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Hello, Diocese of the Rio Grande. This is your Bishop's Address to Diocesan Convention.

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The year is 2023.

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For as long as I've been ordained in the Episcopal Church, there has been talk of decline.

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Decline in membership, decline in attendance, and worries about the financial survival of the Episcopal Church.

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When the House of Bishops met in September of this year, we heard statistical analysis from Matthew Price, the statistician at the Church Pension Group.

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Dr. Molly James, the Deputy Secretary of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, and the Reverend Megan Froelich, the Transition Minister of the Episcopal Church.

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All three offered information about the realities facing the Episcopal Church today.

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And yes, there was talk about decline, at least that's what the headlines said.

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But actually, digging through the data with these three thoughtful and faithful Episcopalians gave me some insights and ideas.

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that helped me understand where we are right now in the church.

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And they got me thinking about what God might be calling us to do.

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In the presentation of Church Statistics, two facts were mentioned, which I'm still thinking about, and which I think we all need to understand as leaders of the Church today.

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First, we need to get our minds around the concept of decline in the Episcopal Church.

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And we need to remember that the Episcopal Church isn't the only denomination in decline.

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In fact, all churches in the United States and all organized religions are in decline just now.

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The issue is rising secularism in the United States, combined with the reality that many Christian churches today are seen as being exclusive and divisive.

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The word, "religion" comes from the same root as the word "ligament".

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Ligaments tie bones to muscles so the body can actually do stuff.

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Religion actually means re bind together or tie it all back together.

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Religion is what ties our souls together and what ties us all to God.

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It can be a tremendously positive force in society, caring for the poor, spreading hope, healing brokenness, doing justice, reminding us that we're all in this together, and helping us focus on what really matters.

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But today, it seems religion is often a destructive force in our world.

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Religions divide people, who's in, who's out.

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Religions create conflict and wars. We have seen highly publicized scandals and a lack of trust in leadership.

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Perhaps it's not surprising that many young people want to be spiritual, but they're deeply suspicious of organized religion.

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We are indeed at risk of losing a generation, and it may not be surprising then that decline in the Episcopal Church looks like this.

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On this chart you can see the blue columns, those are membership numbers.

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The gray is the average Sunday attendance, and the green and gold at the top is our financial giving.

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This slide shows how we're doing fewer baptisms, fewer weddings, and fewer funerals, which shouldn't be a surprise.

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I know you've gone to destination weddings and funerals which were not held in churches.

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And baptisms? You know we're not doing as many of those as we all remember from our childhoods.

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The past 40 years, many parents have deliberately raised their kids without church.

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So, when they haven't had any experience of church, and all you hear in the news is about how religion is a divisive force in the world, it's not surprising that young people today aren't all that interested in joining us on Sunday mornings.

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Interestingly though, we're not seeing financial decline in the church, yet.

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And that yet is an important thing, which we'll come back to in a moment.

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But here, first, is some data you should know about giving in the Episcopal Church.

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This slide shows the changes of pledge and plate, the changes in giving in the Episcopal Church.

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And this slide shows changes in operating revenue.

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When you put these two slides together, the picture that you see is, there are fewer people who are being more and more generous.

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So thank you. Episcopalians are being generous and increasingly so.

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And I think that's because this church matters to you, like it matters to me.

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And you believe in what the Episcopal Church is doing.

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As your bishop, I want to thank you personally.

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The financial data shows something which I know you have all been feeling.

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A truth which needs to be named.

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The reality is that right now, in the Episcopal Church, fewer people are doing more and more of the work, and are paying for more and more of the ministry.

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But you knew that already, didn't you? Another way to look at this data, at this same reality, is to talk about our deacons and priests.

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Today, in the church, there is a clergy shortage.

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There are seven full time openings for every priest who is looking for a full time job.

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Here's an idea of what that looks like across the nation.

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This slide shows clergy openings versus those clergy who are searching.

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And you can see, there's a huge gap.

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Many congregations that would normally receive 15 or 20 applicants are receiving none.

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And this means that the clergy we have are working harder than ever.

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And so are the lay leaders in those congregations.

