We Are
We Are
Beloved in Christ,
If you are reading this, you're probably involved with it enough to know that the Episcopal Church is a massively inefficient organization. Our system is complex, our administrative and governance structures often move at a glacial pace, and if you are at all acquainted with how things normally work in the corporate or non-profit world, the way we make decisions, staff, and govern ourselves can seem alternately bewildering and maddening.
As a bishop, I’m steeped in all of that every day, and that’s especially true this summer as I spend time at both General Convention and Lambeth. But while it can be frustrating, even and especially for those of us who have been given particular responsibility and authority, I’ve come to appreciate it all as a deeply holy inefficiency.
As followers of Jesus, our fundamental value is not efficiency, success, or production. Our fundamental value is Spirit-formed community, the whole people of God hearing God’s voice and doing God’s will together, for the sake of the world’s salvation. We have canons, structures, the Book of Common Prayer, and holy tradition, all to remind us that “we are” before “I am.” We agree to be part of a family, to give ourselves to a system discerned by the whole body, because it is only together that we are most fully able to know and do God’s will. Worshipping traditions and institutions for their own sake is idolatry; disregarding them is the height of hubris.
Anyone who has ever worked closely with me knows that one of my biggest liabilities is my impatience. Jesus and his gospel are urgently needed in the world, and I always want things to move more quickly than they do. Our system, and our values as a church, usually force me to slow down, and it’s usually when I slow down that I experience the Spirit’s leading most fully, and know God’s love most powerfully. In these blistering warm days of mid-summer, I hope you can slow down, hear the Spirit calling to you, and delight some in the weird, holy inefficiency of being a critical member of Christ’s body, the church.
Grace and Peace
The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop
Episcopal Church in Minnesota