Spirit Magazine

SpiritEPISCOPAL CHURCHES OF THE OZARKS• GLEANING • THE DIOCESE’S YOUNGEST RECTOR

Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri

BISHOP’S BALL

Spring 2013Volume 4, No. 3

8 SPIRIT, SPRING, 2011

Through My Eyes: Consecrating the 1,055th Episcopal BishopWRITTEN ACCOUNT BY HUGH WELSH

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GARY ZUMWALT

SPIRIT, SPRING, 2011 9

9:33 A.M. SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 2011I am late. This marks the second time I’ve left Gary

Zumwalt, my prized photographer, out in the cold at a diocesan event. My phone is ringing; I answer. “Hey Gary, I’m looking at a ‘park here’ sign as we speak (in truth, I’m on Interstate 70 and tailgating an 18-wheeler with mud flaps that say ‘Back off, Bozo’). Where are you? Need a hand with your equipment?” A pause. “Meet me at the Muehlebach.”

9:44 A.M.All seems well. Gary is smiling. “You know, the founder

of Methodism, John Wesley, died an Anglican priest.” It’s the umpteenth time Gary’s mentioned it. He insists it’s a good selling point for my fiancée who, like myself, grew up in the Methodist Church. Gary is eyeballing the front of the ballroom. “What are you thinking?” I ask. “If I’m going to get the money shot, I’m going to need a lift or a tall ladder.” The money shot: the laying on of hands. “It’s like a rugby match in there.”

9:48 A.M.There’s a lot of purple in the room: purple ties, purple

sportcoats, purple skirts, purple strands of hair. What is it about purple that’s so attractive to Episcopalians? I query Gary. He asks me what shade of purple. Apparently, there are two shades of Episcopal purple: one bluish, the other magenta-like. What’s the difference? “It’s a matter of personal preference,” Gary says. I learn that black is the color of priests and deacons, and that purple is exclusive to bishops. I suppose it’s fitting, then, there being so much purple among attendees, it being a bishop’s ordination, after all. I ask the purple-haired youth to be sure. She explains: “I dyed it cause I thought it looked cool.”

9:54 A.M.I have misplaced Gary. Upon learning there is no apparatus

to support his “money shot,” Gary was sent into what I call “trance of the photog.” Meanwhile, Bishop-elect Marty Field, clothed in a luminous white, is reviewing his steps with the Rev. Sue Sommer onstage. It reminds me of a choreographer and her dancer: Sommer’s hands, feet and face an amalgam of expression, Field a careful-to-follow pupil nodding as regularly as a bobblehead.

(Opposite) Following the consecration, it’s official: Bishop-elect is now Bishop Martin S. Field. (Top) The choir sings the “First Song of Isaiah” prior to the filling of the baptismal font by four diocesan youth.


10:09 A.M.I spy Field, his back to a column on the perimeter of the

room. He is alone; his head is tilted downward, eyes closed. His hands are wrapped like a boy clutching a butterfly. The white noise of conversations, the muted tuning of the choir, the whiplash of movement: people coming, people going, people greeting one another. And Field, humbled, his head hanging in prayer.

10:21 A.M.Gary informs me that even he, aged 65-plus with a pet

name for his typewriter, prefers his news online vs. in print. Then, an old-soul newspaperman hears his saving grace: a far-off chorus on the outskirts of the room. A song like the pre-dawn hum of mourning doves. “We’re going to sing to the Lord and make music, make music,” the lyrics tell me. I cannot locate the source of such sweet harmony. I peer towards the front. Nope. I scan the back. Nothing. Then, a woman directs my patrolling eyes to the side and downward. There, they are: eight children, their faces aglow like the breasts of robins, their clothing as colorful as a sun-lit pasture after a spring rain. Second graders from the St. Paul’s Day School (Kansas City). When the performance is complete, the children are greeted by their guardians, with whom they link hands and — a cascade of smiles — skip away.

10:40 A.M.The St. Augustine Liturgical Dancers (from St. Augustine’s,

Kansas City) trot onstage. They’re clothed in white, red sashes ribboning their waists. The music begins. It’s “The Prayer,” a duet between Celine Dion and Josh Grobin. The dancers’ arms rise from their sides slowly, tenderly, like butterflies testing their long-cocooned wings. “I pray you’ll be our eyes, and watch us where we go,” the song begins, words befitting the day that will bring a new bishop to the diocese. The dance unfolds like a ballet, the arms and fingertips undulating heavenward. Liturgical dance is an embodiment of God’s love; it is a prayer of movement. Watching these women perform — their motions synched, their engagement of melody ever-so-nuanced — brings to mind a stanza I’ll forever remember from William Butler Yeats’ “The Stolen Child”: “Come away, O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery hand in hand,/For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

(Opposite, Top) The Second Grade Singers from St. Paul’s Episcopal Day School in Kansas City. (Opposite, Bottom) The clergy of the diocese gather at the back of the ballroom before the procession. (Top) The procession begins. (Bottom) The Rev. Jerry Grabher, left, bearing the gospel, and the Rev. Bryan England, deacon of the table. Trailing them is the Rev. Dr. George Clifford, preacher.

12 SPIRIT, SPRING 2011

10:52 A.M.The banners of the diocese’s parishes are aloft. The tapestries are original to each congregation. Some, such as St. Paul’s

(Maryville), are simple: a church is outlined in black and white, a red door beckoning entrance. The year of the church’s founding, 1872, is embossed. Christ Church (Lexington) also features a banner exclaiming its history (1844), only its church is hugged by earthy greens and browns. Then there is the banner belonging to St. Alban’s (Bolivar). A brown cross is at its center, a rainbow of color streaming from it. Altogether, the procession of banners symbolizes both individuality and unanimity: 50 parishes and one religious community — from urban centers to frontier towns with memberships large and small; upper class, middle class, working class — united in the Christian spirit.

11:02 A.M.Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, her voice carrying the command of a gavel, asks if there is any objection to

continuing with the consecration. “If any of you know any reason why we should not proceed, let it now be made known.” Not a noise. Even an infant, crying a moment earlier, is silent. “Is it your will that we ordain Martin a bishop?” Half the assembly speaks before Jefferts Schori can finish, reinforcing the result of the third ballot back in October: “That is our will.”



11:35 A.M.The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, who befriended Field as a fellow Navy chaplain 20

years ago, says this about Field’s character, upon stating that the decommissioning of Destroyer Squadron 25 corresponded with Field’s departure: “The superstitious among you may want to keep him as your bishop for as long as possible.”

11:51 A.M.Before the consecration, I am struck by two observations. Coinciding with the

reading from John 21:15-19 of “Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep,’” a toddler frees himself from his mother’s care and scampers away, tripping over a hump of wire. He is saved by the awaiting arms of a stranger. The singing of the hymn “Veni Sancte Spiritus” stirs an onslaught of tears. Perhaps it’s the melodic arrangement of the syllables or the resurrection of a language regarded as “dead,” or its literal message: Come, Holy Spirit.

12:07 P.M.Jefferts Schori and the other bishops lay their hands upon the kneeling Field. I

don’t know if the “rugby” analogy is accurate: the scene reminds me of the 1987 film Wings of Desire, in which angels — in a walled Berlin — place their hands upon those whose spirit is broken, whose lives are without human compassion. The angels’ touch is one of healing and everlasting love; I can say the same of the laying on of hands. Afterwards, Field, now bishop, is gifted his mitre and crosier. Applause erupts like the boom of a cannon. Field, until this moment an archetype of modesty, smiles. He is bishop of the Diocese of West Missouri.