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Particularly those lay leaders in congregations where the search for a new priest is taking longer.

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Because there aren't enough clergy out there. to choose from.

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Here's a look at ordinations and retirements over time.

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You can see here that we've got more people retiring than we've been ordaining, and that has been the case for well over a decade.

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So we know there has been a decline in church membership and attendance.

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There has been declines in baptisms, marriages, and funerals.

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There are declines in ordinations. Fewer people are becoming priests and deacons.

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while more priests are retiring.

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And here's what's coming. Notice over half of the clergy in the church today are over 55 years of age.

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All of them must retire in the next 17 years or before.

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Many of them will retire much sooner than 17 years.

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So, as much of a clergy shortage as we have right now, we're not going to see that change any time in the near future.

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Even if we got 17 people to join the Bishop's School for Ministry, today it'd be four years before they could serve in our churches as priests.

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And look at how few in number are our clergy under 55.

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Particularly how few there are under 45.

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Only 25 percent of our clergy today are under 45 years old.

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If you add all this together, you can see that the generation of people leading the church right now, most of you who are watching this, is the same generation that has been leading the church since you were young adults.

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It's the same generation that have provided most of our clergy, who have done most of the work, and who have paid most of the bills, for your entire lives.

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And already that generation is beginning to say, I'm kind of done being senior warden.

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I've been leading the altar guild for a long time.

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It's someone else. It's time for someone else to take over.

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The problem is, and you know this as well as I do, because you tell me this as I travel around the diocese, the problem is there simply aren't a lot of people waiting in the wings to take over leadership.

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There simply aren't that many people in their 20s and 30s ready to take over the altar guild, ready to serve on the vestry, or ready to go to seminary.

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We are at the very beginning of a huge generational shift in our church.

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And the way we have been Church, the way that you and I are used to being Church, is not going to be the way the Episcopal Church will be.

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I really want you to see that. If we keep doing what we've been doing, there will not be enough people or enough clergy or enough money to keep the church the way we are used to having it be.

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And it may be that the way we've gotten used to being church is actually an historical anomaly.

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And that what we're returning to is what has historically been the norm in the Episcopal Church.

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To put that into perspective, check this out.

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This slide shows a hundred years of membership numbers for the Episcopal Church.

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Notice how small the church was in the early 20th century.

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And notice how small the growth rate was nationwide until World War II ended.

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And then comes the baby boom.

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And look at the growth rate in the Episcopal Church.

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And it goes up and up and up until 1969, when the baby boomers stop being born, and the church then begins to decline.

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I want you to remember the shape of that line, how it goes kind of flat until the baby boom, how it booms and then begins to decline in 1969.

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And I want you to remember that as we look at...

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This slide. This slide is the birth rate for the United States over the last hundred years, and this line looks strikingly similar to the membership line of the Episcopal Church, doesn't it? Now, let's look at what's happened to population growth after the baby boom.

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This is a slide from the Brookings Institute, and it shows population growth in the United States.

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As you can see, it follows the same pattern, showing that baby boom.

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And as you can see, the growth percentage has been more or less in decline since 1969.

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You can see there's a little millennial bump there, but the growth rate is generally trending down, not up, nationwide.

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There are two important points I want you to take away from these last few slides.

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The first... is that with the baby boom ending, it is entirely unrealistic for us to assume that the Episcopal Church would continue to grow or be the same size after the boom as it was during the boom.

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And in fact, this is the point.

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The Church will not be as big as it is now in the future.

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And it will not be as big as we remember it being.

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And it doesn't need to be. But that doesn't mean there isn't still work for us to do, and that doesn't mean there aren't ways for us to grow in the Episcopal Church.

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In fact, I want to share with you some hopeful news from right here in the Diocese of the Rio Grande.

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Remember this slide? This slide shows the decline in numbers of the Episcopal Church as a whole.

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And I want you to remember that arc, that shape of decline.

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Now, look at this slide. This is the Diocese of the Rio Grande over the same time period.

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And notice... There is decline, but our decline in the diocese is a little bit flatter than that in the whole Episcopal Church.

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And now look at this. This is the city of Santa Fe.

