPEAKER_04: The answer is yes to all of them, by the way.
SPEAKER_04: Are my sermons my intellectual property or the church's?
SPEAKER_04: They're mine.
SPEAKER_04: Love that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh anything I write, like a blog, my intellectual property, not the church's.
SPEAKER_04: That's because Andy writes a book probably every six months, so probably he's he's doing what he does.
SPEAKER_04: Um, the diocese I came from, San Diego, small diocese.
SPEAKER_04: If you wanted a sabbatical, you better negotiate it for it right up front, because it wasn't in your letter of agreement.
SPEAKER_04: In the Diocese of Texas, every clergy person is guaranteed a sabbatical.
SPEAKER_04: What do we accrue?
SPEAKER_04: Two weeks for every year we serve.
SPEAKER_04: We can take them after three years, or we can wait until seven.
SPEAKER_04: If it gets to year eight, the bishop's gonna call and say, What's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_04: Take your sabbatical.
SPEAKER_04: So I didn't negotiate for any of that.
SPEAKER_04: The bishop mandated that in letters of agreement.
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes a bishop can say, like the Diocese of Colorado says, if you want to be a priest in my diocese, you will be open and affirming.
SPEAKER_04: So if you're not willing to celebrate a gay marriage, you will not get a you will get vetoed by me.
SPEAKER_04: Whatever the congregation says, I will veto it.
SPEAKER_04: So bishops can be more heavy-handed because their job, right, is to create the vision of the diocese, support it, and some might say to be a priest to the priests.
SPEAKER_04: Depends what diocese you're in and how it's structured.
SPEAKER_04: Here, that's not how it works.
SPEAKER_04: We have chaplains in each area.
SPEAKER_04: And look, we have 176 parishes in the diocese, which is huge.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we go north of uh Fort Worth from here, right?
SPEAKER_04: And we go all the way out to like Beaumont and we go out to Austin.
SPEAKER_04: It's so big.
SPEAKER_04: What our bishop has decided to do, which is his right, is split the diocese into convocations, and there are nine of us.
SPEAKER_04: We live in the dio in the Galveston convocation, which goes from St.
SPEAKER_04: Andrew's Pearland to Trinity Galveston, from La Porte to Grace Alvin.
SPEAKER_04: So we're kind of, I'm not going to say we're in the middle, but we're kind of in the north and middle, and obviously we're a little bit on the west side.
SPEAKER_04: Convocations, like the goal is that we kind of geographically live together, clergy should support each other, and we have somebody to support the clergy in the convocation through continue education, through fellowship, they throw a Christmas party for the clergy, and then they pass on any misses from the diocese.
SPEAKER_04: That person's called a dean.
SPEAKER_04: Convocations have deans, and I'm the dean.
SPEAKER_04: And that means I get to be not just the reverend Mike, I get to be the very reverend Mike.
SPEAKER_04: Isn't that funny?
SPEAKER_04: What's a bishop?
SPEAKER_04: A bishop is the right reverend, because they're always right.
SPEAKER_04: And then the presiding bishop's called the most reverend.
SPEAKER_04: The most.
SPEAKER_04: The most, the right, the very, the reverend.
SPEAKER_04: The reverend deacon, if you choose, but even if you're a deacon, you're still the reverend.
SPEAKER_04: We have one archdeacon in the diocese, and they're called the venerable, if you want to know these titles.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the venerable.
SPEAKER_04: Like Bede was the archdeacon.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you know about Saint Bede, but the venerable Bede.
SPEAKER_04: How we get addressed is up to us and you.
SPEAKER_04: So I have a lot of people say, like, shouldn't I call you Father Stone?
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, nope.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you can if you want, but I don't need that.
SPEAKER_04: Some priests like to keep it that way, so they have a degree of separation.
SPEAKER_04: Nobody's wrong.
SPEAKER_04: It's how we do it.
