Total Ministry

The Rt. Rev. Jim Kelsey

This coming Saturday (June 3rd) marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Jim Kelsey, then Bishop of Northern Michigan. Bishop Kelsey died in a car accident as he was returning from a Sunday afternoon visitation. Many of us in the House of Bishops know where we were that day as we heard the news. I was passing the Mercy Hospital exit heading west on the I-235, coming back from my own Sunday visitation. Jim had Iowa ties, as his wife, Mary, had grown up at St. Timothy’s in West Des Moines. Her parents were founding members of the congregation, and to this day Mary and Jim’s relatives live in the greater Des Moines area and are active in various ways in the Diocese.

In February, 2003, as the newly elected Bishop of Iowa, I spent a week with Jim in Marquette, Michigan. His was the first Diocese I wanted to visit in determining how to set about setting priorities for my new responsibility. The Diocese of Northern Michigan, under Jim’s predecessor, Tom Ray, had been exploring what it meant to turn the hierarchical ministry model on its head through the promotion of the ministry of all the baptized. Jim not only inherited that legacy and was developing it further, but he had been Bishop Ray’s Diocesan Ministry Developer. Bishop Ray strengthened the Iowa connection because he was the Assisting Bishop for the Diocese of Iowa during the episcopal transition.

At the General Convention in 2003 and 2006, Bishop Kelsey introduced comprehensive revisions for the Ministry Canons of The Episcopal Church. They included the principles of nomination for ordained ministry rather than self-selection, the broadening of the communities of faith from which such nominations could come (not just parochial settings), the creation of an environment for greater flexibility at the local level for the formation of those to be ordained, and the expanding of licensed ministries for the non-ordained. The revisions defined ministry as the responsibility and call of every baptized person regardless of ordination, and re-defined of the charge of the Commission on Ministry to provide for a comprehensive system to develop that ministry in all persons in Christ.

We across the whole Church are still seeking to live into his legacy, and to understand what it means as a Church with a catholic tradition and a sacramental spirituality to see God (and allow God) to be in mission through all God’s people. It places the ordained as baptized persons called specifically to be the servants of the whole baptized body in God’s mission. Christ carries out that mission through all of us who follow Him and is present empowering us for the task with the Holy Spirit. As the Catechism says: “what is the mission of the Church? The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and to each other in Christ.” How do we do it? “As the Church prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace and love.” And through whom does the Church do this? “Through the ministry of all its members” who are, “lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons” (The Book of Common Prayer, 855).

Fifteen years ago, you asked me, your ninth bishop, to be a total ministry bishop. What did that mean? It meant someone who would find ways to uncover and help release the ministry of Christ in each and every one of us. The total ministry of the Diocese of Iowa is the accumulation, the sum total of all we are doing to restore people to unity with God. Over this past decade, I think that the premature losing of Jim’s voice and his tirelessly loving presence in The Episcopal Church has caused us to lose focus on this undertaking in The Church as a whole. It is easy to return to a model more dependent solely on trained professional leadership. And yet, the gifts of God are for the people of God – and they are not simply the consecrated bread and wine; though in truth, they are – because the gifts flow from the life of Jesus in us. For He alone restores all people to unity with God and with each other.

I have heard some say that they prefer to mark the anniversary of a person’s birth rather than their death, as we are doing at the centenary of JFK’s birth. We cannot wait that long to be reminded of Bishop Kelsey’s significance. He was heading somewhere on that fateful day ten years ago, and it was not only home. He was helping take the Church to a new self- awareness of God’s desire to work through us all; to an understanding that we all have the call to serve and we have the inner resources of the Spirit to achieve God’s purpose – a world restored to God, and with each other. He was seeking to bring out of each and every person that individual sense of the release and empowering of the Spirit of God for the task of mission. And what about we, the ordained, and our particular roles in this? Our call as baptized among the baptized is to serve, to remind, to encourage, and to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of God’s grace, as well as to work our personal part in mission alongside the rest of the baptized of which we belong. Together we are always the total ministry of the Church. And like Jim, while the opportunities are ours to do so, we seek God’s call, play our part, and commit our total beings to God’s cause. 

In the peace and love of Christ,

+Alan

The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe

Bishop of Iowa