SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking a little bit about the structure and the polity of the Episcopal Church.
SPEAKER_00: That is, how is the church organized?
SPEAKER_00: What's the theology at the national level look like?
SPEAKER_00: What's it mean to be a member of the Anglican Communion?
SPEAKER_00: And specifically, what are some of the differences between things like vicars and rectors and missions and parishes?
SPEAKER_00: And how is a diocese organized?
SPEAKER_00: So, what I want to start is by telling you that the polity of the Anglican Church, from which the Episcopal Church, of course, or originated, is much closer, curiously, to the United Methodist polity.
SPEAKER_00: In the Anglican Church, of course, the monarch is the head of the church, and basically all people in the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, any archbishops or bishops or priests or deacons are essentially appointed either by the crown or by the hierarchy.
SPEAKER_00: So no priest, no bishop is elected, but rather are appointed.
SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about the Methodist Church, then what that means is that if you're a pastor in the Methodist Church, you are appointed by your bishop or your district superintendent, and you're on something called the itineracy system.
SPEAKER_00: And theoretically what that means is that no pastor should be at a congregation more than three to five years, and that each year, usually appointments are made for a single year in consultation with a district and superintendent a district superintendent by a bishop, the goal is to rotate clergy throughout the conference.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Episcopal Church is actually rather different from that, and this is a way when the American Revolution happened that the polity of the church came to more match the polity of the new nation.
SPEAKER_00: So in the new nation that America set up, there were checks and balances, and we all know that from high school government, and um different houses, the judicial, the executive, and um and obviously the Congress, the legislative branch.
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting about Congress is of course there's bicameral houses between the representatives and the senators.
SPEAKER_00: And so we sort of ended up organizing the Episcopal Church in a structure that looks like that.
SPEAKER_00: So until very, very recently, every diocese functioned much like a state would function, with really strong emphasis on states' rights.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means, uh, it's changing a little bit now, but what that has meant anyway, is that every bishop is autonomous in her or in his own diocese, which means uh really that the bishop of Texas cannot tell the bishop of West Texas what to do ever.
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very possible that a bishop could say something like, uh, until recently this is changing, uh, by the way, it's changing because of what's happened in dioceses like Fort Worth and South Carolina, but until very recently, it's really possible that a bishop could forget, forbid, say, a same-sex marriage in their diocese, even though the national canons recognize it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you have been reading at all, that's actually coming into question lately because since the bishop of Fort Worth and the Diocese of South Carolina tried to remove the whole diocese from the Episcopal Church over the question of same-sex marriage, um, some of the national canons have changed, and there is uh, it seems like a an um ecumenical court to be held for um for bishop love about uh whether or not he'll be removed from or inhibited as bishop by the national church for forbidding same-sex marriage in his diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, that's a recent development hitherto for the case was that even the national resolutions are not necessarily binding at the diocesan level.
SPEAKER_00: Um really interesting thing to think about.
SPEAKER_00: So again, strong emphasis on states' rights.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh what's interesting to know, and and our bishop has transferred the assets of the diocese to a corporation, but still the theology at the fundamental level of the church is that wherever the bishop goes, there the diocese has gone as well.
SPEAKER_00: So the bishop really is the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Um like other uh churches that are governed by bishops, um, churches of any kind do not hold the deed to their own property.
SPEAKER_00: Those rest with the diocese specifically, uh, they rest with the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so uh again our bishop has chosen to form a diocesan corporation, so he's not the sole shareholder, but uh essentially the bishop holds the deeds to St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas and to Grace and Alvin and to um you know every every diocese and property there is here in the diocese of Texas.
SPEAKER_00: Um the other thing that's really interesting then is that theoretically a priest could get in trouble in one diocese and be inhibited by a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Inhibited means uh we're not able to perform the sacraments in that bishop's diocese, but at a theoretical level, we could go to a different diocese as priests and perform sacraments there as long as that diocese and bishop did not share in the original inhibition.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in general, they do, which is why uh if you've ever been senior warden of a parish, it's very possible that you've seen uh an email to all senior wardens and priests and bishops in the church, in the Episcopal Church, when a clergy person is inhibited informing you that, hey, they're inhibited and you should not try to employ them in your different diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's that's sort of how that tends to work.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, bishops choose to honor each other and uphold that because, of course, if everybody played by their own rules, there'd be no continuity.
SPEAKER_00: The bishops do meet regularly in something called the house of bishops, and in some ways that's modeled off the house of lords.
SPEAKER_00: So not that they are necessarily lordly, but again, that follows that there's this particular house.