SPEAKER_04: And I think you can probably notice by now that every episcopal church has its own character.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, look, we love having a fall fest.
unknown: St.
SPEAKER_04: Christopher's doesn't.
SPEAKER_04: We like parties.
SPEAKER_04: We love auctioning cakes for outrageous amounts of money.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know any church that loves doing that.
SPEAKER_04: They do other stuff.
SPEAKER_04: But so, like, that's part of our flair, right?
SPEAKER_04: And St.
SPEAKER_04: Christopher's has a band and they have smoke and they have like screens.
SPEAKER_04: And while I'm your rector, we won't ever have that.
SPEAKER_04: Because I will it so.
SPEAKER_04: But um, but it's not because it's wrong, it's because it's me and us.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that maybe I'll change and I'll and I'll eat crow.
SPEAKER_04: But for now, like we we like books and we like pews, and and we don't have a coffee bar.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we have every we we're right up to it, right?
SPEAKER_04: Like we have we have hospitality here, but we don't have a barista here on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, like every parish kind of does it differently, and so does every mission.
SPEAKER_04: And theoretically, we're we're also united in our identity.
SPEAKER_04: Not uniform, but united.
SPEAKER_04: Boy, I think that was my whole spiel on government, but maybe I missed something you're interested in.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this diocese, and my last one didn't have this.
SPEAKER_04: In San Diego, we only had 46 communities, probably 31 of which were parishes, right?
SPEAKER_04: So 15 were missions.
SPEAKER_04: This diocese, and look, I'm just gonna like just be totally frank with why we have Bibos and what they do.
SPEAKER_04: We have some parishes that just can't afford clergy.
SPEAKER_04: And it's not that their people aren't faithful, it's not that sometimes, and often, frankly, they're in places that have had seen demographic changes, so that there's just not the economy.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, let's just give an example, if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_04: Anybody been to St.
SPEAKER_04: George's in Texas City?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's in the wrong place of Texas City.
SPEAKER_04: Texas City has rebuilt away from that church.
SPEAKER_04: So it was the heart of the place, now it isn't.
SPEAKER_04: They're meeting their own bills, they're doing okay.
SPEAKER_04: But you know, if a few of their pillar members die or decide to stop pledging, they won't.
SPEAKER_04: So there are groups of faithful people who we're not cheap.
SPEAKER_04: Let me tell you about how expensive we are in just a second, but they can't pay their clergy.
SPEAKER_04: So Dina Harrison, who was a suffragan bishop about, I think it's been about 12 years ago, came up with this idea that we could have what are called bivocational priests.
SPEAKER_04: Now, I'm a mono-vocational priest.
SPEAKER_04: This is the thing I do.
SPEAKER_04: If I volunteer at Little League, I volunteer.
SPEAKER_04: If I write books in my spare time, that's my hobby.
SPEAKER_04: But this full-time job with full-time pay.
SPEAKER_04: She created a system where people could work full-time at NASA and they feel called to the priesthood, but they love their job and they don't want to quit it, and they love the church.
SPEAKER_04: So after three years of training at a different kind of school, a non-residential three years, so they can keep their job, they can be ordained to what's called a bivocational deacon or a bivocational priest.
SPEAKER_04: Now, that title means they will never get paid for their employment in this diocese.
SPEAKER_04: If they leave this diocese, they can, but they can't be paid as bivotes here.
SPEAKER_04: That means they're volunteer priests.
SPEAKER_04: We've got one in the pipeline right now.
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and we we we sent one successfully through seven years ago.
SPEAKER_04: He served at St.
SPEAKER_04: Augustine's in Galveston, this is Mike Brady, for two or three years without pay.
SPEAKER_04: He had an HR job, right?
SPEAKER_04: Paid his bills.
SPEAKER_04: He was down there on Sundays, he probably spent another day doing pastoral care, office administration, and ultimately he got called to be the rector of a church in Florida where that is now his mono vocation.
