Embracing Fruitfulness
The Bishop’s Address to the 141st Annual Convention



Fruitfulness…embracing fruitfulness:  this is the theme of our 141st Annual Convention.  Why this theme?  Why now?  The notion that we should focus on fruitfulness during the course of this last year was something that God gave to our good canon missioner, Mary Hays, back in January.  

The theme of fruitfulness has been useful to us all, I think, but especially so to me this year as your bishop.  This is the fifteenth time I have stood before you in an Annual Convention, the tenth time as diocesan bishop.  Holy Scripture makes it plain that fruitfulness is our God’s evaluative category, the ground on which he judges the stewardship he has entrusted to us.  From the very first instructions God speaks to Man and Woman – “Be fruitful and multiply.” [Gen. 1:28] – to the parables and teachings of our Lord, it is fruitfulness – increase – that is held up as the measure of fulfilling our purpose and His, the “measure of God’s pleasure,” if you will.


We celebrated the tenth anniversary of my consecration to be Seventh Bishop of Pittsburgh in two significant events.  The first was a festal evensong on the actual anniversary, April 27th, 2006.  It was an extraordinary gathering of clergy of the diocese, faculty of the seminaries, ecumenical partners, and people.  Especially significant were the presences of the Byzantine Catholic Archbishop, Basil Schott, and Catholic Bishop Donald Wuerl, now Archbishop of Washington, as well as the Anglican Archbishop of Tanzania, Donald Mtetemela.  A choir drawn from around the diocese, under the direction of Fox Chapel musician Clark Bedford, sang Easter portions of Messiah.  It was a stunning evening in which we gave thanks to God for what He has done, in Christ Jesus, most especially, and done through all of us in these last years and in this place, to the extent we have “abode” in Him.  I do not believe that anyone who was present that night will ever forget the glory given our God in that offering of classic Anglican worship.

The second of the two tenth anniversary events was a youth overnight at St. Michael’s Ligonier and diocesan eucharist and picnic in the then nearly-completed barn on the Donegal Lake Common Life Property.  This event took place on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, 23-24 June, 2006.  This event highlighted the “other” face of our diocese: contemporary, inter-generational, country and “down-home.”  

As we assess fruitfulness, two aspects of the Donegal event are significant.  The venerable Episcopal Church Women are in a season of seeking re-birth and renewal.  Most important are the questions the leadership have focused on with me.  “What would it take to be fruitful again?”  “What would it look like to accept the prunings that might mean contemporary abundance?”  At the heart of what the ECW has come to is an assessment that their highest calling is to focus together as a Family Life Movement.  That calling would be to do everything possible to strengthen families, and families in all their contemporary shapes and sizes, with all their present-day challenges and wounds.  Being “in Jesus” means a willingness to be pruned, re-shaped and changed.  Cindy Thomas and Sharon Forrest and all those who have supported them in embracing the hard things fruitfulness requires deserve this convention’s recognition and continued prayer.  The Episcopal Church Women in its inherited form with its inherited patterns was on the path to irrelevance and death.  Honest assessment brought its leaders to admit that it was bearing very little Kingdom fruit.  But embracing the outlines of a new call, it was the Family Life Movement that hosted the Donegal celebration.  

The Episcopal Conference Center at Jennerstown was sold in 2002.  Our annual loss in operating and capital costs for that property was in the neighborhood of $100,000 dollars a year. There was much affection for the beauty and memories associated with Jennerstown.  Yet it was far too small, environmentally fragile and not purpose-built, all of which were part of its economic challenge.  It was also geographically at one edge of the diocese. Our hope in acquiring the Common Life Property at Donegal Lake was that a financially sustainable, readily accessible, 200-bed conference center could be built.  That dream is still before us.  The divisions of the Episcopal Church, played out locally, led a feasibility study to conclude that the necessary fund-raising to build a new center could not be achieved.  What has happened is that one family nevertheless made the gift of a tract of land twice the size of the Jennerstown property, within four miles of the turnpike, on a magnificent lake on the East side of the Laurel Ridge, all debt-free.  Careful stewarding of the resource derived from the Jennerstown sale has now resulted in the bank-barn – envisioned for hosting large day-events as well as youth-group overnights – and in ground-breaking for a clergy retreat house.  Resources in the Bishops Residence Fund are also enabling the construction of a bishop’s house.  Hundred-fold fruitfulness is not yet our boast, not even close, but by the time of the 142nd Annual Convention, there is reason to believe we might be at thirty-fold productivity over our Jennerstown days.      

