The following are the opening remarks of President of the House of Deputies Julia Ayala Harris on June 13, 2023. This is at the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church, meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, through June 15, 2023.

Good morning, Executive Council, churchwide staff, and our distinguished guests. 

About the Presiding Bishop

Before I begin my opening remarks, I need to acknowledge that this morning is different. 

I’ve joked in the past that it’s always hard to follow the presiding bishop at these meetings, and yet today I so wish that he were here with us in person. I miss his prayerful and catalyzing presence among us.

This distance has reminded me that our church–our common life together–is only as strong as our relationships with one another. It is our greatest asset in ministry and mission of our church. Our presiding bishop is my colleague, my partner in ministry and sometimes my partner in crime, and my brother in Christ. 

Let us pray together for our leader and our brother. 

Prayer for the Presiding Bishop

The Lord be with you,

Creator God,

As we come to together this morning, we thank you for the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit throughout our time together. We ask that you bless us with your wisdom and grace as we go about our work.

We pray for our presiding bishop, asking for your healing touch upon our brother, Michael. We know that you are the great physician, and we trust in your power to heal and restore.

We pray for all the leaders of our church, that they may be filled with your spirit and inspired to lead with compassion and courage. May they always seek your will and follow your path.

We pray for all those who serve in our church, that they may be strengthened in their faith and empowered to share their love with others. May they be a lamp on a hill and a source of hope for those in need.

We pray for our communities, that they may be filled with your peace and justice. May we work together to build a world that reflects the love and compassion of Jesus.

And finally, we pray for ourselves, that we may be open to your guidance and willing to follow wherever you lead. May we be filled with your love and grace, and may we always seek to serve you in all that we do.

We ask all of this in your holy name. Amen.

Thank you, everyone. Please continue to hold the presiding bishop in your prayers as we conduct the work of the church this week and travel to our many places in the field. 

There is nothing ordinary that happens during this season

We already have done this, but I want to do it again, I want to welcome the Rev. Lester Mackenzie to his first Executive Council meeting. Thank you, Lester, for saying yes to serving as our chaplain. You are already an answer to prayer. 

As we approach the work of this particular council meeting, we come freshly rooted in the post-Pentecostal season. Personally, I’m not a fan of calling it “Ordinary Time.” Because there is nothing ordinary that happens during this season. 

This time of year, we hear in Scripture about the early formation of our church—how Christ, died and rose again, commissioned his followers and sent the Holy Spirit to be their guide. 

In this season, ignited by the fire of the Spirit, we see how early believers gathered from all over, all in beloved community, to figure out what had just taken place, what Jesus had intended for them, and what all of this could mean in a post-resurrection world. 

The church was being born, and it was discerning who it would be. What our identities would be as followers of Jesus Christ and the Way of Love.

Commissioned to the ministry of embodying love and action

And at the churchwide level, we sometimes talk a little too much about numbers, numbers of people in the pews, and not enough about the fruit of our ministries. 

We worry about the dreaded “D” word—decline—as though finishing the work that Jesus left for us to do on Earth was measured in Average Sunday Attendance or by the available funds in the parish bank account. Now don’t get me wrong—these things are important, of course, and we need to talk about them, especially in a place like Executive Council. But, just as the disciples were commissioned in the early days of the church, we are commissioned now—we are called by Jesus into the crucial ministry of embodying love and action in our communities. 

And today we will take a look at what the data says about our beloved church. We will take a look at the challenges facing our local congregations on the ground, what defines a healthy congregation, and how will we go about discerning our identity as a church today. This work matters. It matters a lot!

And I do not want us to lose sight of the big picture. Because our role on Executive Council is to keep that wide-angle lens on our beloved denomination. 

Significant marker of health in congregations

And so later today, we will hear from Molly James, Meghan Froehlich, and Matthew Price about survey data surrounding congregational health. One of the major themes that has emerged from the data that is a significant marker of health is literally the feeling of pride in congregational identity. Pride in what we accomplish together, not the size of the congregation. Pride in belonging to a common family, not the size of the endowment.