SPEAKER_04: So we have Baivo priests and Bivo deacons who run sacraments for churches who can't afford to pay clergy.
SPEAKER_04: Why can churches not afford to pay clergy?
SPEAKER_04: Well, as I mentioned, demographic shifts.
SPEAKER_04: So the last one that closed in our convocation was in Hitchcock.
SPEAKER_04: It was called All Saints, and their average Sunday attendance was six.
SPEAKER_04: And Andy said, just because you're six doesn't mean you need to be closed.
SPEAKER_04: You've been faithful to the church, and we want to figure out how to be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_04: So they're a bivocational priest who's a professional musician, lives in downtown Houston, and he commuted to run services in Hitchcock until the ASA fell to four, and then the diocese closed it.
SPEAKER_04: And since they hold the deed, they sold the property and they took the money.
SPEAKER_04: The diocese did, right?
SPEAKER_04: So Bibos do this really tremendous ministry.
SPEAKER_04: Who's a baivo in our in our convocation?
SPEAKER_04: Eric Ellis, who's at St.
SPEAKER_04: Augustine.
SPEAKER_04: He's a cosmetic dentist, and he's doing fine financially.
SPEAKER_04: He's a nice guy.
SPEAKER_04: He's thoughtful.
SPEAKER_04: He goes down there two days a week.
SPEAKER_04: Sundays and another day he does pastoral care and administration stuff.
SPEAKER_04: St.
SPEAKER_04: Michael's in Lamarck has a by though as well, Warren.
SPEAKER_04: So he's not getting paid, right?
SPEAKER_04: He's got an HR job, he telecommutes, and then a couple days a week he goes down to Lamarck and runs services.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, how do we get paid?
SPEAKER_04: This is important to hear because I've told you there's a letter of agreement, right?
SPEAKER_04: Which is a contract.
SPEAKER_04: We get paid a salary, and the diocese says there's a minimum for what you're going to pay clergy.
SPEAKER_04: I think the diocesan minimum is$75,000.
SPEAKER_04: I think that's it.
SPEAKER_04: So you can be fresh out of school, you could have done this job for 40 years, and as long as you're not 72 yet, at 72 you're forced to retire from full-time.
SPEAKER_04: Even if you're a bishop, like you're out.
SPEAKER_04: Church has to pay that minimum.
SPEAKER_04: So again, if you've got 10 members, how are you going to do that unless you've got an endowment or the people are independently wealthy and that's what they're pledging?
SPEAKER_04: You can hire full part-time, and there's a different minimum.
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if there's a minimum for an associate.
SPEAKER_04: In this diocese, so you know, we've decided that.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I didn't take a vow of poverty.
unknown: I didn't.
SPEAKER_04: So in the letter of agreement, we get a salary, and part of why we're expensive is let's pretend I got paid$100,000, right?
SPEAKER_04: The church also has to contribute 18% of that salary to the church pension group.
SPEAKER_04: So when I retire, if I've served 30 years, I'll get a pension for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_04: JP Morgan started the pension board because he noticed priests who'd served their whole life retired from ministry and they didn't have rectory, like a parsonage anymore.
SPEAKER_04: And like they were homeless.
SPEAKER_04: So we're not that now.
SPEAKER_04: Now we've got a pension, and so if if you're paying me$100, you're really paying$118.
SPEAKER_04: In this diocese, we've also said that the church is going to pay our self-estimated tax payment, our SECA.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So I don't pay income tax.
SPEAKER_04: I get a W2.
SPEAKER_04: I don't get a$1099, I get a W2.
SPEAKER_04: I could opt out of Social Security because I'm have religious employment.
SPEAKER_04: Me, I've chosen to be all in on that.
SPEAKER_04: Sure hope it's around, like all of you do.
SPEAKER_04: And the church pays that estimate based on it on a calculator.
SPEAKER_04: How much is that to be transparent?
SPEAKER_04: It's about$5,000 a quarter.
