One of the things I learned in seminary is that the church is where the bishops get together.  That The Episcopal Church doesn’t truly exist except at General Convention, for instance.  In this sense, it is all about the bishops.

Similarly, the role of the priest was as the bishop’s local representative.  In practical terms, this is why the rector gets to sit in the Bishop’s Chair until the bishop comes to visit.  The deacons, as described in Acts, represent the bishop’s appointed staff to outreach missions.

These descriptions of church are simple, but effective, I think, in conveying the relationship of the orders.  What is lost in this description is the place of the episcopate in a changing world.

I have had the good fortune to work in two neighboring diocese that have similar theological interest in grass roots ministry and the role of the Baptismal Covenant.  I have also observed bishops in both dioceses doing a lot of things that bishops of a different age would not have needed to do.   This isn’t a product of their theology, but of an external and internal reality that has us constantly focused on scarcity.  If you think we’re tired of talking about human sexuality, I can only imagine how tired they are!

The weak link in the church from an engineering perspective is at the point of contact.  That place in which the church exists where the bishops are.  In other words, the more pressure we place on the episcopate, the greater strain the entire structure takes.  The more we place the episcopate in the position to do more with less, face an unfriendly media environment, and then come home to a diocese that demands leadership, the more likely the episcopate does not act according to its call and the more it lives in a reactionary mode.

In an episode of The West Wing called “The Drop In”, the president attends a fundraiser hosted by the environmental lobby and Sam writes a speech for the president that is intended to energize them .  His speech is undermined by the senior communication’s officer, Toby, whose encourages the president to drop in an admonishment for their lack of policing their radical wing.  The episode serves to show the depths that moderates have to go to please everyone, and the way this relatively liberal administration has to cover its butt.

What the episode really reveals, however, is how many in leadership succumb to overprotective behaviors in light of greater truths.  Without the text that was ‘dropped in’, the president gains the enthusiastic support of one constituent group, which may lead to the slight irritation of another.  With the “drop in,” on the other hand, the president irritates the one constituent group in their own home while hardly reducing the irritation of the other group.  This political move, intended to keep the peace between two groups that are occasionally at odds ends up making nobody happy, when they could have walked away with at least one group happy.

The failed leadership demonstrated in the episode wasn’t intended to demonstrate failure, but the difficult circumstances this somewhat liberal president is under in the political climate of early 2001.  I think it reveals more, however.  It reveals the problem of centralized authority under which humans, more often than not, fail to live up to the leadership we ask of them.  It reveals the problem of the perpetually defensive position; in which leaders, in an attempt to reduce stress and anxiety, actually create an environment that breeds it.  It reveals the problem with leadership in the 21^st Century is that we have few good examples from which to draw.

If there is any problem in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, it is centered squarely on the episcopate, precisely where the bishops are conditioned to want it.

I could write here about the move by the Archbishop of Canterbury to centralize authority under himself.  How he is assuming a theological position of first among equals that would make him an Anglican pope.

I could write about overseas bishops that are trying to use the instruments of communion to, at one level, direct, and at another, punish the bishops of The Episcopal Church.  These irritated bishops seem to have learned nothing from church history, and the places in which the church has attempted to act benevolently, but in practical terms, as tyrants.

I could write about bishops crossing borders and I could write about one bishop telling a second what s/he is supposed to believe and I could write about bishops writing new rules of the game in the ninth inning and I could write about bishops attempting to form an upper and a lower tier in Anglican Communion and I could write about bishops waging intercommunion war in the media, but…

I won’t.

Because the place in the mechanism where all of the pressure resides is at the bishops.  Our House of Bishops showed courage to stand up and say what the Episcopal Church stands for.  Some formally critical bishops came to General Convention and thanked the Episcopal Church for wading into the difficult waters.  Bishops are looking at local budget compromises that are neither theological or strategic, nor are they political; they are necessary. Bishops are facing a church that already looks so different than the one in which they were raised, and they watch with eyes of reservation and excitement.

And because I am angry that bishops (and standing committees) short-sightedly did not approve the election of Bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester.  And I am angry that the Archbishop is short-sightedly providing the stake that is wedging the Anglican Communion apart.  And I am angry that we are approaching a time in which all will have to decide to ratify a document that will irrevocably change the very nature of the Anglican Communion, sacrificing our revered via media in favor of autocratic rule.

And two of the finest men, who live lives of honesty and integrity, whom I serve with pleasure and excitement, have the worst job in the church.  It is a sad day when a lack of leadership on the part of the rest of the world, makes it so hard to be a bishop today.  May God bless them and the work they do, helping bring the Kingdom nearer to the people of Michigan.