SPEAKER_00: Um within a diocese, there's two kinds of institutions, and St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas is the first kind, which is a parish.
SPEAKER_00: A parish has uh could have multiple clergy people, but a parish parish may have only one rector, may have a priest in charge, may have an interim rector.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's another kind of institution which is called a mission, and a mission is served by a clergy person called a vicar.
SPEAKER_00: So what's the difference?
SPEAKER_00: Uh the main difference between a parish and a mission has to do with financial footing.
SPEAKER_00: So a mission might not pay all of its own bills, might not pay all of its own light bills, or might not pay all of its clergy's salary, or maybe pays its own bills but doesn't pay its diocesan fair share.
SPEAKER_00: More about that in a second.
SPEAKER_00: A parish is self-supporting and contributes to the diocese, and those have different privileges.
SPEAKER_00: So a parish can call a rector, and rector from Latin means right.
SPEAKER_00: So the rector is right.
SPEAKER_00: The rector is essentially the absentee supervisor of the bishop's property on behalf of the bishop and the chief liturgical officer on behalf of a parish.
SPEAKER_00: A rector comes in to a church immediately with tenure, and a rector therefore cannot be fired for bad performance in, say, sermons, or even like in being negligent with pastoral care.
SPEAKER_00: The things that get rectors uh cost rectors their jobs are, of course, breaking the law, uh, having affairs, uh, drunk driving.
SPEAKER_00: These are the kinds of things that will earn a rector in inhibition by the bishop, and once a rector is inhibited, no longer able to serve the sacraments, they're not employable.
SPEAKER_00: But um, because rectors are tenured, uh, they could come in and not be the kind of preacher a congregation wants, and they essentially are stuck together until they figure out a way to exit gracefully, and sometimes they don't.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the only thing really that can be done for a rector is a bishop can ask them to go, or uh a church might choose to trim their salary to incentivize their leaving, but all of that has to get worked out really, really carefully.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever been a part of a church or heard of a church that wasn't functioning well, you say, why don't the bishop just fire the rector?
SPEAKER_00: It's because the bishop can't just fire the rector unless they've committed some kind of egregious uh thing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what about a vicar?
SPEAKER_00: A vicar is appointed by the bishop, which means the bishop can change vicars uh sort of from week to week.
SPEAKER_00: Usually those tend to be like year-long or longer-term appointments, but a vicar then serves at a mission and does not come in with tenure, serves at the pleasure exclusively of the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: When a rector's called, a parish gets to have a search committee.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, when I came to St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, there were nine people on that committee.
SPEAKER_00: And um the role of the bishop really is being a veto or a blesser of whoever the search committee calls.
SPEAKER_00: So the veto does get to um, sorry, the bishop does get to veto the call, but cannot force the parish to take somebody.
SPEAKER_00: That's opposite in a mission.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop can decide who the mission gets.
SPEAKER_00: Usually bishops work with missions and say, hey, uh, here's who I'm thinking of, let's see how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but a bishop can say, here's your new vicar and make it work.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when I was called at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, which is about five years ago, the way the Diocese of Texas chooses to work this is that names are submitted uh to the diocese who sort of act as a clearinghouse.
SPEAKER_00: And that means in that first step the bishop is already vetoing applicants.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the what would be really bad is if a parish falls in love with a particular candidate, gets really uh excited about calling them to be the next rector, and the bishop steps in and says no.
SPEAKER_00: So the way we do it usually is we do most of our vetting up front, and once candidates are approved, then the call committee can go ahead and start interviewing, and there's some diocesan guidelines, they're not rules because parishes in some ways get to do a little bit of their own thing, but there's really firm guidelines in place for regarding how to conduct interviews and when and what kind of interviews you should be doing.
SPEAKER_00: And um, at the end, then the parish gets to decide on what salary they want to pay with some within some reason, and um they also uh get to choose their person, and and in Texas the bishop has already blessed candidates, so at that point there's just informing the diocese in office, hey, any last-minute veto is here, this is who we want.
SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of how it came to be for me.
SPEAKER_00: Um there is a different kind of clergy in in the governance uh called a priest in charge.
SPEAKER_00: So a priest in charge is uh somewhere between, usually that's somebody who serves at a parish uh could be at a mission, but a priest in charge is somebody who's not a rector, so not completely tenured, but not an interim.
SPEAKER_00: Like they're more of a medium-term person than they are a short-term person.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the priest in charge has a few, a few of the privileges and rights of a rector, but not all of them.
SPEAKER_00: And um often what what's happening now in the church is that a parish who um is having trouble making a call or a church that uh has just come out of a bad relationship with a rector might call a priest in charge and try on the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: They may say, we're gonna hire you to be priest in charge for three years.