SPEAKER_04: So if you're paying a priest$100, you're paying$118, nope, you're paying$138.
SPEAKER_04: In this diocese, if you're a full-time clergy of any kind, they also pay your family's health insurance for the whole family.
SPEAKER_04: The diocese pays that, the church doesn't.
SPEAKER_04: And Andy figured that out by selling that hospital, St.
SPEAKER_04: Luke's.
SPEAKER_04: We used to own that.
SPEAKER_04: He sold it for$3 billion.
SPEAKER_04: The diocese did, I mean it was his, but he sold it.
SPEAKER_04: And a billion point five went into an endowment that was meant to transform health structures.
SPEAKER_04: So that's called the Episcopal Health Foundation.
SPEAKER_04: And then there were two other billion, and some of it had like monetary restrictions, and one of the ways he used the restrictions to support health was paying health insurance for the clergy family and diocesan staff.
SPEAKER_04: If you're a lay employee, you don't qualify.
SPEAKER_04: So it's up to the parish to do what they think is ethically right.
SPEAKER_04: We don't do family coverage here, but we do the same coverage we get as clergy.
SPEAKER_04: I think, don't we?
unknown: So all the churches are required to pay for help insurance at least for single coverage for the employees.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, but not family.
SPEAKER_04: You can negotiate that.
SPEAKER_04: And look, Walmart's not the only place that's figured out.
SPEAKER_04: You only have to do that for full-time employees.
SPEAKER_04: So you can hire somebody for 29 and a half hours a week, and guess what they don't get?
SPEAKER_04: Are there parishes that do that?
SPEAKER_04: Sadly, yes.
SPEAKER_04: But when money's tight, money's tight, so what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
SPEAKER_04: It still makes me sick.
SPEAKER_04: So I mean, I just think it's taking advantage of people.
SPEAKER_04: But clergy are expensive.
SPEAKER_04: That's what I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_04: And that's why we have Bibos.
SPEAKER_04: They get their health insurance, but that's all they get.
SPEAKER_02: A supply priest that will go down, say, to St.
SPEAKER_02: George's and do communion.
SPEAKER_02: Do they get paid?
SPEAKER_04: The diocese mandates, mandates that a supply priest gets paid$150 for one service and$225 if they do two on the same day, and the church has to reimburse their mileage at 69 cents, whatever the IRS is.
SPEAKER_04: So St.
SPEAKER_04: George can't afford a clergy person full-time.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I just told you how much it costs, right?
SPEAKER_04: You're not getting out the door under$100,000 by the time you do those things, right?
SPEAKER_04: And their building's falling apart, so they got to take care of the building.
SPEAKER_04: Um, so so for them it makes sense to hire the same supply person every Sunday they can get them, and that's how they get continuity.
SPEAKER_02: Do they do the supply priest have pastoral responsibility or are they asking?
SPEAKER_04: Only if they contract, and sure, you sure hope so.
SPEAKER_04: And that's why, by the way, like having a ministry of laity reminds us that we can have pastoral gifts to one another without making the priest do it.
SPEAKER_04: And let's just be clear some of us are not very pastorally inclined.
SPEAKER_04: Well, you can't be everything.
SPEAKER_04: Well, if you thought you were getting everything when you got married, I bet it took you two years to figure out uh you didn't get it all.
SPEAKER_04: And hopefully you realize that, hey, relying on your spouse to meet all of your needs is a one-way ticket to despair.
SPEAKER_04: Because there ain't anybody in the world gonna meet all your needs.
SPEAKER_04: That's why we still need communities, right?
SPEAKER_04: Like, it's not only am I wrong to think my wife will meet all my needs, but like I'm just gonna be disappointed.
SPEAKER_04: So I better have friends and communities who can meet needs my wife can't or won't meet.
SPEAKER_04: Hope you don't mind me saying that.
SPEAKER_04: And so, hey, you can have strong, strong lay leadership.