(Opposite, Top Left) Acolytes lead the way for the visiting bishops. The Rt. Rev. John Buchanan, the Sixth Bishop of West Missouri, is clothed in red. (Opposite, Bottom Left) The co-consecrating bishops, from left to right: The Rt. Rev. Michael Milliken, Bishop of Western Kansas; the Rt. Rev. G. Wayne Smith, Bishop of Missouri; and the Rt. Rev. Dean Wolfe, Bishop of Kansas. (Opposite, Top Right) The Ven. John McCann and the Rt. Rev. Barry Howe, Seventh Bishop of West Missouri. (Opposite, Bottom Right) The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. Jefferts Schori served as chief consecrator. (Top) Bishop-elect Martin Field kneels before Jefferts Schori and the other bishops, who pray for him. (Middle) The bishop-elect prepares to receive the laying on of hands from the consecrating bishops. (Bottom) Field is vested according to the order of bishops.

SPIRIT, FALL, 2010 11

Electing a BishopPhotos by Gary Zumwalt

10 SPIRIT, FALL, 2010


BEATING A DIFFERENT DRUMTen years ago, Sudanese refugees were offered a home in the United States, many of them settling in Midwestern cities such as Omaha and Kansas City. Many, however, lack a spiritual home. Fr. John Deng, an Anglican priest whose family was stripped from him by civil war, wants to change all that. Thanks to St. Paul’s in Kansas City, he has a place where his people can worship. At 1 p.m. each Sunday, a foreign language pervades St. Paul’s, but the message is one all Christians can recognize.

The Sudanese rely on drum beats when singing hymns.


DENG’S DREAMS DETAILED a better future. He envisioned himself as a great grower of cabbage, the caregiver of row upon row of the vegetable, an African staple. The cabbage was the church, the body of Christ. A dream also told him of his exodus: a Dinka countryman would find him at a United States airport. The visions were a source of laughter among Deng’s fellow Lost Boys until a couple of them fielded a phone call from Deng, newly arrived in Kansas City. (He was among the several thousand Lost Boys allowed to resettle in the U.S. in 2001 as agreed by the U.S. government and the United Nations.) Deng promptly handed the phone to his escort, who spoke the following words in Dinka: “I am Dinka, and I just picked up Mr. John Deng from an American airport.” Lost Boys now make up part of his congregation, which meets at 1 p.m. each Sunday at St. Paul’s in Kansas City.

Not much differentiates the 1 p.m. service from the ones that precede it, at least in the few minutes before it begins. The soft din of chatter. Children ducking and dashing through the pews as if coursing a maze. Clothing discerned for the occasion. It is in the clothing, however, that this service is different. The dark-skinned parishioners wear brilliant colors: the men sport them in their polo shirts tucked into khakis, their wrists glistening with golden watches; the women boast robes and headwraps in vibrant oranges and greens and patterns that stripe and zigzag. Then there is the instrument of choice. Not the organ, which will lie dormant for this service. A round drum several feet high is set before the pulpit. The drum is a yoking of African tribalism with Anglican tradition. It is to be the heartbeat of any hymn. Deng made the drum himself, starting from the rawest of materials: animal skins.

Deng went to Lenexa, Kansas, for the skins, one from a goat,

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY HUGH WELSH

FR. JOHN DENG ISN’T IGNORANT OF HIS DREAMS, RED HOT in their vividness. Since he was a boy, Deng’s dreams have proven prophetic. If he dreamt of someone dying, the person perished within a week. Sometimes it has been people neither old nor frail, whose death may arrive violently and without warning. His father, a casualty of Sudan‘s civil war in 1991, is an

example. Deng summons his father often; he closes his eyes to reveal his him seated inside their mud-and-waddle home, staring lovingly at his son. Deng is among the “lost boys of Sudan,” a group of 20,000 boys of Nuer and Dinka ethnicity orphaned when pro-Islamic government troops raided villages in southern Sudan, where most of the country’s Christians are concentrated. The Lost Boys were nomads, migrating thousands of miles from one refugee camp to another. Death was an unwanted companion; more than half succumbed to starvation, dehydration and disease. Deng says God never abandoned him.

the other from a cow. “They ask me what you going to do with the leather?” Deng says, carefully articulating each syllable. “I tell them I’m going to make a drum. They look at me and say ‘wow.’ Deng learned the art of drum making with another Lost Boy. “We wanted to know how so we could worship in the church.”

lt’s an arduous task in which the leather is cut, stretched and sunned. Strips of skin are twisted to make the rope that binds it. The drum’s shape and sound are different from the one customary to traditional dance, which is slender and longer and drummed from the top instead of the side. Both drum types are used by the Sudanese congregation as well as various bells brought by parishioners.

The service is conducted entirely in Dinka, save the occasional word or two in English. Fifty-nine Anglican hymns have been translated into Dinka, a keepsake of so many Dinka Christians during the civil war. The books the parishioners carry has these and more than 600 other hymns in English; Deng has 500 of them memorized. The big drum as its pulse, each song is led by Deng, whose voice has an urgency like a sentinel that has spotted a threat to the village. For him, song is the story and the sermon is the postscript. Before Deng was a priest, he was a choir teacher.

Deng wasn’t born into a Christian family. Growing up, a church down the road from his home always piqued his curiosity. What was it the people were doing that drew the ire of the government? (Only five percent of all Sudanese are Christian.) When he was nine years old, Deng entered the church. lt was his calling. Eventually, he convinced both parents to join the faith. Deng’s decision was a bold one; he was immediately at odds with many in the community, including


Women and children occupy one side of the aisle and men the other in accordance with Sudanese customs. Some of the women brought percussion instruments such as bells and rattles to the service.

teachers who presumed him less intelligent than his Islamic peers. His commitment to the faith never wavered, however. He never bent to his critics, not when he was made a refugee nor when he learned of his parents’ death.

Dreams foretold his destiny. Before he left for the United States in July 2001, Deng was a choir teacher for six years before he was ordained an Anglican deacon. In 2003, Bishop Barry Howe ordained Deng as a deacon in the Episcopal Church. Two years ago, Deng became a priest assigned to a people rather than a parish. Deng’s congregation met for a while at a vacant space owned by the Presbyterian Church until the building was condemned earlier this year and the congregation was left homeless.

More than 1,200 Sudanese live in the Kansas City area; Deng’s Sunday congregation varies between 40 and 200, the approximate number that turned out to celebrate the independence of South Sudan. “If you give them a good location, a big number will come,” Deng says. St. Paul’s in Kansas City was willing to offer that location. The congregation is a parochial mission of St. Paul’s. Whereas most mission work occurs outside the church, this one occurs inside it. “It fulfills the ethnic, language and cultural mission of the Church,” says Stan Runnels, St. Paul’s rector. “Everyone in the mission is also a member of St. Paul’s.” He says the arrival of the Sudanese congregation has been a welcome addition at St. Paul’s.

Deng embraces his newfound role as a leader in the Sudanese community. “I am honored to do what I can,” he says. Deng was part of a Sudanese delegation that visited Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in New York City shortly after South

Sudan declared its independence. To Deng, the trip wasn’t for sightseeing and a meet-and-greet. He needed to deliver a message: “I wanted her to know that we appreciated what the Church has done for the people of the Republic of Sudan, but I also wanted her to know that so many Sudanese do not have a place to worship in places like Iowa and Nebraska.” At 7,000, Omaha, Nebraska has the greatest number of Sudanese refugees in the country. Deng says Schori asked about the situation in Kansas City. “I told her that because of the Diocese of West Missouri, we are OK.”

Deng’s sermons always acknowledge the hurt branded on his people, many of whom have lost their families and friends to a civil war that persisted nearly a half century. When Deng gives his sermon, his long arms bend and sway, emphasizing key points; his vocal register drops. No one looks away. One Sunday, his sermon rested on the notion of forgiveness. How do you forgive someone who’s spat on you as a lesser being, denied you your livelihood and stole away the lives of loved ones?

In the basement of Deng’s North Kansas City home lie two paintings, each symbolic of a dream realized for so many Sudanese who now call themselves American. One reveals two scenarios involving the same young girl. In Sudan, she is married as a child to an old man whom she’ll never love. In America, she is wed to her soul mate at a later age. Another painting, displayed prominently on the wall, centers on healing. According to traditional African belief, no ailment can be cured unless the blood of an innocent is shed, a sacrifice. The painting shows a father leading his daughter away from a doctor holding a lamb in her lap, a knife ready to slit its throat. A figure is aloft. It’s Christ crucified.