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Three churches in Santa Fe. There are more Episcopalians in Santa Fe today than there were ten years ago, my friends.

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And that's not the only place where we're seeing growth.

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This is Marfa, and this is Taos.

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This is St. John's Farmington, which shows steady membership growth while average Sunday attendance varies a little bit.

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This is St. Mark's on the Mesa showing steady growth over the last 10 years, and you can see the COVID drop and rebound in attendance.

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This is the Cathedral in Albuquerque showing steady, incremental growth over 10 years with varying Sunday attendance again.

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We can grow this church, my friends. We can be intentional in each congregation about how we grow steadily, with integrity, one family at a time.

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You can sit down with your vestry or bishop's committee and intentionally think about people you already know, friends of yours.

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who would enjoy your church and what you have to offer.

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As a group, you can write down the names of people who you know who would benefit from a conversation with your priest.

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And then as a group, you could think about how you could approach these friends of yours, invite them into the life of your congregation, invite them into the way of God's love.

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Your vestry, your bishop's committee, working with your priest and deacon might imagine events.

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that you could invite the community to. Perhaps it's a movie night, or a potluck supper, or a celebration of All Saints Day in which all the names of your loved ones will be included in the prayers.

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Christmas is coming soon, and people may not know where they're going to church, but you can invite your friends to come along with you.

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Think through the things that are happening in your community, major events, festivals, holidays, rallies, and imagine ways that your church can participate in and be a visible presence of God's love.

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To folks who wouldn't know you otherwise.

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Think about those who have not historically been a part of our churches.

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While we have compelling data that tracks with birth rates, we as the Episcopal Church have almost entirely missed those who have emigrated into our cities and towns.

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An immigration from Central America and South Asia is predicted to be the single biggest driver of population growth in the United States between now and 2050.

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What are the cultural touchstones of those arriving in our neighborhoods? And how can we be a place where they can meet Jesus? without giving up pieces of their heart and their culture and their history.

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We can grow this church. Your congregation can grow by one or two families a year.

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Our bigger congregations can grow by five or ten or fifteen families a year.

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But we must be intentional about sharing the way of love.

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We must change our hearts from caring about those who are already members of our church and intentionally focus on how we can invite others into the way of love.

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Which we find so valuable. The second point about all this I want you to notice is this.

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Look at this slide. Today, our Episcopal church is roughly the same size as it was in the 1930s.

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Now that's interesting, isn't it? We need to adjust our expectations.

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Not to recreate the church of the 1950s or the 1980s.

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We need to think about a church roughly the size as it was in the 1930s.

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And then we need to see how we can grow a church that size.

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in the next 15 years. So what was the diocese like in the 1930s? Well, from 1931 to 1938, in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, there were five parishes and between 33 and 46 missions.

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That's an average of 40 missions over those years.

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In the 1930s, there were between 18 and 22 priests, depending on the year, and there were no deacons because they didn't ordain permanent deacons at that time.

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So notice, There are about 20 priests on average, serving an average of 45 congregations.

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There was not a single priest for every congregation.

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It was not one priest, one building. Not every congregation had Eucharist every single Sunday.

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So how did all those congregations make it, and how did the diocese grow? Because they did, even before the baby boom.

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In 1939, two missions became parishes, for example.

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In the 1930s, most priests cared for more than one congregation at a time.

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And there was a whole bunch of lay readers.

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But what is a lay reader? You may not have, you may have heard of a lay reader, but I'm not sure you might have met one.

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Lay readers are trained for their work and licensed by the bishop to serve in congregations.

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Lay readers lead morning prayer and they help organize congregational work.

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They work with the priest who is the vicar when that vicar isn't physically present.

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And although we don't have a lot of lay readers in the Diocese of the Rio Grande today, this is something we will have to think and pray about as we move into the future.

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Because lay readers were a huge reason why our congregations were cared for and why they grew in the 1930s.

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In the 1930s, each year there were between 22 and 39 lay readers.

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That's an average of 30.

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5 lay readers each year. There were approximately one third more lay readers than priests in any given year.

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In the 1930s, the congregations in the DRG were served by clergy serving multiple congregations and by lay readers working with them, holding down the fort while the clergy traveled about.