Worship (as represented by the 10th Anniversary Evensong) and Teaching and Fellowship and Pastoral Care (as symbolized by the Donegal event) do not, in themselves, produce new believers, but they are central to disciples who are committed to making new disciples.  New disciples are brought through Christian outreach, in acts of love and service wherever there is human need or suffering, and in direct witness about Jesus Christ, with demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power, in every circumstance of human life.  This explains our diocesan commitment to the Millenium Development Goals, to the .7% Lambeth Resolution, and to agencies like the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, Five Talents and ERD.  Locally, conversion takes place in social ministries like healthcare and feeding and housing and short-term missions and youth ministries and summer camps.  The measure of their fruitfulness is not in the numbers they serve, but, in fact, whether those served actually have the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ presented and response made.  How many homeless or hungry or dying or lost or adolescents actually make decisions to give the rest of their lives to Jesus and to His purposes?  These are the fruitfulness questions.  Many ministries and many congregations have ceased from their original fruitfulness because they have failed to embrace the pruning necessary to any kind of renewed fruitfulness.  Has our message become “Jesus-lite” rather than the fullness of the radical living and demanding Jesus?  The words in John 15:4 are haunting:  “You cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me.”  Even moreso are the words from John15:2:  “Every branch in me that bears no fruit [my Father] cuts off.”  

Newer congregations, or congregations that have found new purpose in mission or ministry, tend to be the most fruitful.  These are the congregations that are always making decisions in light of a fresh understanding of why the Lord has called them into being.  These are the congregations that are most aware of what it is to be “abiding in Him” in the present, rather than of simply following inherited patterns of activity or behavior.  Those from our diocese who participated in one of the scores of Hurricane Katrina short-term missions to the Gulf Coast know something of the fresh power of the love of Jesus in their lives and the lives of others.  On an on-going basis, Shepherd’s Heart continues to bear much fruit, transforming the lives (or at least the hopes and loves) of the homeless and addicted, and of those who are drawn to share in its residential leadership community.  It is a leaven for the more than seventy congregations, both Episcopal and more widely ecumenical, who participate in its Sunday services and meals, as well as a force in drawing seminarians and others into life-long commitments to the poor.  You will remember that Shepherd’s Heart bore Seeds of Hope, which focuses on children at risk in the Bloomfield section of the City, and which also conducts its ministry through a leadership team that lives in extended community with an ever-changing cadre of Pitt undergrads. That Shepherd’s Heart finally has its own home, Uptown, on Pride Street, nearby the doors of Mercy Hospital, is, after ten years, both a joy and a danger.  But the fruitfulness continues:  Shepherd’s Heart, because it has a home, is now sharing that home with Jesus is Lord Sudanese Fellowship, serving Pittsburgh’s community of “lost boys.”  In June the Bishop of Khartoum came to Pittsburgh to ordain Michael Yemba as the Fellowship’s priest and as leader for the Sudan Council of Churches -- USA.  

During my ten years as diocesan bishop, in addition to adding Shepherd’s Heart as a parish, and welcoming the Seeds of Hope and Jesus is Lord Sudanese communities as missionary fellowships, we have attended the births of Three Nails Fellowship (whose twenty-somethings have produced the media darling Hot Dogma, now Franktuary), and Grace Anglican Fellowship (at Slippery Rock).  Garden Gate at Oakdale, Acts 2:47 at Robinson and Living Stones at Latrobe have been lost in infancy.  Not all blossoms come to fruit: some blossoms are devoured by the adversities they face, and we grieve those losses here.  I want to recognize Deb Carr, James Vreeland and Marty Wright for their labors on our behalf, and their families and those they gathered, for casting seed, despite the fact it fell on stony ground.  Grace Edgeworth formed as a multiplication of Grace Mt Washington, one little congregation literally increasing by doubling itself.  St Philip’s Moon has been our fastest growing congregation for a dozen years, increasing its average Sunday attendance from 64 in 1993 to 546 today, a nine-fold increase.  St Philip’s is now weighing its responsibility and call to birth a daughter congregation.  St Francis in Somerset, whose Average Sunday attendance has nearly trebled ( 61 to 163) in the last six years, has also given hope to a small daughter community meeting at New Baltimore, twenty miles and forty minutes further East across the mountains on the very edge of our diocese.  

Sadly, but precisely parallel to the creation itself, as new plants are cultivated, some of our mature plants die.  In the last decade we lost venerable Epiphany Church Avalon, with a tiny shoot sprung from that once great stump in the form of the Diocesan House of Prayer, a personal apostolate of Jamie and Sharon Forrest.  All Saints Aliquippa, which in the 1980’s birthed Prince of Peace Hopewell, is no more, though the Church Army has planted one of their bases, Uncommon Grounds, just down the street from where All Saints once met.  Also gone is Trinity Church Connellsville (whose people now share in the life of St. Bartholomew’s Scottdale), and our congregation at Northern Cambria (formerly Barnesboro) is now merged into Ss. Thomas and Luke of Patton.  Also disbanded is a thirty-year work which was Resurrection Mars.  The pruning is painful.  Congregations are the chief way disciples are increased.  Congregations are where new believers are baptized, discipled and deployed.  That is why new church plants are so essential, and why existing congregations must ever be looking to reclaim the purpose for which they were created, the increase of disciples who make disciples.    