The Rev. John Deng delivers a sermon centered on forgiveness.

Chas Marks, a parishioner at St. Mary’s in Kansas City, has always had the goal of bringing people closer to Jesus Christ.

“I’m someone who’s always been an active Christian,” Marks says. “I want to do everything I can.”

For the past four years, Marks has volunteered as St. Mary’s liturgist, which means he’s responsible for designing worship.

“Chas’ gifts include a remarkable intuitive, spiritual and technical understanding of what liturgy is supposed to be and how to make it happen with the resources that St. Mary’s offers,” says the Rev. Lauren Lyon, St. Mary’s rector.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Marks attended Catholic schools his whole life. He possesses a lay master’s degree in theology from St. Meinrad School in Indiana.

In a way, Marks can relate with St. Meinrad, a hermit saint murdered for his hospitality. It was the Roman Catholic Church’s inhospitality toward gay persons that provided the biggest springboard to Marks’ becoming an Episcopalian.

“I was told by a vocation director that for me to go to seminary, I would have to go through reparative therapy,” says Marks, who worked professionally in Catholic parish ministry in southern Indiana and Louisville, Ky., where he met his partner, Barry Nipp. When Nipp, a chef,

Not Your Average Layperson

BY HUGH WELSH

Chas Marks was brought up Roman Catholic. In fact, his heart was

bent on attending seminary — until he was told that because he’s

gay, he would need reparative therapy if he wanted to follow his

calling. Today, Marks volunteers as the liturgist for St. Mary’s in

Kansas City. It’s a vital role in a Church he now claims as his own.

10 SPIRIT, WINTER, 2010

was transferred to Memphis, Tenn., Marks moved with him. It was in Memphis that Marks found the Episcopal Church.

“A friend of mine was a member at Calvary Episcopal Church,” Marks says. “It was a welcome place for me.”

While Marks felt comfortable, it was not easy for him to abandon his Roman Catholic heritage.

“It was all I had known,” Marks says.But after a year and a half at Calvary, it was

official: Marks was an Episcopalian. Soon thereafter, in 2003, Marks and Nipp moved again – this time to Kansas City where Marks could be closer to family. Before he left, Marks figured he’d research a few Episcopal churches online. It wasn’t long before Marks came across one that was Anglo-Catholic in its worship yet progressive in its ministry.

“The first Sunday I went to St. Mary’s, I knew that was where I wanted to be,” Marks says.

Almost immediately, he forged a bond with the parish’s rector.

“It takes a wise pastor to recognize the skills people have and give them the freedom to exercise them,” says Marks, referring to Lyon.

According to Lyon, Marks’ approach to liturgy is profound.

“We experience on a weekly basis liturgy that moves people from ordinary space and time

“I try to do whatever I can to create memories, to make faith more real for everybody,” Marks says. “Liturgy is my passion and love; it’s something I can do for others.”

SPIRIT, WINTER, 2010 11

As the liturgist at St. Mary’s in Kansas City, Chas Marks is responsible for much of the look and feel of worship services. Photo by Hugh Welsh.

into the realm of the sacred, where narrative elements of the natural world – including human sensory experience, memory and imagination – allow worshipers to open themselves to God’s constant presence,” Lyon says.

Marks says his objective in designing liturgy may be summed up in two words: seasonal observance.

“I want each season to be a different sensory experience for parishioners in the vein of the early Church,” Marks says. “A subtle change can make a world of difference in terms of insight into the feel of a season.”

An example would be during Lent, when Marks veils all statues, places paintings on the altar and uses pinon, an incense reminiscent of the desert.

“I try to do whatever I can to create memories, to make faith more real for everybody,” Marks says. “Liturgy is my passion and love; it’s something I can do for others.”

It’s not the only thing Marks does for the welfare of other people. He is the street outreach coordinator for Synergy Services, a local

organization that helps homeless and runaway youth.

Marks is also a part of the diocesan Sexuality Listening Process Committee,

which allowed him to voice his opinions and experiences as a Christian who is gay.

“Sexuality in the church is hugely contentious,” Marks

says. “My hope is that issues such as sexuality and woman’s ordination will be an afterthought in 10 to 20 years. There is still a lot of work to be done.”


The Rt. Rev. Arthur A. Vogel died Tuesday, March 6, at age 88. In addition to being the diocese’s fi fth bishop, serving from 1973 to 1989, Vogel was an educator, theologian, author and ecumenist.

IN MEMORIAM: BISHOP ARTHUR VOGEL

THE RT. REV. ARTHUR A. VOGEL WAS born February 24, 1924, to Arthur Louis and Gladys Eirene Vogel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up in the Milwaukee area, attending Shorewood High School, where he met his future wife, Katie. He and Katie were married in 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They have three children and five grandchildren, John Vogel (Beth), their children David and Leah; Tony Vogel (Joan), their daughter Sarah; and Kit Smith (Gaylord), their children Katie and Andrew. He is also survived by his brother, John Vogel (Martha); as well as nieces and nephews, John Vogel (Carolyn), Jenny Gettel (Jim), Libby Vogel, and Jim Vogel (Ann). In 1946, Vogel received a Bachelor’s of Divinity degree from Nashotah House, a seminary of the Episcopal Church near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He went on to receive a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1948 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1952. Vogel was rector of the Church of St. John Chrysostom in Delafield, Wisconsin, from 1953 to 1957. Vogel was Williams Adams Professor of Philosophical and Systematic Theology at Nashotah House from 1952 to 1971, when he was consecrated as bishop coadjutor in the Diocese of West Missouri. He was the diocese’s bishop from 1973 to 1989. The bishop wrote 14 books, including Body Theology: God’s Presence in Man’s World (1973),

I Know God Better than I Know Myself (1989), Christ in His Time and Ours (1992), and Radical Christianity and the Flesh of Jesus (1995). Vogel was a frequent contributor to other books, journals and magazines. He was also an active participant in a variety

of ecumenical endeavors, including the Consultation on Church Union (1962 to 1966), the First and Second International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commissions (1969 to 1990), the National Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission (1964 to 1984) and the fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (1968). Vogel and Bishop Charles H. Helmsing of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph established a covenant between their cathedrals in 1974. The covenant celebrated the cordial relations between the cathedrals, which are a block apart in downtown Kansas

City, and committed them to shared works of mercy. The

bishop was buried at Nashotah House. In 1966, Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders discussed a theological basis for shared Eucharist between their churches. “If the nature of the Eucharist, the fact of Christ’s presence in it, and the means of its production can be essentially agreed upon,” Vogel wrote in a position paper, might common reception “be the primary means by which God wills to bring about ever increasing unity among His people?”

The Rt. Rev. Arthur Vogel, the diocese’s fifth bishop.Submitted photo.


“We don’t gather around the Communion Table to escape the world’s problems, but

to escape the world’s answers.”

When my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he was grief stricken. His days on this earth were few. Doubt was in his mind and on his tongue. I’ll never forget when Bishop Vogel came to our door. My father didn’t want to be bothered. Bishop Vogel said all he wanted to do was listen and be present. He remained with my father until the very end, when the cancer ultimately claimed his life. Because of Bishop Vogel, my father saw the light and never lost track of it. Thank you and God bless you. — Richard Guier

Bishop Vogel was the one to whom I tendered my resignation as librarian at Nashotah House, when he was provost there. It was a trying time there, but he was always one of the most gracious human beings I have ever met. — Lynn Feider

Art was a good friend and mentor as I became a new bishop. He will indeed be missed, he has been so for years in the House of Bishops with his calming presence and theological soundness. May Christ’s abiding presence be with all of you at this time. May Art go from glory to glory. Blessings galore! — The Rt. Rev. Roger White Former Bishop of Milwaukee

A LEGACY REMEMBERED

Among Bishop Arthur Vogel’s most popular works was Radical Christianity and the Flesh of Jesus: The Roots of Eucharistic Living. An excerpt: “God’s unfailing love for us is shown in Jesus; that is why Jesus accepts us with an acceptance deeper than our being. Jesus accepts us in thedeepest roots of our being, the roots lying beneath our consciousness, from which our conscious lives arise. Thus our acceptance by Jesus is even more than our consciousness of him; that is why we can trust our wholeselves — conscious and unconscious, known and unknown — to him.”

