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My plan to accomplish the goal of focusing the diocese on mission and ministry as an icon of God’s Love for all includes the following actions that I will take as diocesan bishop:
• I will ensure that my episcopacy identifies the Diocese of Texas as the people, both lay and clergy. My episcopacy will identify the diocesan center as more support for the ministries and mission of the people than their origin. I will ensure that our diocesan center is equipped and required to be highly responsive in communicating with the clergy and lay leaders of our diocese, and will proactively seek evaluation from these leaders in order to refine as necessary the center’s ability to be responsive and supportive.
• I will call for the operations of the diocesan center to be demonstrably accountable to the diocese’s emphasis upon ministry to its members and mission to the world around us. In order to address immediately the diocese’s current fiscal challenges, I will allow no expenditures of energy or allocations of funds that fail to meet this criterion.
• I will work with the Executive Board to determine a specific strategy to increase by increments the diocesan response to the asking of the ‘National Church’ and achieve a full diocesan response by the year 2020. I will work with the Executive Board to ensure that the diocesan budget continues to contribute to the pursuit of the Church’s Millennium Development Goals. I will work with the Executive Board to and the Standing Committee to refine diocesan goals, incentives, and accountability for implementing environmentally conscientious practices in all diocesan entities.
• I will urge the House of Bishops to summon through its Theology Committee a panel of scholars, theologians, and experts in the relevant sciences to study further those matters concerning the Church’s teachings on human sexuality, to call for the Standing Commission on National Concerns to review the panel’s findings and to prepare a report for presentation to General Convention in 2012. I will do so in order to support the Church’s process of discerning the participation in its mission and ministry of persons whose manner of life may present a challenge to some in the wider Church.
• I will call upon the best and the brightest of the Episcopal Church and of the wider fellowship of Christians to bring to our diocese training for our clergy and lay leaders in the use of innovative forms of worship as means to communicate the gospel to a wider and more diverse population.
• I will call for the leaders of our parishes, missions, and congregations to explore and incorporate innovative forms of worship to communicate more widely our ministry and faith, especially to younger generations. I will call for the formation of a Task Force to collect information on these efforts, provide a report to Council in 2012, and recommend a strategy whereby the diocese will build upon what they have learned.
• I will work with the Executive Board to ensure that the Diocesan Center’s Divisions of Christian Formation and Youth Education receive preference in budgeting for operating and/or mission funding in order to support growth and improvement in their ministries. I will call upon our diocese to become a community that is increasingly literate in Holy Scripture, and with ensuring that our youngest generations of members are given top quality education in and access to the blessings conveyed through scripture.
• I will call for the formation of an advisory committee to function under the leadership of our diocesan Canon for Multi-Cultural Ministry to provide recommendations by 2010 that shall lead to the implementation by 2012 of culturally defined forms of ministry and worship appropriate to the local settings of each diocesan parish, mission, and ministry.
• I will ensure that the locations of all church plants and new mission congregations are guided by a preference for reaching under-served and minority populations. I will call for a moratorium on new church plants in order to ensure that current diocesan missions and church plants are given resources to grow to sustainability.
• I will add to diocesan communication about the entities and institutions of the diocese a new emphasis upon the ministries taking place within them. I will ensure that these ministries are widely communicated to the community of the diocese as inspiration for all. I will ensure that the wider diocese is better informed about the persons ministering there and thus is better able to appreciate them, more willing to support them, and better able to identify with the people receiving their ministries. I will do this to ensure a greater cohesion of the collective ministry of the diocese.
• I will encourage the growth of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System and its ministry throughout the diocese.
• I will work with the Boards of Directors of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System, El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission, St. James Houses, the William Temple Episcopal Center, St. Vincent’s House of Galveston, Ubi Caritas, Community of the Streets Outreach Corporation, and Health Opportunities for People of East Texas (HOPE) to create greater coordination between these outreach ministries of our diocese in bringing God’s Love to those in acute need. I will call upon St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities to define ways to double its current giving of approximately four million dollars and to dedicate a portion of its increase to the support of other diocesan entities engaged in wellness and healthcare.
• I will work with the Iona School for Ministry and the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest to grow the collaboration between them to ensure the best education and formation for the bi-vocational priests and deacons for our own diocese and for other dioceses of the Church.
• I will work intensively to establish in the diocese a proactive program for the support of the health and wellness of diocesan clergy and clergy families. I will urge comprehensive participation in the program by all clergy and clergy families for their own sake, and in order to help prevent the pain and suffering caused by clergy whose behavior is harmful or abusive.
• I will pursue ways that the diocese can work collaboratively in ministry and mission with our ecumenical partners and in inter-faith efforts to do good works in the name of God’s Love. I will call for congregations of the diocese to seek ways to work and pray collaboratively with fellow Episcopalian congregations, with congregations of our ecumenical partners, and with congregations of other religious faiths for the sake of good works in the name of God’s Love.
• I shall ensure that the Diocese of Texas remains constituent of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. I will ensure that any matters that may arise within the diocese around departures from the Church are addressed strictly within the limits of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and the diocese, and that diocesan property shall not be the subject of negotiation with persons departing.
• I will do all in my power to see that our diocesan community grows as a spiritual home for an ever widening fellowship of people of all sorts and conditions responding to the call to know God’s Love for them. I will lead by example, model a godly life, and be faithful shepherd to all the diocese. I will work and pray always to help the Diocese of Texas to be an icon of God’s Love for all.
God's Peace,
Jim Stockton + |
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Posted by JimStockton on 2008-03-21 16:28:36 | Rating: | Views: 63
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I don't understand anything you just said, i don't really get church stuff
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Posted by ReD_MooN
on 2008-03-21 16:30:24
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Dear Red Moon,
I'll be happy to speak with you more about church stuff if you're interested. I find it all fascinating and illuminating, of course. There really is, I believe, a power and truth that underlie all the other church stuff that derive from them. This list of items, though, is quite specific to a particular setting here in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. I'll be happy to speak with you further about this, too if you wish. Let me know and we can pursue the conversation. In the meantime, God's Peace.
Jim +
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Posted by JimStockton
on 2008-03-21 17:19:05
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