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And some of the clergy really traveled about.

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One priest whose life and ministry characterizes the spirit of the diocese from the early 1900s through the start of the baby boom was Preacher Lewis.

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And he was not your ordinary priest, but his spirit and the way he thought about ministry is an example which I think we need to know and we need to emulate.

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Preacher Lewis was born in Virginia, attended Virginia Seminary, and as a young man, came west, first to Texas and then to Mesilla Park, where he served for nearly 50 years.

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In those days, most of the roads weren't paved and there were few cars, and the railroad was the primary means of transportation.

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Louis founded 21 congregations, and he served them all at the same time.

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How did he do it? He traveled.

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And he understood that his ministry was not only to the Episcopalians, not only to the members of the churches, not only to those who attended on Sunday, he ministered to the whole area he could reach.

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He was the embodiment of the old Anglican idea that a priest has the cure of souls in a geographical area.

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That a priest's work is to care for all the souls in a territory.

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Whether they come to church or not. That's what he did.

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And that's how he lived. Preacher Lewis lived with his wife and children in Messiah Park.

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Preacher was married to Florence Edith Weymouth Lewis who graduated from college at the University of Texas in 1902.

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She was at least as impressive as Preacher was and you can learn about her by reading the book Journeys of Faith by Lee Priestley.

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St. James was a parish church and had a rectory so he lived there.

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And he did services on Sunday at St. James.

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And then, on Sunday night or on Monday morning, he got on the train.

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And he'd get off the train at each stop and walk sometimes many miles, sometimes hitching a ride with whoever drove by, to the various villages and communities and ranches in the area.

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When he got off the train, first thing he'd do was visit the bar.

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And in the bar, he'd pass around a tin cup or his small leather bag.

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At least buy a drink for Jesus, he'd say.

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He met people. He helped care for those in need.

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If a family was hungry, he'd reach into the leather pouch and provide some food.

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If a child needed shoes, he'd figure out a way for that child to have some shoes.

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When babies were born, he'd baptize them.

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He held church services everywhere, outdoors, in barns, under trees, in people's homes or dance halls.

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As he traveled, he knitted, little caps mostly, which he snuggled onto the heads of each baby he baptized.

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Preacher Lewis understood his ministry to be on behalf of Jesus to the entire population of everywhere he could reach by train and on foot and by bumming rides.

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He used to say that the best way to ensure a good sized congregation was to bring them with you.

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And so, if he bummed a ride from someone, he'd say, let's stop and pick up your family because I'm about to baptize a baby and that baby needs a full congregation.

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Or he'd say, I'm about to do a funeral and they deserve to have you singing a couple of hymns.

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Also, while he was traveling, Preacher Lewis wrote letters, hundreds of them.

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He wrote to people back east asking for money to build churches, or for boxes of clothes for the people in need.

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He wrote to his bishop. He wrote to people in the congregation he visited last week.

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Preacher Lewis, like St. Paul before him, wrote letters to keep in touch with his congregations as he traveled around.

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He embodied that long standing principle of ministry in the Anglican Communion.

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that the priest has the cure of souls for a whole area, not just those who come to church, or consider themselves Episcopalians, or are members of the Episcopal Church.

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He cared about all the souls he met. We need to recapture the spirit of Preacher Lewis in the Diocese of the Rio Grande.

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We need to see ourselves as caring for the souls of everyone in the neighborhood.

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We need to send priests to care for people's souls in places like Grants and Fort Sumner, where we used to have missions.

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But we don't right now, and in the places we already have congregations, we need to encourage our clergy not to sit in their offices, but to go out and care for the souls of everyone they meet.

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Some of our clergy are already doing that, of course.

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We have descendants of Preacher Lewis among us today in the diocese.

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We do. But we all need to get used to that being our norm.

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Even in the big parishes in the big cities of our diocese.

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We will need clergy in the big churches who are willing to travel out to smaller places.

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To plant churches and care for the souls of people beyond their congregations.

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And as I've traveled the diocese, I'm hearing that most of our clergy are already open to that idea.

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Eager for it, and many are already doing it.

