Some of you will remember the visit we had in our diocese several years ago from the Reverend John Kater.

He joined us for a Ministry Fair.  Always both entertaining and thoughtful, Dr. Kater regularly challenges his listeners to press beyond the usual assumptions and conventional wisdom we so often live with. In other words, he is a good teacher who opens new avenues to explore about our experiences of Church and our spiritual journey together in the Body of Christ.

Recently he spent an afternoon with the bishops f Province VIII (all the dioceses in the states f Idaho, Utah and Arizona west, including Taiwan). He spoke with us about the state of the Anglican Communion today. This is not an easy topic to approach, but with his many connections around the world, he has a good picture of the thinking and actions of our Anglican sisters and brothers elsewhere in the Communion. I would like to share a few of his observations.

First, he reminded us that the Anglican Communion has always been in flux. From the beginning of our history as a separate branch of the Church in the 16th century, the Church of England has gone through a series of re-visionings. Think about it for a moment. In separating from the Church in Rome, Henry VIII established a national church, the Church of England. Prior to that time control of the church was in the hands of the Bishop of Rome. Then Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the first things Cranmer did was to authorize the use of English as the language of worship. Not
everybody was excited about either of these revisionings, but they set a direction for what we now know as the Anglican Communion.

A distinctive element of re-visioning is the idea of "the local context." In other words, the manner in which a national or regional church shapes its life together is, in part, dependent on its local context. An example of this is the founding of the Episcopal Church. Following our war for independence from England, it was no longer appropriate for the Church of England in the United States to have governance ties to England. Thus was created The Episcopal Church. But in our creation new ideas were introduced about the governance of the Church. We created a General Convention that in many ways looks and acts like the Congress of the United States. Never before had the laity been given such responsibility in the governance of the Church as they constitute half of the House of Deputies!

There are a number of other examples which could be cited. But perhaps in the two examples I have given you can grasp the idea that re-visioning continues in the church, and that when it is happening tensions are created among faithful people. People died in England in the 16th century because they could not imagine the church being separated from Rome. And the Episcopal Church struggled in its beginnings because the leadership of the Church of England could not imagine the Episcopal Church as a separate but related partner in the mission of the Church.

For 2007, I have asked our Diocesan Council to begin a process of re-visioning. It is certainly not going to be on the magnitude of the examples cited above. Nevertheless, we will begin a conversation about the future of our diocese, its mission and ministry. And we need you to be part of this conversation. To some degree we are already embarked on this process. Many of our congregations are moved from a maintenance to a mission mentality, focusing on what God is calling us to be about in our communities rather than worrying about paying the light bills. And on a diocesan level we have been doing this kind of work for several years. It is my hope, however, that we might pull together both the work you are doing in your local congregation and we are doing in the diocese, re-visioning for all of us the work we do together for the spread of God's kingdom in our diocese.

I am excited about the possibilities of this work and hope that you will be too. Great things will continue to happen as we work together on our journey to the Kingdom of God.