SPEAKER_04: Maybe you've heard of Stephen ministry before, but that's a pastoral care ministry by lay people.
SPEAKER_04: Other interesting thing to know is I have requirements in terms of pastoral care.
SPEAKER_04: I can give you all the pastoral care you want, but I can only meet with you about a single issue three times in the calendar year.
SPEAKER_04: So if you say my wife is dead and I've got all this grief, we can have that meeting three times.
SPEAKER_04: And I can't do it a fourth time in a calendar year, because guess what I'm not?
SPEAKER_04: A licensed therapist.
SPEAKER_04: So I've got three meetings with you to make a good referral.
SPEAKER_04: Unless I'm also a licensed therapist, and then I can keep meeting with you.
SPEAKER_04: Now, if I can check in on your grief every day of the week, right?
SPEAKER_04: But I can't offer you therapy unless I'm a therapist, and I'm held accountable by the bishop on that, right?
SPEAKER_04: Because the worst thing that happens is when a pastor or priest steps out of their lane and gives somebody advice, which no therapist should be doing anyway.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, maybe a good therapist says, Well, you know, just you want to live, I just think you should stop using cocaine.
SPEAKER_04: But that's if you want to live, right?
SPEAKER_04: I hope you hear what I'm saying, right?
SPEAKER_04: Anybody been to therapy?
SPEAKER_04: If you go to a therapist and the first session, the therapist says, I think you should get a divorce, pick another therapist.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, pick another one.
SPEAKER_04: Because if they're giving you that kind of mandate in 45 minutes.
unknown: Why are we good for us?
unknown: Look how we hands.
SPEAKER_04: Well, and this, to be honest, is part of I mean, I don't want to say that we're elitists, but we tend to prize education in the Episcopal Church, and people who prize education tend to not be threatened by therapy.
SPEAKER_04: Now, in the house I grew up in, therapy was for weaklings, and there was no way we were gonna admit we were weak.
SPEAKER_04: We could go see our pastor because that was spiritual care, but we couldn't see a therapist, and that's just ludicrous.
SPEAKER_04: So I I just think we're honest about this here, right?
SPEAKER_04: We're honest, and and I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_04: I went to school for three years, and pastoral care was one semester.
SPEAKER_04: And if you've been married, and I married a few, married a few folks, I think I married uh Danny and Amber, right?
SPEAKER_04: Uh I will do the pastoral, the premarital counseling.
SPEAKER_04: I'll do it.
SPEAKER_04: And I usually tell people, I'll do it, and you should go to a professional.
SPEAKER_04: Because they do it every week.
SPEAKER_04: I do it about once a year.
SPEAKER_04: And often people say, we'd like to do it with you, and I think we make it work.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, they're still married, you know.
SPEAKER_04: Actually, all my couples are still married, which I'm I'm glad.
SPEAKER_04: There's more than 50 of them, and and they're still married.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, other cool thing about being the rector, I can decline any marriage I want, and I don't have to give a reason.
SPEAKER_04: And because I'm the rector, if Sean says, I want to have a marriage in Chris Tall, I can say no, you can't.
SPEAKER_04: Because I don't believe in that marriage.
SPEAKER_04: I can do it for petty reasons and I can do it for great reasons, but it's part of the tenure.
SPEAKER_04: I don't ever have to give an accounting to the diocese of why I won't marry a couple.
SPEAKER_04: And because Andy wanted to protect us from like fighting, Andy said a long time ago that if that I can do any marriage I want on the church property, but if I want to do a same-sex marriage in the sanctuary, the vestry has to approve it.
SPEAKER_04: So I could do it in the parish hall, I could do it in the narthex, but I needed the vestry permission to categorically do it in the sanctuary, and we voted, and that's what we did.
SPEAKER_04: Frankly, because if I could do it in the narthex, I mean Jesus, what's the difference between that and the sanctuary?
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So, and by the way, none of y'all know how I decide whether I'm gonna celebrate a marriage anyway.