The orientation of this challenging yet highly readable text is foreshadowed in the title and clearly identified in the preface:

Christianity is much less about doctrinal discussion and debate than it is about daily living (living “in the f lesh,” as Vogel would say). This orientation shapes the tone (the entire text is written in the first person plural), content, and order of chapters so as to distinguish this work of sacramental theology from many others. For instance, the author begins not by outlining the church’s historical understanding of eucharistic theology, as many a sacramental work has done,

but instead with an appraisal of the value of intimate experience in lives — whether the lives of the first disciples or our own. This relational necessity was foundational to the incarnation just as it is foundational to full life in a world that can be defined as “an all-inclusive interrelation of activities and events.”

From here the author runs (not walks) his reader through many doctrines of the Christian faith. From justification to grace and from sacrifice to mercy, Vogel writes in an encapsulating, almost devotional style that led this reviewer to read the entire text in one day. Eventually the focus of the text becomes the impact of the eucharist as a lived reality rather than an attended event, instituted by Jesus in order to reveal the perfect love of God and to bring humanity to meet and be with Jesus time and again. — NATHAN D. WILSON Virginia Theological Seminary

Bishop Arthur Vogel discussing a report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic

International Commission in 1982.Submitted photo.

RADICAL CHRISTIANITY

12 SPIRIT, WINTER 2011

A Mann PossessedThe Rev. Fred Mann, rector at St. Andrew’s (Kansas City), is spooked. “In Lakota Sioux country, it’s as if everybody knows who I am and what I’m doing,” says Mann, who visited tribal lands twice in 2009 and twice again in 2010. Mann will retire at the end of July. Since October 2007, when he completed Hanbleceya – a Lakota Sioux vision quest – Mann has become a resident of a new community, both of the fl esh and of the spirit. Sioux acquaintances, normally shy toward white men, have approached him with regularity, as if longtime friends. They give identical descriptions of four guardian beings that shadow Mann; among them is a newly acquired Native American as old as humankind. The acquaintances also ask him about progress on his book. The book will detail an Episcopal priest’s exploration of the so-called “primitive” religions of Celtic and Lakota Sioux tradition. Some of the Lakota Sioux he has befriended belong to the Episcopal Church: about half of the 12,000 baptized Episcopalians in South Dakota are either Dakota or Lakota Sioux.

At 5,000 feet, White Tail Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota is a sacred place to the Lakota Sioux. Photo by the Rev. Fred Mann.


A bison grazes in a pasture at the Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Photo by the Rev. Fred Mann.

BEFORE ENTERING THE PRIESTHOOD, it was Mann – an unf linching oak of a guy – who did the spooking.

“I didn’t do anything to threaten world peace during my service” in the Navy, says Mann who, as an administrative specialist in Submarine Squadron 14, was party to spying on the Russians along the Volga River. “I can’t go into too much detail. It’s classified.”

It was the wish of the Rt. Rev. William Folwell, the Diocese of Central Florida’s bishop, that he enlist in the armed forces before entering seminary, even if he had little desire to do so. “Then, I acquiesced and enlisted,” he said.

He had passed the preliminary exams to become a naval officer (he completed seminary simultaneously) when Mann learned he was needed as curate at Christ Church in Springfield. He remained there until 1980 when he accepted the position of assistant rector at Emmanuel in Orlando, FL. He would serve as rector at two other parishes in the Diocese of Central Florida and as dean at St. James Cathedral in South Bend, IN before returning to the Diocese of West Missouri as rector of St. Andrew’s in 2004.

Mann’s interest in bridging the gap between indigenous interpretations of God and the faith of the Episcopal Church had its beginnings a decade ago, when Mann was awarded a $30,000 grant from the Lilly Foundation to explore Anglicanism’s roots in Celtic religion.

“I wanted to explore Celtic spiritual tradition, starting with an incarnational approach (the physical embodiment of the divine represented in Christianity by Jesus),” says Mann, whose sabbatical included researching, interviewing

and making pilgrimages to holy sites. “I wanted to discover their way of praying and their understanding of God and creation, which precedes but informs Christianity.”

Seven years separated Mann’s sabbatical abroad and his first visit to Lakota Sioux country.

Mann’s excursions to Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Lakota Sioux territory have fortified his philosophy that “if God created it, God’s at work in it somehow.”

In October, Mann underwent a major, four-hour shoulder replacement. Mann kept his fear of the procedure to himself. But the risks were many: infection, injury to nerves and blood

vessels, tendon failure, the understanding that one botched surgery precipitates a lifetime of corrective surgeries, the idea that he may never again have a fully functioning arm. His recovery is a month ahead of schedule.

“I prayed to the spiritual guides to give me strength for my upcoming surgery,” says Mann, his handshake firm. “I get this sense that angelic beings have been babysitting me.”

Originally from Winter Haven, FL, Mann and his wife, Denise, will continue living in Kansas City following his retirement. He

also plans to make repeated ventures into Lakota Sioux country, where he can compile research and conduct interviews for his book.

“I’ve enjoyed being in a very rich collegiality: I appreciate the friendship, the support, the sharing of ideas with fellow clergy,” Mann says. “I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve met as a priest here, and I’m still wrapped in the history and culture of this place.”

— HUGH WELSH


ARTS

The Charity of a Woodworker

Story by Hugh Welsh

In his workshop, Bud McDowell builds a wooden manger scene for a Christmas service at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. Photo by Hugh Welsh


CHARLES “BUD” MCDOWELL’S PASSION is expressed in his hands. A mosaic of calluses, the hands are largely without nails, the fingertips squashed and severed in machinery meant for metal or wood.

The hands defy the rest of McDowell: clean shaven, spectacled, a voice like molasses – slow and sweet. “While I appreciate your interest, do you have to photograph my hands?” McDowell says. “That’s a little silly.”

Yet it’s the hands that tell McDowell’s story. They birthed Edwards & McDowell, Inc., a 30-year sheet metal operation specializing in heating, cooling and ventilation that McDowell sold seven years ago. And they are a link between him and his late father, a carpenter. The centerpiece of the McDowell home is a grandfather clock built by his father, who also restored antiques. “I don’t ever remember not being around a shop somewhere,” McDowell says. Among his boyhood memories is an occasion when his dad arrived with a truck bed full of used lumber salvaged from a demolished building. Not only did the young McDowell assist in unloading it – he pried every nail from every board. “It wasn’t a matter of wanting to do it; it was a family project, and you did your share,” McDowell says.

McDowell is a beneficiary of his father’s thriftiness. He prefers working with used wood, not only due to cost but because he’s preserving history. The lectern McDowell crafted in Founders Hall at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City was made from a century-old church pew. It is one of many to which McDowell, junior warden at Grace and Holy Trinity, can lay claim, including most of the book cases and furnishings in the bookstore and the miniature furniture in the children’s chapel (a second set by McDowell is in storage). Recently, McDowell contributed an aumbry to hold the holy oils associated with Holy Baptism and the rites of healing, as well as a votive stand for Grace and Holy Trinity’s nave. While the concept behind the aumbry was borrowed from a religious supply catalog, the votive stand is McDowell’s own design. Inside the votive stand are lighted tapers in white sand symbolizing continued prayer. Previously, the tapers and white sand were housed in a washtub. “I figure it’s more fitting to the church than an old scrub tub,” McDowell says.

When the Rt. Rev. Terry White, former dean of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, was elected bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky, McDowell volunteered to construct White’s traveling crosier. He had never steamed and bent wood before, a requirement for the crosier’s trademark crook. McDowell Googled the how-tos of bending wood and, after the fifth or sixth attempt, perfected it. “It was a challenge, even for me,” McDowell says.