SPEAKER_00: Now, rectors are not hired for a time period, they're hired until we decide to go or until we do something bad.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but a priest in charge can be on a timed contract that says, hey, this is three years, and at the end of three years, we'll consider whether we select you as rector or call somebody else or go back to an interim.
SPEAKER_00: An interim is really a short-term position that exists to help a parish get to a place of self-um discovery and evaluation so that they can call the next rector that they want.
SPEAKER_00: Again, rector is a tenured position.
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe it helps to know that the average rector stays five to seven years, somewhere in between there, depending who you ask and how you measure that.
SPEAKER_00: The average interim tends to be a year long, uh, sometimes a little less or more, and the average priest in charge tends to be somewhere around two to three years.
SPEAKER_00: Again, vicar's can serve as long as everything's going well.
SPEAKER_00: That could be a long-term appointment by a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, vicars uh could get similar pay.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, everybody gets similar benefits.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's helpful to hear that the Episcopal Church has a really historically strong pension system that was started by JP Morgan.
SPEAKER_00: And so whenever you're looking at a budget and you see how much a rector is earning and salary, you have to add 18% of that to the church's cost for that clergy person because they pay 18% into the pension system.
SPEAKER_00: And um, depending on when we start as clergy, that uh indicates what vet what our vest will look like and when we're eligible for retirement and at what um at what rates.
SPEAKER_00: Um until recently, I don't know if this has been updated, but I've heard that the Episcopal Clergy pension system is among the top five in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's set up very, very well.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in case you're really interested, it's not based on uh on how much you make throughout your career, it's based on your seven highest annual years of compensation, and uh they didn't have to be in a row.
SPEAKER_00: They've done that so that people who are sort of um who are working at large financially capable churches uh won't take a retirement hit if they step down and work at a smaller church after that.
SPEAKER_00: So you could, for example, serve seven years at the dean as the as the dean of a big cathedral and then serve in a small parish on your pension that is based on your top seven years, not your last even 23.
SPEAKER_00: In my case, I was early enough uh starting in.
SPEAKER_00: I um was priested when I was 33, so um I'll be fully vested when I'm 63.
SPEAKER_00: The pension system recommends I work until I'm 65.
SPEAKER_00: Um we sort of get these annual reports, and that's sort of how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: Um I just brought up a different uh title though that maybe is helpful to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Um so there's parishes, there's missions, and then there are cathedrals.
SPEAKER_00: The cathedral is sort of the bishop's home base, that's where the bishop is enthroned, and when a bishop is finally elected by people and consecrated, the bishop diocesan has an enthronement, and their throne sits in the cathedral, and that's essentially that big chair.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have one at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, it's just behind the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: Um the cathedral is run not by a rector but by a dean.
SPEAKER_00: We use that word just as different as a differentiator, and um to help that we have a couple of titles.
SPEAKER_00: So um I'm the the Reverend Mike Stone, and you're a Reverend if you're a deacon or a priest.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you really want to differentiate between deacons and priests, you might say the Reverend Deacon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh very few people do that.
SPEAKER_00: If you're the Dean of a Catalan, you're called the Very Reverend, and that title stays with you throughout your career.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're a dean for um, you know, a few months, you'll be the very reverend the rest of your career.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a bishop, you're called the right reverend, and right is shows up because look, when you're the bishop, you're always right.
SPEAKER_00: And um, when you're the presiding bishop, you're called the most reverend.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the presiding bishop um until recently has been mostly sort of the national faith of the church, uh, without necessarily ability to make binding resolutions on bishops and their own diocese.
SPEAKER_00: As I told you, national canons are still changing a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And so the big case recently, as I mentioned, is that Michael Curry is calling an ecclesiastical court uh to try uh Bishop Love for violating the canons of the national church by forbidding same-sex marriage in his diocese.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that would have been doable 25 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the most reverend, if you're interested, is also called the primate of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so these are some of these uh historical uh historical titles.
SPEAKER_00: Um the way uh the national canons of the church are changed is every three years the national church meets in what is the largest democratic assembly in the entire world.
SPEAKER_00: Truly.
SPEAKER_00: Um they meet this most recently in 2018, we met in Austin, Texas, and many people at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas helped support that as volunteers.
SPEAKER_00: And there are three houses or three different people who get to vote.
SPEAKER_00: There's the House of Bishops, there's the clergy vote, and there are clergy-specific delegates to each diocese.