Healthy congregations, a healthy church body, are marked by feelings of intentional community, hospitality and care for one another, and diversity—a wealth of voices—amongst its members. These signposts, along with a clear mission and purpose, reveal a congregation that is alive with optimism and relentless hope—empowering and fueling ministries that truly change people’s lives both within the parish and in the wider community that it serves. 

So what would our church look like if we took time to define our identities, to figure out who we are and what transformational ministries we can offer the world? What if we did all of this with the true and unwavering belief in the abundant love of Jesus who provides for all of our needs? 

Embrace the abundant blessings given to us

My friends, we, The Episcopal Church, we are being called to live into the fires of Pentecost—and not ordinary time. The Spirit is alive, and she’s here with us now, calling us deeper! 

Let us start by believing what we know to be true: that we are being called to let go of our scarcity mindset and embrace the abundant blessings that the Holy Spirit has given us. That we already have exactly what we need to seek the Kingdom together.

We are being called to take an honest look at ourselves and define who we are:

• What our identities will be.
• What we value.
• What our mission is, together.

Because this identity and mission reveal a path that Christ is calling us to follow right now, in this season of the  church. And we cannot follow this path if we are consumed by, or distracted by, or we focus on scarcity and not abundance, if we focus on what we do not have. We lose sight of the path where Jesus is calling us to go, to travel lightly with our companions by our side. 

Scouts survey the Promised Land

You all remember Numbers 13 and 14, you remember Numbers 13 and 14, you know where I’m going, right? And I don’t mean the numbers like 13 and 14. I’m taking about the Hebrew Bible, right, Numbers 13 and 14.

So, in Numbers 13 and 14, Moses and Aaron are with the Israelites in the desert at the very end of their journey, they think, right? They’ve been living on manna, which is a gift that they’re grateful for. And then Moses, in his amazing managerial style that he has, decides to send out 12 princes, or spies. I prefer to call them scouts. So if you will allow a laywoman, without any training, to call them scouts today, I appreciate it. We have consent on that, right? OK.

Prepare TPS reports

So the 12 scouts go out, and they go to Canaan. And they look at the land. They have been told by Moses, again, a great manager, “Go, see what the land is like. Is there fruit? What does it look like? Is the land good? Can you have cattle on it? What are the people like? Are they strong, or are they weak? Can we take them? And come back with your TPS reports”—Gen Xers know what I’m talking about, right? “Come back with those.”

And Moses hints that he only wants to hear good news. It’s kind of fascinating. So the 12 scouts go out, they go to the land of Canaan; they’re gone 40 days or so, you know, biblical numbers. They come back, and what happens? Right? Of the 12 scouts, 10 come back saying, “Yeah, the land’s pretty good, you know; there’s a bunch of grapes—isn’t that awesome, we can make wine,” Right? “However, the people are too strong. It’s bad, this is not the Promised Land, we can’t go there. This is not for us.”

Groan around the campfires

And so what happens? The Israelites start groaning around the campfires. “No, but we thought this would be our Promised Land. We’re tired of manna. We are tired of this. We want to get out of here. Let’s just go back to Egypt. Egypt was so much better than where we are right now.”

So then what happens? So Caleb and Joshua stand up all bravely and they offer a dissenting report. “The land is good.” I don’t like the whole “we can take the people” that’s fine – it’s there in the Bible. There’s a lot in the Bible we don’t like. “We can conquer the people. We have proof, we have milk and honey, which means it can grow crops, and we can have livestock. This is the Promised Land. God is calling us to be here.”

And what do the Israelites do? They moan and they groan and they fret and they tear their clothes. I mean, they don’t even have robes, why are they tearing them? … There’s no, like, shopping mall to buy a new robe.

So what’s happening here? Why are the Israelites whining and crying and fretting? And not listening to the two reports from Caleb and Joshua? Because the Israelites have a mindset of scarcity and not abundance. Because of their disbelief and fretting, the Israelites, except for Caleb and Joshua, had to wait for another generation before they could see the Promised Land. My friends, let us not spin our wheels fretting only to lose a generation of Episcopalians by letting this opportunity pass us by. 

Do not lose a generation of church leaders

Let us not lose a generation of church leaders because we clung too dearly to our addiction to scarcity rather than the full embrace of God’s abundance. 