McDowell’s handiwork is also displayed in 500 patient rooms at St. Luke’s hospitals, although this design is rather basic – two wooden rectangles screwed together. These crosses were created by McDowell from three old church pews, then assembled and stained by the youth group at Grace and Holy Trinity during a three-week span. The idea came to McDowell by way of his wife, Candy, who volunteers at St. Luke’s, and the Rev. John Pumphrey, St. Luke’s director of spiritual wellness. “I came home to tell Bud that John wanted a Christian symbol in the rooms at the hospitals and was considering bids to have the crosses made at a price he could afford to pay,” Candy McDowell says. “Bud said it sounded simple enough. He would do it.”

Bud McDowell’s dutifulness to the diocese hasn’t gone unnoticed: at November’s convention, he received a Bishop’s Shield award for outstanding service. But Bud McDowell doesn’t consider what he does as a service. It’s a meditation. During Lent, when many seek prayer in silence, Bud McDowell will find it in the din of his wood shop, where he can commune with a fellow carpenter’s son.

The votive stand McDowell designed and built for Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. Submitted photo.

Bud McDowell’s fingers have been smashed, sliced, severed and reattached. Photo by Hugh Welsh.


ONE CHURCH

ENGAGINGTHE

WORLD

The Rev. Jason Lewis, vicar at St. Mary Magdalene (south Kansas City), had never ventured into the third world until February, when he was a part of a mission team to Haiti. The purpose of the trip was to make a difference in a country still ravaged by the earthquake one year ago. Instead, it was the people of Haiti who made the difference in him. By Hugh Welsh

Inner-city Washington D.C. during the crack epidemic: Until February, this scene illustrated the term “poverty” for the Rev. Jason Lewis, vicar at St.

Mary Magdalene (south Kansas City).He had never witnessed anything worse — until Haiti.

He had never seen packs of bare-ribbed dogs roaming the streets. Nor had he seen children, adults and old people so ill-fed, their skin draped over their skeletons like loose-fitting clothing.

“It was unlike anything I had ever seen,” Lewis says.

In January 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck 16 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The Haitian government reported 316,000 people killed, 1.8 million left homeless.

More than a year later, from February 16 to 25, a mission team including Lewis, Jim Grant (a parishioner at St. Mary Magdalene who was mission leader and logistics consultant) and four others — from St. Thomas the Apostle in Overland Park, Kansas, as well as churches in Pensacola and Panama City, Florida — visited the country. At that point, much was still in ruins: buildings reduced to rubble, bricks pried apart and scattered like pieces from an errant game of Jenga.

Tent cities abounded. Lewis admits the sight was overwhelming. How could

a small band, without a deep-pocketed person among them, make any tangible difference in such a despairing scenario? Thankfully, the objectives lay not in Port-au-Prince but Le Pretre (The Priest), a community of 1,000 people 18 miles northwest of Les Cayes, the largest city in the southern region of the country.

“I looked upon Port-au-Prince, and my jaw was agape,” Lewis says. “I looked upon Le Pretre, and I knew we could make a noticeable impact.”

Before arriving at Le Pretre, the group briefly visited an Episcopal-sponsored technology institute (the Bishop Tharp Business and Technology Institute),Church of the Holy Savior in Les Cayes, a girls’ orphanage (the Consolation Center) and Maison de Naissance, a Kansas City-based facility providing birthing services and health care for needy mothers and their children in a defined area of

southwest Haiti. The group also went to Torbeck, where they observed

firsthand the miraculous story of Pwoje Espwa. In 1998, it was a one-house shelter for 20 boys living on the street; today Pwoje Espwa is a sprawling campus, including an orphanage and vocational school serving 600 children. Lewis met with its founder, Marc Boisvert, who, among other things, corrected a common misconception.

“He told me that voodoo is a natural religion, serving

Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Submitted photo.


an important function in the lives of Haitians, and I shouldn’t fear it,” Lewis says. Boisvert informed him that it can be complementary to Christianity, not a “pagan” adversary. One of the reasons for voodoo’s negative connotation is the Roman Catholic Church’s wish to abolish it from the country before the revolution. Voodoo was created in Haiti by African slaves in the 16th century as a means for the beliefs and practices of West Africa to co-exist with the religion of their slavers.

“(Boisvert) said he knows of a lot of baptized people who practice voodoo,” Lewis says.

The group spent two days in Le Pretre assessing needs and delivering much-needed school supplies to L’Eglise Incarnation (Church of the Incarnation), a one-room building serving 80 students in grades 1 to 5. Seating is in church pews; there are no student desks, teacher desks, blackboards or bathrooms.

Early on, Lewis observed children carrying buckets from the river, the community’s water supply a quarter-mile below the school,. It was determined coliform

and E. coli bacteria tainted the water, indicating the presence of human feces — a catalyst for cholera outbreaks. An unmaintained outhouse served the entire school and church, more than 250 people. The outhouse’s filth and contamination was “beyond description,” Lewis says.

The mission team was also equipped with a medical unit, who treated as many ailing residents of Le Pretre as they could. The town hadn’t seen a doctor in several years. Lewis offered prayer for those who requested it, anointing them with oil. The line was great: Treatment had to be prioritized according to need. In June, when the mission team returns, they will again have a medical outfit in tow, offering the people of Le Pretre health care twice in one year.

The mission’s primary goals in Le Petre include drilling a well, building a multi-stall composting toilet facility and constructing a school building to accommodate 250 students in grades 1 to 6 that, in the event of another earthquake, won’t pancake like

A starving dog roams the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Submitted photo.

20 SPIRIT, SPRING, 201120 SPIRIT, SPRING, 2011

so many buildings in Port-au-Prince, which had flat concrete roofs. The cost of the project is estimated to be between $10,000 and $15,000. The ultimate goal of the project is to allow Le Pretre to be a self-sustaining community through improved health, education and vocational training.

Lewis says the mission’s purpose wasn’t about “having all the answers with chins held high.”

“Haitians have as much, maybe even more, to offer us as we can offer them,” Lewis says. “Nothing irritates me more than the ‘Taking Jesus to Haiti’ T-shirt groups.”

Lewis says Haitians have a spiritual connectedness that hasn’t been broken by self-importance and material desire. He cites the children of Le Pretre as an example, their faces light with joy as they sing hymns harmoniously without musical accompaniment, never having had any formal musical instruction and many deprived of basic reading and writing skills.

“In spite of it being a third-world country devastated by a natural disaster, I never once felt threatened; in fact, I feel more unsafe in parts of Kansas City,” Lewis says. “I think that’s a testament to the character of the Haitian people.”

In its eighth year, St. Mary Magdalene has forged a strong bond with Haiti, financially supporting Maison de Naissance and supporting educational development. This marked the third mission trip for the parish; members of St. Mary Magdalene, including Lewis and Grant, will return to Haiti in June and September.

ON MAY 22, THE REV. JASON LEWIS, VICAR at St. Mary Magdalene (south Kansas City), will compete in the Kansas City Triathlon. All money to sponsor him will be sent to the project in Le Pretre, Haiti.

TRIATHLON FOR LE PRETRE

The mission team visited Pwoje Espwa in Torbeck, Haiti. In 1998, it was a one-house shelter for 20 boys living on the street; today Pwoje Espwa includes an orphanage and vocational school serving 600 children. Submitted photos.


(Top) The main road leading to Le Pretre, Haiti. A poor community, Le Pretre is without access to clean running water and sanitary latrines. (Bottom) The mission team poses with a group of children attending school at L’Eglise Incarnation (Church of the Incarnation), a one-room building serving 80 students in grades 1 to 5 in Le Pretre, Haiti. Submitted photos.