SPEAKER_00: We get four, and then there are lay delegates to each diocese, and so you really you got three tiers of people who are participating, and they don't outrank each other necessarily with the weight of their vote, but they have a different vote count.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lay vote, a clergy vote, and a house of bishops, and they vote on things like will we consider writing a new prayer book?
SPEAKER_00: Um, will we allow for the continued ordination of apianly gay clergy?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, will we recognize marriage not just as something to be blessed, but as sacramental?
SPEAKER_00: So those have been some of the decisions made at national um at the at the national convention in the last few years.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been to one, or if you haven't, it's really interesting the way that they thrive on efficiency, given that it is truly the biggest numeric democratic gathering that there is, um, is that speakers are given two minutes at a microphone, and after two minutes, they can keep talking but the microphone's off.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, when I went to National Convention in Los Angeles back in 2009, there was a spotlight on the speaker at the mic.
SPEAKER_00: After two minutes, not only did the mic go off, the light went out.
SPEAKER_00: So it really pushes you to be uh concise, and um, I will tell you, having sat on the floor in which this was the big debate about whether or not to continue to ordain Apenla Gay clergy, uh I heard really, really thoughtful, compassionate disagreement in their arguments, and because it was two minutes only, there was no time for mud slinging, there was only time for thoughtfulness, and it was really, really beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: It really for me uh fortified that this was the church I needed to be at because the the way in which disagreement happened was really inspiring.
SPEAKER_00: Now each diocese has every year a council or a convention.
SPEAKER_00: We call it council here in Texas in San Diego, it was our annual convention, and that's where we go about updating or debating things like the canons of the diocesan church.
SPEAKER_00: We also do things like we would do at our annual meeting, and so this is helpful to think about.
SPEAKER_00: A council or convention is just like an annual meeting at a parish.
SPEAKER_00: We approve a budget, uh, we approve appointments like people who are going to serve as treasurer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, dioceses don't have senior wardens, they have standing committees and um executive committees.
SPEAKER_00: So we elect those people.
SPEAKER_00: We elect delegates for diocesan council every year at our parish, but uh at the diocesan level we elect um national delegates every three years.
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of work that happens every year at a council or convention.
SPEAKER_00: Often there's things like a State of the Union address from our bishop, just like we would get at the parish level each year.
SPEAKER_00: And again, like what we have to do at our parish meeting uh in in parallel is approve our budget, approve our vestry members, and approve um delegates to diocesan council.
SPEAKER_00: Now, who's the vestry?
SPEAKER_00: Historically, the vestry means the people who put the vestments on the rector.
SPEAKER_00: And um there is confusion about what those people do.
SPEAKER_00: Canonically, the vestry are the people who approve financial decisions.
SPEAKER_00: So the vestry does not tell the rector, hey, we're gonna be a right one service, no more of this right two.
SPEAKER_00: That decision rests solely with the rector.
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that the rector makes all the decisions over the building, use, and maintenance.
SPEAKER_00: So the rector.
SPEAKER_00: Could decide on her or his sole authority to allow a Jewish congregation to worship in the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: We can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we do it with buy-in and consultation, but because we essentially have in some ways a hierarchical polity, we're the ones able to make that decision.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, at the end of the day, I supervise the property on behalf of the bishop, and I suppose I could tell the police department that certain people are not welcome on the property I'm supervising, and that starts to become binding.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't hear about this very much because it doesn't happen very much, but um it is it is the way in which we are sort of organized.
SPEAKER_00: Um in missions that would exist a little bit with the vicar, but again, that's a little bit less uh less firm.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what do deacons do in the life of the church?
SPEAKER_00: Well, um we talked about deacons last time as a holy order.
SPEAKER_00: Um deacons can be placed in charge of missions, and they would be called instead of the priest in charge, the deacon in charge.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons are not celebrating communion unless there's some kind of specific exemption given them by a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: So if a deacon is in charge, their sacramental ministry typically would look like baptism and weddings and not the celebration of communion.
SPEAKER_00: They might distribute reserved sacrament.
SPEAKER_00: But again, if the deacon is placed in charge by the bishop, then essentially what's happened is the bishop has designated them the absentee landlord or the person who've used the property and it's running on their behalf.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the check and balance to that, as with the rector.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the vestry is the one who says, no, we're not going to spend$20,000 on some new frontal or some mother of pearl Bible color.
SPEAKER_00: We're withholding that money from you.
SPEAKER_00: Um and this is really interesting to know that a lot of people don't necessarily know when we talk about money in a church, there's budgeted money and there's restricted money.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people don't get the difference between these.