One of the goals we set for ourselves for the first decade of the 21st century was to increase from 20,000 to 40,000 Episcopalians in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  The truth is that some congregations have made remarkable contributions toward the goal, but mostly we are just staying even, and at present there seems no possibility of hitting the mark.  Yet, it must be said that, if everyone of us brought one other person to saving faith in Jesus Christ in the next three years – and if they all joined our congregations and they mostly did not move away – we would be at 40,000 in 2010.  Remember the 1:1:3 goal?  Remember our hope of growing from 70 to 85 multiple-congregation parishes?  We continue to have great challenges before us.  Fruitfulness is the biblical measure of faithfulness.  How must I be pruned, how must I be re-shaped, in order that Jesus can bear fruit through me?  It is the great question for every Episcopalian (and every Christian), and for every congregation in our part of the world (and in every part of the world.)  Why is it that in Nigeria and in Sabah (Malaysia) God’s people and their congregations are actually doing it, and not here?  Let’s join them.  

The Board of Trustees have been great stewards of our common resources as a diocese.  During 2006, the Board created a Church Multiplication Revolving Fund.  When the nearly $200,000 in escrowed assessment withheld during the period of the ad litem lawsuit was paid to the diocese, the Trustees determined that our greatest need for the future was a revolving fund that could help existing congregations ready to plant daughter congregations.  Adding resources the Trustees had already been setting aside from annual endowment income, the Board of Trustees now has in place a $450,000 Church Multiplication Revolving Fund.  The great hope is, like the Growth Fund that serves all our congregations with capital for expansion projects, this new fund has the potential, as we add to it and renew it, to be a significant force in bringing new congregations into being, and in thus fulfilling the Lord’s call to becoming ever more fruitful.  


We are in the midst of a very great struggle within the Episcopal Church.  It is a struggle for our denomination to again be fruitful.  We are being very painfully pruned.  The Episcopal Church has been in a forty year decline, from a high-point in 1965 of 3.5 million members (at that time 3% of the U.S. population) to a present membership count of 2.3 million members in 2005 (representing less than 1% of the U.S. population.)  All commentators on church strength point to average Sunday attendance as the most significant indicator of membership commitment and conversion.  In 2004, average Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church dropped below 800,000.  Now look at these figures comparing dioceses by the theological stance of their bishops:

ASA Change 1992-2004 (Domestic dioceses only)

Category	1992 ASA	2004 ASA	% change
APO DIOCESES	62,690	67,058	7.0%
NETWORK	79,319	82,975	4.6%
NO-VOTING DIOCESES	268,594	270,497	0.7%
ALL ECUSA	839,440	795,765	-5.2%
NON-NETWORK	760,121	712,790	-6.2%
YES-VOTING	570,846	525,268	-8.0%
ROBINSON CONSECRATION	143,132	124,925	-12.7%

Some in this hall will protest my use of such comparisons, and the conclusions I draw from them.  But the measure remains fruitfulness, and we have Jesus’ clear words about those who abide in him being fruitful.  The data only confirms our resolve to stand as we have done.  The data also calls us to the need to do very much better.  At its most fruitful, the Episcopal Church is only marginally fruitful.  We here in Pittsburgh are only marginally fruitful.  Our total membership grew a meager 1% last year, but our average Sunday attendance actually decreased by 63 souls!  Again we ask, what must we change, what must we re-shape to be all that God intends?  It is certainly not accommodation to the culture or compromise on the fullness of the Word of God or the person of Jesus Christ.  Yet clearly it is also much more, for we can claim these minimums.  From John 15 we are driven to ask, “What would it look like to be fully ‘in Him’ and consequently abundantly fruitful?”   

This Convention faces another in its series of defining decisions.  It is the Standing Committee’s judgment that the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting at Columbus in June did not adequately respond to the requests of the Anglican Communion in the Windsor Report.  Moreover, it is the Standing Committee’s judgment, in light of her teachings on the nature and work of the Second Person of the Trinity and her teaching on and authorization of same-sex blessings, that the election and confirmation of the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori to be Presiding Bishop is an aspect  of the decision of the majority of the Episcopal Church to “walk apart” from the Anglican Communion.  This “walking apart” is something the 140th Convention of this Diocese said, by resolution last year, it would not do.  This “walking apart” is also something the Constitution of the Episcopal Church expressly rejects, committing us as “constituent members of the Anglican Communion, within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, propagating the historic Faith and Order.”  Consequently, in Resolution One, this Convention is asked to confirm the action of our Standing Committee to appeal to the archbishops of the Communion for “alternative primatial oversight.”   The Convention is also asked to confirm the Standing Committee’s action in withdrawing consent, under Article VII of the federal Constitution, for membership in our internal domestic province, the Third Province, the Province of Washington.  The Chancellor, Mr. Robert Devlin, has rendered opinions about the propriety of confirming both actions.