16 SPIRIT, SUMMER, 2012

Forty-seven percent of the Episcopal Church’s budget is devoted to overhead. Is such a fraction appropriate for a church whose corporate identity is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary

Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America? At least a third of the Episcopal Church’s dioceses, including West Missouri, don’t think so. By Hugh Welsh

STRUCTURAL REFORM

Calls for structural reform in the Episcopal Church stemmed from challenges familiar to all mainline churches: declining

membership and, in turn, declining finances; demographic shifts; cultural change. The matter of how to restructure the Episcopal Church was muddled, however, until last September when the Rt. Rev. Stacy Sauls, the Church’s chief operating officer, presented the House of Bishops with an alternative budget emphasizing mission rather than administration and governance. “Much mission work comes through local efforts and budgets,” says Channing Horner, a parishioner at St. Paul’s (Maryville) and lay deputy to General Convention. “The budget passed by General Convention is intended to deal with whatever administration and governance we deem necessary. And that leads to the important second matter of exactly how much administration and of what type we think is required to enable all of us to work toward furthering the Kingdom in an inspired and coherent fashion.” Sauls told his fellow bishops of how the Better Business Bureau holds that a non-profit’s budget should cap overhead expenses at 35 percent of its budget. Currently, mission accounts for 53 percent of the Church’s budget that, in 2011, was around $35 million. Twenty-six percent of the budget is allocated to administration and almost 21 percent to governance, including 7.6 percent to General Convention. Churchwide diocesan income is 13 percent of the Church’s budget. Diocesan incomes peaked in 2007, but have been in decline ever since. “What if we reversed canonical priority

and funded mission first?” Sauls asked the House of Bishops. Sauls then supplied dioceses with a model resolution they could submit to General Convention. “This is not a bishop-imposed [initiative],” Sauls said. “This is testing to see if there’s a grassroots support for this kind of thing.” One third of the Church’s dioceses (including West Missouri) filed resolutions favoring structural reform. “There seems to be desire for structural change,” Horner says. “The question is how to accomplish it and how much we must spend to discern and

establish an appropriate new pattern. The Committee on Structure has a large task ahead of it.” Most of the dioceses’ resolutions adopted Sauls’ model, including West Missouri. Three dioceses — Oklahoma, Oregon and West Tennessee — submitted different resolutions. Oklahoma is calling for

a special commission on Missional Structure and Strategy (rather than a special General Convention) and for 2012’s General Convention to “present a plan to the Church for reforming its structures, governance, administration and staff, thereby facilitating this Church’s faithful engagement in Christ’s mission to the world.” Oregon is asking the Standing Commission on the Structure of the Church to continue its study and to develop recommendations to be presented at the next General Convention for further action. West Tennessee is proposing “an ad hoc special commission on Missional Structure and Strategy” with membership elected by each of the provinces

SPIRIT, SUMMER, 2012 17SPIRIT, SUMMER, 2012 17

“Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner put it this way. The Church has two natures: charismatic and institutional. The charismatic is attuned to the will of God; the institutional organizes to carry out that will. While the charismatic should always predominate, it is more often the case that the institutional overtakes the charismatic and takes charge. Bishop Sauls has hit the theological nail squarely and robustly on the head. Dude! Good job!”— Fr. Bob Marsh (St. Francis in-the-Field in Ponte Vedra, Florida)

“I am excited that the conversation is being opened up in such a public way. The conversation about ‘restructuring’ is already taking place in congregations in the Diocese of Vermont from the smallest congregations to the most thriving. And the challenges are exciting to people because change means we give ourselves the gift of growing and thriving even more. Once we let go of the notion that the ‘present structure’ is the only way, or is sacred, or the best way, the door is open to sharpening our understanding of the new ministry goals and objectives that await us. Only then can we create a new organization that serves the newly defined objectives.” — Mtr. Angela Emerson (Diocese of Vermont)

“Survival of the fittest. Over the years, we have witnessed many such changes in the ‘environment’ into which the Church has been called to proclaim the Gospel and yet the Church has changed very little – change which has come much too slowly and certainly not enough to remain the dominate force God intended it to be in order for it to live out the Gospel message announced by Jesus in the synagogue on that Sabbath day when he stood to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord…has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The Church must find a way to become all that God has intended for her and therefore must either adapt or die. That’s the basic task faced by all living organisms throughout the annals of time. Mere survival has never been good enough. Mere survival is not an option for any living organism either in society or in nature. The old needs to pass away, and we need to make things new again.” — Fr. Johnnie Ross (St. Raphael’s in Lexington, Kentucky)

(one lay person, one clergy person and one currently serving active bishop from each) and that it present its recommendations at a special convention prior to 2015. Sauls’ model would have General Convention charge a special commission with “presenting a plan to the church for reforming its structures, governance, administration and staff to facilitate this church’s faithful engagement in Christ’s mission.” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson would appoint the commission’s members. The commission would present its recommendations to a special meeting of the House of Bishops and House of Deputies before the 78th General Convention in 2015. In an interview with the Episcopal News Service, Sauls said that, in addition to reducing the cost of administration, he proposed that General Convention meet every four or five years instead of three and a reduction in the size of both houses. “It is not as simple as cutting up the existing pie the right way,” Sauls told the Episcopal News Service, “but to make the whole pie grow larger.” Sauls said that any Episcopalian would agree that mission ought to be prioritized. “One of my fundamental faith beliefs is that the people of the Episcopal Church want to fund the church’s engagement in God’s mission, and I think that if they were confident that that [engagement] is what they were giving to, I think the size of our resources would increase,” he said. Horner concurs with Sauls’ statement. “My feeling is that possibly it is not first the money pie that needs to grow larger,” he says. “If our hearts for mission grow larger, we will find ways to get the jobs done — including coming up with funds in times of strained finances.” At the Executive Council’s April meeting, Sauls said he wanted to talk with the council and the church “about putting everything on the table and rebuilding the church for a new time that has no precise historical precedent...This is not about the panic of our declining numbers but about how we strengthen what is working best out there and make what is strong stronger so that the strong can serve the less-than-strong.”

CHURCHWIDE OPINIONFrom the Episcopal News Service’s online message boards


Before, Elizabeth Flanigan (Grace Church, Carthage) was a college graduate transitioning from the dormitories to a house, where she would live with her longtime boyfriend, Jeb Cook. The Joplin tornado destroyed the home and a lot of memories, not yet unpacked. But not her resolve.By Hugh Welsh

It was the first day of a new life. The night before, Elizabeth Flanigan (Grace Church, Carthage) had graduated from Missouri Southern State University.

Sunday would be spent relocating her belongings from a dormitory to a house, where she would be living with her fiancé, Jeb Cook. She had borrowed his Jeep for the purpose.

When the sirens aired, she didn’t panic. She unloaded the items from the Jeep into the house. Her fiancé called. “Weird weather,” he said. “They’re saying heavy thunderstorms. Possibly tornados.” She needed to pick Cook up from work, anyway. Why not leave a little early and wait the storm out with him? “Probably nothing will happen,” he assured her. While en route, the sirens wailed again. Flanigan observed people outside their homes, gesturing at something in pursuit of the Jeep. She parked in front of a vacant building next to Games N Things, where Cook guided her to the bathroom. They stayed there, along with a coworker of Cook’s, until the lights dimmed and the winds swelled. Air blew in through the ventilation shaft rather than out of it. When it was over, five or ten minutes later, Flanigan and the others left the bathroom to find the store intact. “We thought maybe a big gust of wind had knocked out the power,” she says.

Outside told a different story. Cook’s Jeep entombed beneath an I-beam from the punched out facade next door; across the street, an auto dealership was recast as a junkyard. They hitched a ride from a passerby. “I thought once we got home, everything would be alright,” Flanigan says. The trip turned more hellish by the minute: downed trees and utility poles, roofs torn from houses, the reek of natural gas stronger and stronger. A tire thumped flat. The driver continued onward, over curbs, over tree limbs and lawn until he could drive no farther. They were dropped downstreet from their house.

NEWBEGINNINGS


Jeb Cook’s Jeep was crushed by debris from the tornado but was still driveable before undergoing repairs. Opposite page: (Top) Cook and Elizabeth Flanigan, who is pictured holding their injured Great Dane, found their home destroyed. (Middle) Cook and Flanigan’s neighbors’ house. (Bottom) As Cook and Flanigan seek a vet, a fire rages in the distance. Photos by Jeb Cook.