SPEAKER_00: And this is part of what the uh vestry gets to do is uh undesignated money, if it were put in the plate or given to us through PayPal or cash shows up, that goes against our budget.
SPEAKER_00: And we've made that decision as uh as a congregation, not just as a vestry, at our annual meeting.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes people will make designated gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Like let's pretend somebody gave a check to the church for say$10,000 and said, Hey, I want you to build a golden beaver statue with this$10,000, and they wrote in the memo, Golden Beaver.
SPEAKER_00: We as a vestry have some choices.
SPEAKER_00: We can say, Okay, we're gonna take that money and we're gonna build that beaver.
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, if we don't build that beaver and take that money, we've violated the donor restriction on that, and that can start to really uh build some bad blood and interfere with our tax exempt status because essentially when a donor has made it a restriction, it has to be used for that purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the only real exception is the vestry can undesignate a gift by voting to do so, but again, that can build really long-term bad will uh on behalf of donors and really hurt the donor base.
SPEAKER_00: So if we take the gift for the golden beaver, we kind of need to make the golden beaver.
SPEAKER_00: We can say, hey, we get that you love the beaver, uh, but um we would much rather have a statue of St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, would you allow us to do that?
SPEAKER_00: So this is sort of how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: And at our place, there's been some confusion like, hey, why are you spending all that money on the organ when you know we're struggling a little bit on, you know, we have a really tight annual budget?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is because the organ, the money spent in the organ doesn't come from our operating budget, it comes from designated, that is, restricted gifts.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we intend strategically to install this organ so we're not trying to talk donors out of giving money to it.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: And that happens at all levels of the church.
SPEAKER_00: That happens the same at the um for the bishop as well.
SPEAKER_00: When people make gifts to the diocese, if they're unrestricted, they are, but if they have restrictions, those need to be honored or else addressed by the church corporation or in conversation with the donor.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people will give money to something like a van, and while accruing money towards the van, um our insurance policy says we're not covering a van.
SPEAKER_00: So then we can either go back to the donor and say, can we use this for something else?
SPEAKER_00: Or that might be a time when the vestry would choose to unrestrict the gift of money that's been accrued towards something that the church is no longer going to do, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Again, all of it has to be done um very carefully.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but just to hear, there um is nobody who can speak to the rector or or the bishop about uh what liturgy should be happening in the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the role of the vestry that solely exists with the bishop and and the rector.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh in the vestry are officers who who help, just to sort of like cabinet members.
SPEAKER_00: Um the senior warden is the most prominent one.
SPEAKER_00: Um so I supervise the building on behalf of the rec of the of the bishop because I'm the rector.
SPEAKER_00: If I get run over by a car and killed, the person who will be the fiduciary responsibility until there's an appointment by the bishop or an election of a new rector by a call committee will be the senior warden.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the senior warden is picked by the rector uh without any kind of um vote by anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: The vestry picks somebody else called the junior warden, often called the people's warden, and that person is nominated from within the vestry and voted on by the vestry, and that sort of represents sort of like the president and vice president.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we forget that in the way the country began, um, the person who got the most votes in the electoral college was the president, and the person with the second most was the vice president.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's something a little bit like that.
SPEAKER_00: It could be that um the vestry elects a junior warden who doesn't get along with the senior warden on purpose as checks and balances.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've never really seen that, but it's really, really possible.
SPEAKER_00: Often the junior warden tends to be the person in charge of property affairs, but not always.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's a little bit about our polity, and I might have meandered into things uh you don't necessarily care about.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk a little bit next about that diocesan fair share I mentioned earlier.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the thing that differentiates um parishes between between parishes and missions is that we are able to fully pay something called our diocesan fair share or our diocesan assessment.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that works is every year the diocese creates a budget for itself that includes paying the bishop and the bishop's staff.
SPEAKER_00: Texas actually has three bishops that have voting rights and a fourth bishop who assists.
SPEAKER_00: A word on that.
SPEAKER_00: Every diocese has a bishop diocesan.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's the person who's enthroned and represents the diocese wherever they go.
SPEAKER_00: Some dioceses, like ours, are so big that um the bishop visiting all of the churches in a year or even a two-year cycle starts to become unreasonable.
SPEAKER_00: And so what they do is they elect suffragan bishops.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a suffragan bishop is somebody who votes uh in the house of bishop.
SPEAKER_00: They have a vote, hence the word suffrage.
SPEAKER_00: However, they're not the bishop diocesan.
SPEAKER_00: So the bishop diocesan is hierarchically above any suffragan bishop.
SPEAKER_00: And the canons of the church only allow you to have two suffragan bishops within a diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have a fourth bishop who's called the bishop assistant, and that's Bishop Hector Monterosso.