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We need to recapture the spirit of Preacher Lewis.

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But we have tools that Preacher Lewis couldn't have imagined.

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Tools that can help our diocese grow, and help us care for the souls all over New Mexico and far west Texas.

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We have cars that can travel much farther and much faster than anything Preacher Lewis ever saw.

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Highways with 75 or 80 mile an hour speed limits.

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Preacher Lewis normally left home on Monday, worked all his missions all week long, returned home Thursday or Friday, depending on the week.

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We can drive a couple hours, do some good ministry, and still be home for supper.

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We can drive a few hours, stay overnight, and do even more ministry.

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Our ability to get our clergy moving around and caring for people is much greater today than it was in the 1930s.

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And many of our clergy are already doing that. Mike Wallens and Katie Hudak are together looking after five congregations in the Big Bend.

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Jill Klein is looking after Raton and Las Vegas while she lives in Taos.

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Nancy Antrim lives in Alpine, but serves as the vicar of Hobbs, where she hangs out most of the time.

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Colin Kelly lives in Los Alamos, but for 18 years he's been driving 100 miles each way to Chama, twice a week.

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These are just a few examples, and there's no reason why we can't plant more churches, to build up congregations, and grow churches, to care for people by having our priests and deacons.

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We all need to realize that that won't mean one priest, one building, and it won't mean every church gets Eucharist at 10 a.

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m. on Sunday morning, but it can mean that every church gets Eucharist at least once a week.

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Cars and highways are not the only tools that we have that Preacher Lewis didn't have.

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We have the internet. We have Zoom.

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And during the pandemic, we all learned, reluctantly at first, that we can do ministry online.

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Church meetings, vestry meetings, and trustees meetings, docs and council meetings, and standing committee meetings are better online, and we don't have to travel.

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Commission on ministry meetings and confirmation classes are happening online.

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And in a world where people are more and more able to see their doctors online, or have therapy online, there's no reason we can't do pastoral visits online too.

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Now don't get me wrong, I want you to hear me.

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This is a two part strategy. We need to travel to be in person more often and to supplement that in person ministry with ongoing online ministry.

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I'm saying we follow the example of St.

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Paul and Preacher Lewis, but we have better tools than they could ever have imagined.

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Both Paul and Preacher Lewis traveled, but we can travel farther and faster than they did, which means we can be home more often.

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Both Preacher Lewis and St. Paul wrote lots and lots of letters.

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But we can communicate directly through video conferencing and video chat.

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We don't even have to rely on email. Thanks be to God.

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One other tool that we have which can be more effective for us than it was in Preacher Lewis's day is the diocese.

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We can do more together because we are more connected.

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Here's one example. At the clergy conference in September, we were talking about how clergy might be able to work together to care for the diocese.

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Not one priest, one congregation, but teams working together.

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Christopher McLaren, the rector at St. Mark's in Albuquerque, floated a great idea.

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What if, at the clergy conference each year, we took an afternoon or maybe a whole day, and the clergy all paired up with each other, or got into groups of three or four? What if each of those groups then worked together on planning a Christian formation offering? Maybe one group came up with a Bible study and another group came up with a book study.

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Another group was doing something on church history and another group wanted to study environmental issues.

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Some other group might want to study about theology.

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You get the idea. But what if those clergy working in groups committed to offering all of these different studies online to the whole diocese throughout the year? And if the diocesan website then would list all 15 or 20 or more of those offerings? And you could participate in any or all of them.

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What I love about this idea is it's a new way of being a diocese.

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It's a way of collaborating, a way of using our many gifts and talents and offering those gifts to the whole diocese.

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Instead of each church having one priest and only getting what that one priest has to offer, we all get access to the whole amazing power and talent and wisdom of all of our clergy.

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And it's fun for clergy too. Instead of feeling isolated like each priest has to come up with their own program every season and do all the pastoral care, clergy get to work together.

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Sharing ideas and working with others on things they're passionate about.

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We have already begun working on implementing something like this, and my hope is that by next fall, there will be a list of offerings led by teams of clergy from the DRG that you can choose from.