THEY WERE GREETED not by their dogs, a Great Dane and a Pomeranian, but trees ghoulishly warped to nubs. Five steps led to a main floor sandwiched under a roof without any exterior walls to support it. “The top half of our house was gone,” Flanigan says. Cook clamored after the dogs but got no response. Flanigan was mute, disabled by what she witnessed. She heard a wimper. The Great Dane’s hind leg was snagged under the wood heap that was the garage, hurled 20 feet from where it should have been. Flanigan and Cook were able to free the leg, but there was a compound fracture and the dog was losing large quantities of blood. The dog needed medical attention soon, or it would die. She presumed the Pomeranian dead. Flanigan and Cook met up with first responders who told them their priority was saving human lives, so they set out on foot for a vet hospital they knew to be several blocks away. As they walked, the dog limping behind them (it was too heavy to carry), they saw people ambling along sobbing or shrieking pet names like Rover and Rusty. “lt was Zombieland,” Flanigan says. In the distance, a house fire raged. They saw a woman whose shoulder was wrapped in a towel stained red; a man in a pickup bed was screaming “hurry up,” the graying figure next to him motionless. Cook thought he saw human remains staked to treetops. He didn’t look long enough to be sure. The vet hospital wasn’t spared. No one was there. They flagged a ride from a guy willing to surrender his shirt as a tourniquet for the dog. The next animal hospital was untouched and operating on reserve power. While the dog’s foot was amputated, they tried contacting family. It took several hours, as cell service was intermittent. They stayed at their parents’ that night, Flanigan in Carthage and Cook in Joplin. Sleep came for neither of them. Beyond their bedrooms was the noise of a citywide crime scene, helicopters overhead and

convoy after convoy of emergency vehicles. A haze descended over the days that followed. Flanigan says she didn’t do a whole lot. What was there to do? She salvaged what she could from the house and volunteered at a shelter established at Missouri Southern. Family that Flanigan would seldom see were mainstays, helping Flanigan’s grandmother, whose house was obliterated. She and her husband survived in a closet between the bedroom and garage, both of which were swept away. Rain was an around-the-clock occurrence. In the rubble, she found her high school class ring and shoes. Much of her clothing couldn’t be saved. Flanigan and Cook considered moving to Springfield or Tulsa, somewhere not tainted by hurt.

Four days after the tornado, Flanigan got a call. Someone had found her Pomeranian, its dog tag giving Flanigan’s name and phone number. She received a donation: a suitcase full of clothing. Most of the clothing didn’t fit, but it was the gesture that mattered. The poor cell service in the weeks that followed gave her cause to meet with friends, exchanging stories of terror, courage and hope. Flanigan says the Joplin community is more attentive than before. “When you talk, people listen. They really listen,” she says.

Cook still works at Games N Things and is a student at

Missouri Southern while Flanigan works at the Cow Fairy deli. She is seeking a job in communications. They live in another house, rented to them by Cook’s mother. They are expecting twin boys in March. “Joplin is home,” Flanigan says.

Flanigan’s drive to and from work takes her through the bleakest area of Joplin, which, at night, is like “a remote part of Kansas,” she says. One time, while driving to work at daybreak, she noticed a tree lopped to a stump. Branches were sprouting from it, green leafed. She’ll persevere. And so will the town.


Insight into three diocesan parishes’ search for a new rector. By Hugh Welsh

THE SEARCH FOR THE RIGHT REVEREND

In 2003, Linda Robertson chaired the search committee at St. John’s (Springfield) that resulted in the installation of the Rev. Jerry Miller as rector.

With Miller’s retirement in June 2012, Robertson was again approached to chair the committee. “One always learns in a search process,” Robertson says. To obtain congregational input, the Search Committee devised a 13-item questionnaire that asked ranking questions (varying from extremely important to not important) about such topics as lectionary-based sermons, weekday services, missionary support, administrative skills, community involvement, Christian education and church growth, as well as asking open-ended questions. The survey was distributed after both Sunday services, and the results were posted on the church’s bulletin board. The feedback was crucial as the committee answered questions for the parish’s Ministry Profile for the Episcopal Church’s Office for Transition Ministry, which assists individuals (lay and ordained), congregations and institutions in the discernment process. Bishop Field is the Discernment Officer for the diocese. The parish’s profile is available to individuals who are seeking a position as rector, and information from the profile is also used for computer searches to help the committee locate ministry profiles of individuals who are seeking positions. The congregational input and information from the parish profile are apparent on the church’s Web site, which includes a link to the rector search page. In a straightforward format, the page outlines the congregation’s community and demographics as well as its liturgical style and missionary objectives. There’s even a pitch to prospective rectors: “The parishioners

of St. John’s are searching for a committed spiritual leader and counselor who is grounded in the Anglican tradition of worship. Our diversified membership is united in the love of the liturgy with all the ‘smells and bells.’” “We didn’t want a Web page that was too complex or hard to access,” Robertson says. The Rev. Ross Stuckey, the former rector of St. James’ in Springfield, is the supply priest at St. John’s. Stuckey occasionally substituted before Miller’s retirement. Robertson says Stuckey’s role isn’t limited to Sunday sermons. “He’s busy celebrating at St. John’s at other times through the week,” she says. “Whether it’s Wednesday Mass before supper or the Thursday healing service, the people of St. John’s know Fr. Stuckey well.” The deadline for applications was December 31;

in addition to a letter of interest, resume and his or her Office for Transition Ministry profile, applicants

were to provide short answers to three questions: why do you wish to come to St. John’s; what are the most important skills you could bring to St. John’s; and in what ways can you help a church to grow? According to Robertson, the committee would interview selected candidates by speaker phone, presenting a short list to the vestry. The vestry would then determine who would be visited in his or her home environment, including on-site interviews and attendance at a worship service led by the candidate. Candidates the vestry decided to invite to continue the process would be asked to visit the parish and would also be interviewed by the bishop. Finally, the vestry would take the matter to a vote. Any call has to be pre-approved by the bishop. Robertson says St. John’s hopes to have a new rector in place this summer. “Calling a new rector is not a simple procedure,” Robertson says. “You have to cross the ts and dot the is.”

ST. JOHN’S (SPRINGFIELD)

“Calling a new rector is not a simple procedure,”says Linda Robertson, search committee chair.


In the 1950s, Christ Church in St. Joseph was a bustling congregation. As St. Joseph’s prominence declined, so has membership in all its downtown

churches, Christ Church included. In 1978, average Sunday attendance was 135. It is half that 24 years later. A year and a half into his three-year tenure as interim rector, the Rev. Charles Caskey has added faces in the pews: average attendance is up to 65 from 55. But, if the church is to hire a full-time rector, more growth is needed, according to Caskey. “Christ Church has a core of parishioners who work hard each week to provide a vibrant worshiping community as well as outreach, but we need at least 10 to 12 more giving families,” says Caskey, who’s previously served as interim rector at churches in California, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. While his contract expires in July 2014, Caskey said he’d be willing to remain longer if necessary. “It all depends on how hard (Christ Church’s parishioners) are working.” A hefty portion of Christ Church’s budget for programs and maintenance is culled from an endowment, as many churches are apt to do. “We can’t continue to rely on an endowment,” Caskey says. Caskey says part of his challenge is to disrupt what he coins the “Cheers” effect. “Some folks are satisfied being a small church,” Caskey says, “where everybody knows my name.” According to Caskey, Christ Church’s congregation must not only grow but get younger, its electronic communications must improve (including a renovated Web site and a Facebook page) and the church building must become more energy efficient and better utilized. This could potentially include supplementing the church’s costly boiler system with a solar-powered alternative, reconfiguring the second and third floors for handicap access and housing a student-resident group on the third floor. “I’m hoping that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll be ready to get moving on the rector search process,” Caskey says. “But, right now, it’s not in the cards: we have too much work to do to grow the parish.” According to Caskey, Christ Church’s resurgence hinges partly on a revitalized downtown St. Joseph. “We pray that others will want to join us as the downtown becomes a destination once again,” Caskey says. “Our mission and ministry are just too important to the city as well as our families.”