SPEAKER_00: Um he's the bishop for our convocation, and he shows up then more often than any of our other bishops would because this is his geographic region.
SPEAKER_00: Hector is a bishop in Costa Rica, so he's been consecrated a bishop already, and we've hired him in a uh sort of in a role that he has no vote at the National Convention, but is a bishop.
SPEAKER_00: And once a bishop, always a bishop, is sort of how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: Once a priest, always a priest.
SPEAKER_00: And so he helps the bishop, uh diocesan, and the bishops suffer again in their work, and they work very collegially together.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're thinking about a hierarchical structure, he's at the bottom of the totem pole and has no vote at the national level.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we can have as many assisting bishops as we'd like, um, but they just don't get vote in the house of bishops.
SPEAKER_00: Um so when the diocese is making their budget, they're considering how do we pay our bishops, how do we pay their staff.
SPEAKER_00: Each one of our bishops has, for example, uh a bishop's assistant who does things like scheduling and communication and other tasks within the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have a canon to the ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: So a canon, just like in scripture, is a reed or a measuring stick, the ordinary is the bishop, the one who makes the orders.
SPEAKER_00: Um the can of the ordinary usually helps the bishop do things like figure out where clergy should be deployed, like makes good matches between vicars and missions, or does, as I mentioned to you in a rector's search, that um that vetting process for who would be good candidates for different parishes, or whether or not a particular candidate would fit well or not.
SPEAKER_00: Um so there's a canon of the ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the candidate also is involved in clergy discipline.
SPEAKER_00: So um candid of the ordinary hears or suspects that a particular uh member of the clergy is um not doing their job correctly or is in violation of some canons, and they may be the one who initially take up the case on behalf of the bishop, and ultimately the bishop presides over things like clergy discipline, but usually with a lot of the groundwork done by the canon to the ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: Our diocese has a chief of staff because not only do we have those people, we have canons for things like mission amplification, uh, for missional communities.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've had at one point um religious education as a as a canon position.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we have uh our corporation is so big, we have not just a treasurer, but we have several people in the treasury department, including a treasurer, a control, a comptroller.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have somebody who does HR on behalf of the whole diocese and negotiates our benefits.
SPEAKER_00: We have a safeguarding office to make sure that we're in compliance with safeguarding God's people, which is of course a way of ensuring the protection of all the people in the church, especially children, but also adults.
SPEAKER_00: They do that at the diocesan level and also at the parish level, so they help us manage all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have somebody who does diocesan youth work, uh, who manages youth opportunities for the whole diocese.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have an employment attorney who works on retainer for the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm able to call that attorney at no charge if I'm having employment issues to help look over any employment contracts I'm going to offer.
SPEAKER_00: And this is really one of the benefits of living in a really big diocese is that we have a lot of resources, a lot of expertise and knowledge, and we tend to share it relatively well with each other.
SPEAKER_00: And the diocese is really good about being accessible to do walkthroughs or advisory or trainings at any point where we need help.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of this, of course, costs money, and the way that money comes in to at the diocesan level is a few ways.
SPEAKER_00: There are some foundations to people who have left endowments, and our strategy has been as a diocese to try to grow those over time and invest within the diocese and new ventures.
SPEAKER_00: So one of those uh biggest ones was selling um St.
SPEAKER_00: Luke's Episcopal Hospital a few years back for a few billion dollars.
SPEAKER_00: Some of that money went into something called the Episcopal Health Foundation.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be used to improve community health structures, religious or not.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the way the diocese has leveraged some of that is by helping support clergy insurance so that parishes aren't have parishes and missions aren't having to bear the full weight of that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because you know our benefits increasingly are expensive.
SPEAKER_00: The cost of health insurance goes up every year, even though our annual giving may not.
SPEAKER_00: Um so part of diocesan revenue comes from foundations and endowments.
SPEAKER_00: Um, another part, though, uh the one of the big heavy parts comes from the diocesan uh fair share or the diocesan assessment.
SPEAKER_00: And every year the diocese uses a formula based on how many it attend our uh parishes or missions on an annual basis that's called our average Sunday attendance.
SPEAKER_00: There's a formula where we're able to consider huge outliers like Christmas and Easter along with the Sunday after Easter to come up with you know what our average Sunday attendance looks like, and they also look at our budgets and they they have a very thoughtful and thought-out formula, and they sort of say, hey St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, based on how many people are coming to your church and how much money you're budgeting, here's how much money we're assessing you to support the activities of the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: If we can't pay that or we won't pay that, then we might no longer be a parish, we might be a mission, at which point we lose the right to call our own clergy on our own, and we don't have a rector, we have a vicar.