SPEAKER_04: And do you want to vote on whether people should get married?
SPEAKER_04: That would be wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: So is that just this diocese?
SPEAKER_00: Or because you said the one in Colorado, that they have to the bishop is they have to be willing.
SPEAKER_04: So the bishop makes that rule.
SPEAKER_04: And Andy made this rule to make sure for us, because it was really controversial in 2009.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, churches were breaking apart everywhere, and Andy said, let's just instead of being fast, let's give access with a process.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So I think he was pastoral.
SPEAKER_04: Now, Bishop Kim in Colorado has got a different reality.
SPEAKER_04: What she's trying to control is the vision of the diocese.
SPEAKER_04: So she's saying, look, we're gonna be an open and affirming diocese with me as your bishop, that's my vision.
SPEAKER_04: Y'all elected me, so if y'all didn't like that, you shouldn't have elected me.
SPEAKER_04: But like she was clear with her platform, and she inherited clergy that are anti.
SPEAKER_04: She's just not gonna bring any more into her diocese that are anti.
SPEAKER_04: So, and that's a that's a bishop's right, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: There's other places you can go.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's a lot of places you can go and be sorry, but be homophobic.
SPEAKER_04: You you can do that a lot of places.
SPEAKER_04: But she's decided that the diocese of Colorado ain't gonna be that in perpetuity.
SPEAKER_04: So bishops control a lot.
SPEAKER_04: We gotta be careful.
SPEAKER_04: Do bishops have tenure?
SPEAKER_04: You better believe they got they got tenure I don't have.
SPEAKER_04: Right?
SPEAKER_04: So we we gotta be real careful.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, a bishop is like a Supreme Court justice, except with mandatory retirement.
SPEAKER_04: Which might be nice if we had that.
SPEAKER_04: General convention sets like all the uh so every three years, so every diocese meets once a year with council.
SPEAKER_04: Every three years is the general convention of the Episcopal Church, and it's not just the United States, it's also in Taiwan and Haiti and um American Samoa and 17 different countries, and each diocese sends four lay delegates and four clergy delegates and all of their bishops.
SPEAKER_04: So House of Commons, House of Lords, right?
SPEAKER_04: That's kind of how we bore that out, House of Bishops, layhouse.
SPEAKER_04: And the layhouse is also clergy, so there's essentially three orders.
SPEAKER_04: The biggest democratic gathering in the world is the general convention of the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_04: Like 10,000 delegates come together for like seven days and change national canons, and boy, you gotta love politics or talk about boring.
SPEAKER_04: Woo! And they pass so many resolutions, they're guaranteed to offend everybody.
SPEAKER_04: Um very few of them have what we'd call like what's the legal word?
SPEAKER_04: Uh not damages, but very few of them have teeth.
SPEAKER_04: They're not like enforceable with penalty, but like they'll affirm, you know, trans trans rights, and then you'll have people like, what do you mean the church is paying for transgender kids changing their gender?
SPEAKER_04: Like, well, they're not.
SPEAKER_04: Just some deputies said, like, we're not excluding trans people from church, but which sounds really good to me, but we're not paying for it either.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, uh, you you get what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_04: Remedy.
SPEAKER_04: There's no remedy to many of their resolutions, right?
SPEAKER_04: Um, and it's an interesting thing because it's a room of 10,000 people, and anybody can make a statement if they want.
SPEAKER_04: You go up to a microphone and you got two minutes, and at 120 seconds it just turns off.
SPEAKER_04: You can stay there talk as much as you want, but isn't anybody gonna hear you because the other mic's on?
SPEAKER_04: So you better be succinct.
SPEAKER_04: And let me tell you, I went to one, and that's how I knew I was gonna be an Episcopalian.
SPEAKER_04: I went to the 2009 one, which is a referendum on ordaining openly gay bishops.
SPEAKER_04: And people didn't get up and say, you know, they didn't say inflammatory words about gay people.