CHRIST CHURCH (ST. JOSEPH)

Once the Rev. Fred Mann’s retirement as rector was official June 30, 2011, St. Andrew’s (Kansas City) promoted from within. The Rev. John

Spicer, associate rector at the parish since April 2005, would be Mann’s replacement. Spicer, however, wasn’t the new rector. Not yet. Per then-Bishop Barry Howe’s suggestion, Spicer and the parish agreed to a one-year period in which Spicer would serve as St. Andrew’s priest-in-charge. If the relationship didn’t work as well as hoped, Spicer would have another year as priest-in-charge and both parties would discern new paths for themselves. If it did, he would become rector. “We knew Fr. John was a great priest,” says Stephen Rock, St. Andrew’s senior warden. With an average Sunday attendance of about 350, St. Andrew’s ranks among the diocese’s largest parishes. “But there is a difference between being a priest and a rector at a church of this size.” Before he was priest-in-charge, Spicer delivered a sermon in which he made his intentions clear to everyone in the pews: “I don’t want to be here if you’re hiring a caretaker.” According to Rock, “What made the discernment work was that Fr. John was exceptionally clear about the things he would change and the things that he would not change. The priest-in-charge period would include an evolution in mission and clear changes in leadership culture, but most every other aspect of our life together would remain the same. At the end of the year, we all knew how it felt to be together.” In June 2012 — after “we took him for a test drive for a year,” Rock says — a unanimous decision was reached: Spicer would be St. Andrew’s rector.

ST. ANDREW’S (KANSAS CITY)

St. Andrew’s rector: the Very Rev. John Spicer. Submitted photo.

A TIMELINE

In late January, the Search and Nomination Committee provided an online survey to gather information for the bishop profile, which should be completed by mid-February.

Profiling a Bishop

SURVEYSAYS


MID-FEBRUARY

MID-MARCH

APRIL/MAY

JUNE/JULY

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

MARCH, 2011

Bishop profile complete; nominations open

Nominations closed

Candidate visits

Screening and background checks of potential candidates

Deadline for petition nominees; background checks

Clergy/lay leaders’ retreat before walkabouts; walkabouts (opportunities for members of the diocese to get to know the

candidates) held two weeks prior to election

Election of new bishop at 8th Annual Gathering and 121st Diocesan Convention Nov. 5

and 6; consent process

Consecration of new bishop


INDIA PHILLEY TURNED 90 LAST DECEMBER AND IS A RESIDENT AT

BISHOP SPENCER PLACE, A SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY IN KANSAS CITY. BUT DON’T EXPECT

THIS 50-YEAR MEMBER OF THE DIOCESE TO SLOW DOWN.

HER WILL WON’T ALLOW IT.

A Walk — or Run! — with India

STORY AND PHOTOS BY HUGH WELSH

Pictured inside the Chapel of the Epiphany at Kansas City’s Bishop Spencer Place, India Philley continues to not only be an active Christian in faith — but also in practice.


India Philley is as fleet of foot as a robin in pursuit of a worm.

“Good afternoon,” she chirps to passersby during her mile-long daily walks through Bishop Spencer Place – a nurse, a cook, the receptionist.

Then she encounters a man leaning on his walker, his face drooped in resignation.

“Keep moving,” Philley tells him. “Always keep moving.”

In early December, Philley celebrated her 90th birthday. The turnout was testament to her popularity both at her new place of influence (she moved into Bishop Spencer Place, a senior independent living community in Kansas City, in 2007) and her former one, Christ Church in Springfield.

“I do miss parish life a great deal,” says Philley, who became a member of Christ Church in 1966.

In a recently published book about Christ Church’s history, no name is mentioned more than hers. While a copy occupies her coffee table (she says she’s been gifted a dozen copies by friends), she isn’t one to reminisce too much.

“I don’t think about the past,” Philley says. “I think about what’s going on now and in the future.”

Yet Philley’s past cannot be ignored.“India, my beloved friend, has a heart for ministry and

mission and knows that the Church has a high calling on earth as the Body of Christ,” says the Rev. Kenneth Chumbley, rector of Christ Church. “She is a devoted Episcopalian.”

For 40 years, Philley was a member of St. Mary’s Guild (a group devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Incarnation of our Lord); for 30 years, she belonged to the Altar Guild; for an 11-year stint, she was the church’s treasurer; and she’s served on the Vestry three times. But perhaps most significant to Philley was her involvement with the Christ Church Foundation, which she helped

found and spearhead. The foundation receives property contributions, monetary donations, grants and gifts of title, which are invested and allocated according to donor instructions.

On the diocesan level, Philley’s list of accomplishments are of equal, if not greater, stature: she has been a member of the Diocesan Council, Standing Committee and Commission on Ministry (“one of my life’s great joys,” she says), and she’s chaired the Department of Stewardship along with the Credentials Committee and Resolutions Committee at Diocesan Convention. She was a lay deputy at the 2003 General Convention.

In June 1995, Philley was asked to join the Diocesan Finance Committee, which oversees the budget and advises the Diocesan Council.

“They thought it’d be a fun thing for me to do,” says Philley, whose term limit has long expired. “I’ve never been asked to leave.”

Crunching numbers has always come easily for Philley, who possesses an MBA from Drury University in Springfield. She worked for years as a certified public accountant for firms in Los Angeles and Chicago.

For 13 years, she taught accounting at Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State University). As a founding member of the Springfield chapter of the American Society of Women Accountants, she inspired entry-level female accountants to enter management.

But before all that, she was a high school math teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in the mountains of North Carolina, having earned her teaching degree from East Carolina Teachers College. She left her position after two years – not because she didn’t love the kids or the challenge, but because of the meager pay.

“I was raised believing I could make a more reasonable salary,” says Philley, who accepted a corporate job in Baltimore.

India Philley serves on the Altar Guild of the Chapel of the Epiphany at Bishop Spencer Place in Kansas City.


By age 7, both of Philley’s parents were dead. Her mother’s youngest sister adopted her as her own.

“She was very strong in her principles and morals,” Philley says. “She had high expectations of her children and of me – and we knew it.”

Philley was raised a person of faith, attending worship at a nearby Baptist church every Sunday. She knew the Scriptures so well she was once asked to conduct a funeral while she was a teacher.

She met and married William Bennett Philley in L.A. before moving to Chicago and then Springfield, the hometown of her husband, who had been a member of Christ Church. India Philley had been active at the Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Chicago.

“I fell in love with the liturgy, the music, the priests and their sermons,” says Philley, who belonged to the church’s Women’s Auxiliary and St. Martha’s Guild. “When I got to Springfield, I was a faithful Episcopalian.”

Christ Church became a kind of second home for Philley – its clergy and parishioners an extension of her family, which includes two sons and one stepdaughter.

When Philley lost her husband in June 1978, they were the support she needed.

“I’ve been blessed with great friends at Christ Church,” Philley says.

Chumbley likes to think of himself – as well as the church and diocese – as the blessed party.

“She knew everyone in the parish, knew the books better than anyone and watched the money closer than the Government Accounting Office,” Chumbley says.

In 2004, she was the recipient of the Bishop’s Shield. It is the culmination of an “exemplary life of lay ministry in action,” the inscription reads.

That was six years ago.Today, Philley remains an impassioned member

of Daughters of the King, a women’s organization committed to a rule of prayer and service.

The day Philley arrived at Bishop Spencer Place, she asked to join the worship committee and Altar Guild.

Apparently, her reputation preceded her. The assignment had already been made.

India Philley plays a role on the committee that oversees the courtyard garden at Kansas City’s Bishop Spencer Place. “The garden is a source of happiness for many people,” she says.

Spirit Magazine

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