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Even sooner than that, I think we can figure out a way for the diocese to list those existing Bible studies and book studies which are already being offered.

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We can make a list and offer them online.

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Curate those things which are already being offered to parishes and open them up to all of us.

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I want you to notice that this idea involves a few important shifts in our thinking.

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It involves changes of heart, if you will.

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These changes of heart are important for our future.

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We've been in the habit of thinking that each congregation only gets what it can afford.

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Some congregations can afford multiple full time priests.

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And they get lots of offerings each year from those clergy.

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Other congregations struggle to have even one part time priest.

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And they have less clergy time, less clergy support, and less clergy care.

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By having clergy work together to create Christian formation offerings and offer them to all of us, It won't be the case that each congregation only gets what it can afford.

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We will all benefit as we literally share our resources in common.

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That idea that every congregation gets only what it can afford will cripple us in the years ahead.

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We need to find ways to collaborate and share the abundant resources God is giving to us.

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In the future, our congregations will not be able to meet all of their own needs and in many instances, that's already true.

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Congregations are struggling to find a treasurer or enough people for the Bishop's Committee.

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Congregations don't have confirmation class or enough people for a Sunday school or a youth group.

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Congregations already need help with building maintenance and audits.

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As a diocese, we do have enough resources for all these things.

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We just need to find ways to share those resources.

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We need to figure out how junior wardens can support one another.

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How those teaching Sunday school can support one another.

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We need to find ways to share our good ideas, to mentor people, to do the work.

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We did that really well during the pandemic, online.

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We need to make sure that sharing and collaboration is a part of our Dowson life.

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We need to use technology to bridge the vast geography of our diocese.

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Third, we need to think about the diocese in new ways.

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We need to start thinking that the diocese is all of us.

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We need to start thinking that all the resources of all the churches are accessible to all of us.

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And we need to build diocesan structures that make those resources more available.

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Clergy offering Christian formation beyond the walls of their congregation is one example.

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One junior warden helping another. One middle school age person in one congregation joining with other middle schoolers across the diocese in a monthly online Zoom gathering could be another.

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We need to think of the diocese as a network.

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We need to think of the diocese like the internet, where we all have access and we all can create content and offer our thoughts and energy and ideas.

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Whether you live in a big city or in a house in the wilderness, you're connected to the diocese and you matter.

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If the church is a huge facility or a tiny building, you matter.

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To make all these connections work, we need a diocesan staff that is working more and more on connecting resources of the diocese, rather than being the house of experts at the top of some hierarchy.

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For example, if the clergy start collaborating and offering online classes, someone's going to need to make sure the diocesan website accurately lists those opportunities and makes it easy for you to join in.

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Someone will need to help facilitate the relationships with junior wardens and Invite those brand new junior wardens into the fold.

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Your Diocesan staff is already stretched thin.

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We can't do everything. We can't raise fair share and hire new people.

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We need to think of creative ways to work together and decide what are the most critical functions your staff can do to make ministry easier for you to do.

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We will need volunteers, not so much to sit on committees and be in committee meetings, but we are going to need people to volunteer to share their experience beyond the walls of their congregations.

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We will need work together and to help each other out.

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And all of this will really take a change of heart.

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Instead of thinking, I'm a member of St. Margaret's and who knows what the diocese is, we need for us all to think, I'm a member of the diocese of the Rio Grande.

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I go to St. On Sundays, but I also participate in a Bible study out of St.

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Mark's and my kids are in the diocesan youth community.

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Our congregation is now working with a junior warden from St.

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Swithin's. who's helping us with an energy audit of our building.

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Can you see the difference? Instead of thinking, we're in decline, we've all got gray hair, what will happen when we're gone? We need to be thinking, I love this church and I'm part of a vast, beautiful network which meets on many locations and online.

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I am blessed by God with many resources and it's my responsibility to offer what God has given to me to the vast and beautiful church which meets in many locations.

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Do you see that change of heart? It's about how we think.

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One final thing. As a diocese, as congregational leaders, we all need to be thinking not just about our congregation today, not just about the diocese today.

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We need to be intentionally preparing our church for the decades to come.

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Even if we won't be here leading it, or even here to study it.