SPEAKER_00: So this is sort of how that works.
SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that our biggest outreach offering at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas is our diocesan assessment, which looks like something around 10% of our annual budget goes to the diocese, and again supports the diocesan clergy, supports things uh that the diocese does, like with disaster relief, um supports our own clergy insurance, etc.
SPEAKER_00: So uh that's that's part of what it means to be in a church that's run by bishops, and that's that's our diocesan fair share.
SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned, the biggest difference between us and um and a mission.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, um this is our polity uh so far.
SPEAKER_00: Um what's great, of course, when we think about um all these checks and balances and things like uh rectors uh being tenured is the ability to have a lot of similarity and a lot of difference.
SPEAKER_00: So we use a prayer book, a common prayer book, but perhaps and you remember this from last week, there are four rites in rite two.
SPEAKER_00: There's prayer A, B, C, and D, that's in the prayer book.
SPEAKER_00: If you use rite one, there's two different forms.
SPEAKER_00: There's Eucharistic prayer one and Eucharistic prayer two.
SPEAKER_00: So you could go to six churches in the area and find they're using an entirely different liturgy for the Eucharist that is in the prayer book.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: There are some resources called enriching our worship, and there are two additional Eucharistic prayers in enriching our worship.
SPEAKER_00: These are supplemental materials to the Book of Common Prayer, and those have been authorized for regular use uh in parishes.
SPEAKER_00: So we wouldn't need, for example, the bishop's permission to use the rite and of enriching our worship.
SPEAKER_00: We would, however, uh court the bishop's permission, let's say if epiphany was on a Monday and we wanted to use the epiphany uh on Sunday instead.
SPEAKER_00: If we wanted to transfer a feast, that is the prerogative of the bishop and not the priest.
SPEAKER_00: Um there are churches in our uh even in our convocation that don't use the revised common lectionary.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they have the bishop's permission to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Those priests tend to believe that um a sermon series might better fit their people than what can sometimes appear to be random readings from the lectionary, and so they've requested permission from the bishop and they've got it to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Um you know, there is also alternative rites.
SPEAKER_00: So the prayer book tells us rubrics that have to exist uh at the um celebration of, say, the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's words like this is my body, eat this in remembrance of me, and this is my blood, drink this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then there can be some variants.
SPEAKER_00: So there could be something like rite three, as long as it sort of honors the rubric.
SPEAKER_00: Rite three should really only happen with permission of the bishop who is the chief liturgical officer of the diocese.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that makes a little a little bit more sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um I mentioned that a clergy person can only get inhibited by a bishop for doing things like accruing DWIs or embezzling money or uh having affairs with people in a parish.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it turns out that if a bishop believes that a particular priest is um committing uh the sin of heresy as a heretic and promulgating false doctrines, that um that bishop has to call an ecumenical uh court or an ecclesiastical court.
SPEAKER_00: So a bishop cannot come and say, Mike, you know, you're preaching bad theology, so you're fired, or you can't be a priest anymore.
SPEAKER_00: If the bishop really believes that, the bishop needs to call together sort of a trial by jury to establish whether I'm a heretic or not.
SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting to hear that um there's checks and balances in this power.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was a famous case a few years ago where a bishop in Los Angeles wanted to liquidate a property that um was currently housing a mission.
SPEAKER_00: The mission, interestingly enough, was growing and getting closer and closer to paying their full fair share.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the bishop decided to sell the property, and um the the people of the mission ended up suing the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: They did that in a regular courtroom, but uh applied canon canon law as the choice of law.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the bishop lost the case.
SPEAKER_00: Um he had already been forced into retirement when the verdict was delivered, but um that was one of these situations where canon law can be tried in a civil court, and that's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: So the jury had to be comprised, according to canon law, of a certain number of priests and bishops and lay people, and um, and that's sort of how it worked.
SPEAKER_00: If you're interested, the bishop was named John Bruno.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he's retired since then, and now the new bishop dialson is John Taylor.
SPEAKER_00: But you could Google that if that's of any interest to you, how that works at the polity level.
SPEAKER_00: Um maybe it's helpful to distinguish a little bit in terms of how clergy uh dress as well.
SPEAKER_00: So um the bishop is the one person uh who carries what's called the crozier, that's the shepherd's stiff, and wears on her or his head the mitre.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of fish-shaped hat.
SPEAKER_00: And those are traditional signs of the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, being the shepherd, that's why you're getting uh the crozier.