SPEAKER_04: They didn't use jargon that we've all heard that doesn't bear repeating.
SPEAKER_04: They said things like, Boy, you know, like if we do this, there's the rest of the world, there's like the Anglican church is in Africa, and it's like we're gonna be losing the wings of the plane.
SPEAKER_04: So they were thinking maybe we're going too fast.
SPEAKER_04: And then there were other people that were like, and if we don't do this, what happens to the gay members we already have?
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it was not, it just was lovely.
SPEAKER_04: Um it was there was nothing inflammatory, there was no fighting.
SPEAKER_04: They were like, here's our heart, and here's our spirit, and here's the scriptures, and here's tradition.
SPEAKER_04: And they did that for like an hour.
SPEAKER_04: And I sat and I thought, you know, if we can talk about things like this before we vote, I mean, I think I could be a part of that.
SPEAKER_04: There was nobody saying, well, that's dumb, or like, stop.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you got two minutes.
SPEAKER_04: And because of that, people were brief and succinct.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, they'd spent months preparing their two-minute statement.
SPEAKER_04: I guarantee you they timed it.
SPEAKER_04: Um, unlike a public meeting where you can talk for anybody been to a public meeting?
SPEAKER_04: You you wanna you want to know what hell's like.
SPEAKER_04: You go to a public meeting.
SPEAKER_04: Good lord.
SPEAKER_04: Because you can just go on, you can say anything you want for as long as you want.
SPEAKER_04: Boy, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_04: Anyway, so we we don't do that.
SPEAKER_04: We we we do it this other way.
SPEAKER_05: We did that here too.
SPEAKER_05: That's really sweet.
SPEAKER_04: The two-minute rule?
SPEAKER_05: No, or when when we did that screen.
SPEAKER_04: We did.
SPEAKER_04: It was lovely.
SPEAKER_04: We had limits, which meant you came prepared, having thought about it instead of being on the spot.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, wow.
SPEAKER_04: Look, well, here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_04: Next week, I won't be here.
SPEAKER_04: Sean's gonna talk about how Episcopalians use the scriptures.
SPEAKER_04: Two weeks, that's Advent one.
SPEAKER_04: I'll be here.
SPEAKER_04: Courtney's gonna lead the discussion on the Book of Common Prayer.
SPEAKER_04: Three weeks, Bishop Monterosso's here to do what you want.
SPEAKER_04: Would you send me an email with what you want so I can have it ready?
SPEAKER_04: If you want to be confirmed, say, hey, I think I want to be confirmed.
SPEAKER_04: If you want to be received, would you say, hey, like I want to be received?
SPEAKER_04: If you want to renew your vows, would you say, hey, I want to renew my vows.
SPEAKER_04: Just so I can get you in the right bin.
SPEAKER_04: He was supposed to come the 21st, he changed it to the 7th.
SPEAKER_04: So what I want to do is say on the 14th, I want it, you don't have to come because you'll have already had your thing, but I want that to be an open day to say, how was it for you and what questions do you have?
SPEAKER_04: Like Jen told me last week, like, I don't know some of the stuff we do in church and why.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a great time to answer that.
SPEAKER_04: Because it's a great question.
SPEAKER_04: And thanks for bringing it up because a lot of people wonder and they don't ask, right?
SPEAKER_04: So I want to have a debrief questions, comments day on the 14th.
SPEAKER_04: And that's kind of what we've we've got planned.
SPEAKER_04: Um thanks for thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_04: Really appreciate you.
SPEAKER_04: And last thing, I only have two.
SPEAKER_04: But if you're if you want to read about Episcopal people in 90 pages or fewer, I got two copies you can have.
SPEAKER_04: You don't need to give them back.
SPEAKER_04: Well, if you want them, there they are, and like don't fight each other over them.
SPEAKER_04: I can always order more.
SPEAKER_04: But if you want an excellent reading, I got that.
SPEAKER_04: And um thanks for being here today.