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To see it, we need to be intentionally working to make sure our Episcopal Church will still be here in 15, 20, or 30 years.

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We have seen how this generation leading the church today has been faithful.

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Y'all have led the church, supported it financially your whole lives.

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Those of us in the church right now are contributing more per household than previous generations.

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We're all doing more with less and giving more of what we've been given.

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I really need you to understand that the generations to come...

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to come behind us, we'll not have the resources to give like that.

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All of the predictions and all of the statistics are saying that generations coming after us will have fewer people interested in organized religion, fewer people willing to be members of anything, fewer people who will pledge to our congregations, and those who do pledge will have less disposable income as they worry about health care costs and their own retirement funds.

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We need to start right now, saving resources.

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Not only do we need to think of ourselves as part of a network of church today, we also need to take responsibility and make sure the church is still here for our grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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We can't know exactly what they will need, but we know they will need what we have needed.

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They will need what the church has always needed.

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They'll need a bishop. They'll need priests and deacons.

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They'll need some churches to worship in.

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Those coming after us are more comfortable... Living parts of their lives online than we are, but they will need the basics of the church.

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And all indications are that they may not be able to pay for those basics themselves.

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Already many of our congregations are struggling to afford their clergy.

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What if, what if we had a diocesan endowment to pay for benefits for all the clergy in the diocese? What if your congregation had an endowment that covered the cost of one priest and all their benefits so that congregations, so that the offering of the.

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What if the fair share didn't need to pay for the bishop or the bishop's staff because there was an endowment that already took care of that? Those of us who are leaders in the church today, those of us who care about this church right now, we have an opportunity to make sure this church is still here for the generations of leaders who will come after us.

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So today, I'm asked We are asking you to make sure you are going to tithe your estate to your church, either to your congregation or to the diocese as a whole.

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Before you give to your college, before you give to your favorite charity, give at least 10 percent of your estate to the church.

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Let your children and grandchildren have 90%, but tithe your estate to make sure the Episcopal Church is still here in the Diocese of Rio Grande for generations to come.

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We have the resources now. We have the commitment to doing God's work through the Episcopal Church now.

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We can't be sure. that our grandchildren will be able to afford priests.

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And without priests, how will they receive the sacrament? Who will teach them the faith? Who will care for their souls? We have the resources now to make sure there will be a Bishop, Priest, and Deacons here, that there will be a Diocese of the Rio Grande in the future.

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We have the resources to make sure lay leaders...

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will be able to be trained for future ministry.

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But we must not think that our congregations or our diocese will have those resources in the future.

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They may not be able to make it without our help.

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My dear friends, I love this church of ours because I love you.

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You are the church and working alongside you is a daily blessing to me.

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As your bishop, I'm not frightened about the future, even though I see the challenges we face.

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I'm excited because I'm beginning to see how we can embody the church in new ways.

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I'm excited because of the faithfulness of the lay leaders I see stepping forward right now.

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I'm excited because of the tremendous gifts which the clergy of this diocese have to share with all of us.

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We're doing this because when Jesus ascended into heaven, he did not leave us comfortless.

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He gave us the church to be a constant presence of God's love in the world and a constant ever present way for people like you and people like me to share the experience of God's love together and to grow.

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Today, we are that same church, with our little buildings, with our bishops, priests, and deacons.

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By studying the Holy Scriptures, through our common prayer, by working together to live out God's love in the world around us, we are the church and the body of Christ.

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We are becoming, in this place and time, that witness of God's love, that ever present way for people to experience God's love and to learn the way of God's love.

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We can't fold up shop. and expect other churches to embody that love in the unique way that our little branch of the Jesus Movement does.

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Many of us have tried other churches, been hurt in other places, but found God's love here.

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That's why we need to stay open. God has work for us to do.

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To embody God's way of love here on earth in our particular way.

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And sure, there are other examples than us, but the way we do it in our little congregations is something worth continuing.

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So keep in God's way of love, my dear friend.

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Let us walk. Walk and work and dance and sing together this loving way of God.

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And may God, the loving, liberating, life giving force that drives the universe, be in your hearts and minds this day and forevermore.