SPEAKER_00: Our bishops tend not to wear the mitre unless they're doing ordinations.
SPEAKER_00: I actually have not seen Bishop Doyle ever wear his, even though I have a picture in our sacristy of him wearing a mitre.
SPEAKER_00: I've not seen him wear it before in a service.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that doesn't mean he doesn't, I just haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_00: They typically wear a lower form of dress called the rochit shamir, but a priest cannot wear a mitre or a crozier.
SPEAKER_00: And what's really interesting to hear is that the bishop doesn't wear those um symbols of authority throughout the service.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop wears those when giving the absolution or the blessing.
SPEAKER_00: And so a bishop never gives a sermon wearing their crozier, holding their mitre, because um the bishop is speaking at the moment of the sermon on behalf of herself or himself, not on behalf of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really helpful to recognize and pay attention to if you ever go to a service with the bishop.
SPEAKER_00: The bishop still gets to be herself or himself at the liturgy of the word and represents the authority of the church only in certain moments, and that's designated with the mitre and with um the crozier.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I mentioned last week that we wear the poncho uh only when we're selling the celebrating the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: That's called the chasable.
SPEAKER_00: It's most meant to represent the yoke of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So if I were going to do a marriage where there's no communion, I wouldn't wear that.
SPEAKER_00: I would wear only a stole and an alb.
SPEAKER_00: Some churches um they don't wear a chasable at all.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to to celebrate communion, although it is very, very standard that a priest uh wears a stole.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they might even wear a black garment called a cassock with a little white kind of top over it called a surplus, and then a stole on top of that, and that's called choir attire.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that is one way that clergy might choose to dress, um, and again differentiates us from bishops, um clergy hats, as I've mentioned to you, go back a long, long way.
SPEAKER_00: Our Jewish brothers and sisters continue to wear hats when they go to worship.
SPEAKER_00: Rabbis uh tend to wear hats as well.
SPEAKER_00: So we have either the round one like the pop hat, like a kippah or a yarmaka in the Jewish tradition, or we have uh what's called the beretta or the cranber cap, um usually with a little poof ball on top, and that shows again from the Middle Ages that we um were educated priests and not just making up the mass in Latin because we couldn't read or write it.
SPEAKER_00: Um so those are a little bit of clergy dress.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons usually wear a stole as a sash, not um as their scarf, so they wear it across their body, and that's one way you can tell uh a deacon um apart.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in a really high church, a deacon might wear something instead of a chesible called a dalma uh a dalmatic.
SPEAKER_00: Um I actually have never seen a deacon wear that.
SPEAKER_00: That's rectangular instead of shaped like a poncho, and again, um that's from that's just from a higher older tradition, so there's um there's range in the Episcopal Church on things and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: Um so what would you do at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas if you were dissatisfied with something that your rector were doing for any reason?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I sure hope what you would do is talk to your rector one-on-one.
SPEAKER_00: And if you tried that and it didn't work, I sure hope you would follow the Gospel of Matthew's advice and bring somebody with you and say, hey, I don't feel like you adequately listened to my position the first time.
SPEAKER_00: So I brought somebody with us just to make sure I feel really heard.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that's what you would do because again, uh, if you were to go to the vestry and say, I don't like that the bishop that the rector is ringing the sanctus bells at the Eucharist, uh, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's not something that the vestry can approve or disapprove of.
SPEAKER_00: It's not within their role.
SPEAKER_00: So um the hope is that we would take our problems with one another, one to another, as the scriptures indicate is best.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you had a problem with a financial decision, that absolutely is the purview of the vestry.
SPEAKER_00: But I would hope again that that's something that we would talk about one to another, and if that's not comfortable, that we do what it takes to earn the right uh to be heard and to be listened to and to regain trust when it's been sort of uh destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh that's my introduction to church polity and the Episcopal Church and a little bit of where our money goes.
SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe the last thing to say is that when if you look through our budget, which is always available, um, in fact, we run our financials every month and put them on the website.
SPEAKER_00: It shows not only what we've budgeted for, but how much we spent year to date on those items.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and also you can see on a monthly basis how our accounting looks just by going to our website.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see things like staff salaries, um, lawn care, um, Christian education, utilities.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it gives you a really good idea where our money goes and in what amount.
SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you to have a look at those and have a better understanding of how our particular church spends money, and then that gives you a better understanding of how the diocese might do that as well.
SPEAKER_00: And the diocesan budget is similarly available on their website, and again, giving gives you a good perspective of how all that goes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I hope you've enjoyed hearing a little bit about our church duality, and I look forward to talking more about essences of our confirmation faith with you again next week.