As we reinvent ourselves, we become more authentic and honest versions of ourselves. We become more authentic when we truly understand our common mission together. We become more honest when we examine our origins and intentionally seek to do better on behalf of the one who sent us. 

Matters for this Executive Council meeting

At this meeting of Executive Council we will discern, debate, and vote on a number of resolutions that will bring us closer to our more authentic and honest versions of ourselves as we focus on accessibility, inclusivity, and safety.

Governance and Operations

The Joint Standing Committee on Governance and Operations will be presenting us a resolution to modify the language found in two trusts that date back to the 1800s. These trusts detail restrictions that exclusively benefit individuals based on their race and perpetuate systems of white supremacy. Such limitations contradict our dedication to dismantling racism and fostering real racial justice, reconciliation, and healing within the church. By changing the language in these trusts, we undertake holy truth-telling, reckoning with our past while striving to make our future and present more just and inclusive. 

Finance

The presiding bishop and I are thrilled that the Joint Standing Committee on Finance will be considering a proposal from the Task Force to Advise the Church on Denominational Health Plans. They have worked to discern an equitable way forward to provide for the health and wellness of our clergy and lay leaders across the United States. This issue is fundamentally about the care and keeping of our people, our church workers, and the communities that we serve.

We need good health and wellness for our employees as a matter of justice, and we need to provide them with accessible benefits. We must also be honest about the financial impact that our current methods of providing health benefits to our clergy and lay leaders is having on our congregations—an impact that has prevented many congregations from being able to contemplate the idea of employing full-time clergy or lay ministers. 

This impact on the availability of professional lay and clergy leaders impacts our mission and our witness in the church. These are among the many reasons why the presiding bishop and I both support the plan coming from this task force.

LGBTQ+

Finally, we are gathered here in June, Pride Month. In this season where we are experiencing a barrage of attacks and efforts against our LGBTQ+ siblings, so it is especially important that while we celebrate we also take action.

We must continue to intentionally extend our arms of inclusion and safety so that we are  truly a welcoming community for everyone. For decades our General Convention resolutions have called us to uphold the principles of safety and human dignity for all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We draw inspiration from these General Convention resolutions that have consistently emphasized the importance of affirming, reaffirming, and respecting the LGBTQ+ community and those who identify as members of it. These resolutions reflect our commitment to stand in solidarity with marginalized individuals and advocating for their rights.

This week, the Joint Standing Committee on Mission Beyond The Episcopal Church will be considering a resolution that speaks to our fellow Anglican Communion members in Uganda where we have seen our fellow Anglican leaders offering praise for deadly anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. 

It is crucial to recognize that every person, every person, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, deserves to live a life free of discrimination, violence, and persecution; a life in which they can live authentically, in the fullness of who God created them to be. The proposed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Uganda threatens the fundamental human rights and the dignity of all of our LGBTQ+ siblings and undermines our Gospel-driven God-given image in all of us. Thank you, Mission Beyond, for taking up this holy work. 

Sacred opportunity for the Executive Council

Friends, in this spirit of Pentecost, we have a sacred opportunity to unite in our shared mission of advancing the Gospel, fostering inclusivity, and advancing justice in the communities we serve throughout the world. As stewards of The Episcopal Church, we are entrusted with the responsibility to discern a way forward, to address the common challenges that we face, and to embrace the abundant opportunities that are before us. 

During our time together, let us strive to embody an environment of open dialogue, respect, and collaboration. Each of us brings unique perspectives, diverse experiences, and deep, holy gifts to this gathering. It is through the collective wisdom of this council that we will discern together the path that aligns with God’s vision for our beloved church. 

May our discussions be marked by empathy, understanding, and a genuine desire to listen and learn from one another. Let us approach our deliberations with a spirit of thoughtful and open discernment, seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit as we do the work we have been elected to do, recognizing that we are bound together in love as members of the body of Christ. 

Thank you for being here; thank you for serving God in this way. I am honored to serve this church with you. 

Executive Council 

The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church is an elected body of bishops, priests, deacons, and lay leaders. In the three years between General Conventions, the group meets quarterly. Executive Council is tasked with carrying out programs and policies adopted by General Convention and overseeing the ministry and mission of The Episcopal Church.  

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6210 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.