Withdrawing consent to inclusion in the Third Province speaks to our continuing commitment to function under the Constitution of the Episcopal Church while at the same time opening the door for those dioceses to band together who hold that the Episcopal Church in its majority is in contravention of its own constitutional requirement to be a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, at least until the time the Anglican Communion shall decide the matter.

The appeal for another primate to fulfill the duties of our Presiding Bishop, under our Constitution, until such time as the status of the majority of the Episcopal Church and the status of our new Presiding Bishop shall finally be determined by the Communion, is admittedly a novel way forward.  The Episcopal Church has no Supreme Court.  Its supreme court is the Holy Scriptures.  The election, confirmation and consecration of a bishop in a same-sex partnered relationship, like the election of a Presiding Bishop who supports this and other innovations in Faith and Order, are greater novelties still.  That the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom our Constitution says we are to be in Communion, has intervened to see if there is a way the disputants in the American Church might agree to alternative primatial oversight, and that half of the Primates of the Communion have already agreed to provide it, should give us some guidance that the novelty we have asked for seems, at least at the outset, reasonable to the leadership of the wider Anglican Communion.  I trust that this Convention will confirm the Standing Committee’s actions.  

What, precisely, will alternative primatial oversight as a temporary measure look like?  That will be the decision of the primates themselves, in consultation with us and the other dioceses making the request.  The copy of the Appeal of July 20, made available on our diocesan website, was a joint proposal by seven U.S. bishops and dioceses to the Archbishop of Canterbury, made within a month of General Convention, as a result of Canterbury’s request for “a proposal about what ‘the nuts and bolts’ might look like.”  That was more than three months ago.  It is clear that what was proposed in July was just a beginning point.  What is before this convention is confirmation of the action of the Standing Committee in asking for alternative primatial oversight, whatever form may finally be negotiated is not yet available for us to debate, and quite frankly not in our hands.  The Standing Committee with the Bishop will be responsible for carrying forward, on our behalf, the process by which the details of alternative primatial oversight can be put in place, God and the Communion willing.  What this Convention is doing is confirming the propriety of an appeal, not specific details, since those details are necessarily in the Communion’s decision to offer or not.  

Two days ago the Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori became 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.  Our prayers are with her.  She inherits a broken church.  May God give her the grace to deal honestly, charitably, fairly and directly with that part of the Body represented in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and in the Anglican Communion Network, with that part of the Episcopal Church that believes, generally speaking, what has always been believed.  I will do my part as your bishop and as Moderator of the Network to work with Bishop Jefferts Schori to come to some mediated disengagement that will allow all of us to get on with the mission as we understand it.  

As I have said on many occasions recently, there are two churches here, each claiming to be the Episcopal Church.  Both have substantial and rightful claims to that identity.  I pray and hope and work for a mediated settlement between these two parties.  The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is the Episcopal Church in this place.  We stand, nearly all of us in this diocese, where the Episcopal Church has always stood.  What is more important still, we stand where the Anglican Communion and the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church have always stood.  One of the confirmations of our decision to ask for alternative primatial oversight is that the Russian Orthodox Church has just last week reiterated its decision to reopen ecumenical relations with all those dioceses of the Episcopal Church who have requested alternative primatial oversight.  All ecumenical dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and the Episcopal Church was suspended at the time of the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire.  The Russians now see in us the Episcopal Church with which ecumenical conversations can be continued.  The Russian initiative is with the full understanding that the Diocese of Pittsburgh is among those dioceses that embrace the ordination of women.  

In this address my focus is on our work here together.  Nevertheless, all of you are aware of the work I do in partnership with the Anglican Communion Network, as its leader and Moderator.  Much of the rest of the nation and the rest of the world blesses you for this generosity in sharing me.  Some of our friends have traveled long distances to offer us that assurance.  I believe that it has been very right for us to make the effort and the investment.  I would be remiss not to mention here the one great gift to the wider Church that hundreds of us worked on together.  Of all the things we did in the past year on behalf of the wider Church, none who were involved will forget “Hope and A Future,” the gathering of 3000 archbishops, ecumenical leaders, bishops, priests, deacons, and laity from across the nation and around the globe at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.  Whether fruitfulness will follow this season of hard pruning is in God’s hands alone.   But attention to all of this would require another address, and that is not our purpose here.  


We are blest in Pittsburgh by so many disciples who give so much.  I am immensely thankful to our incredible clergy.  Many of them serve in difficult circumstances.  All of them serve in a difficult time.  I think of priests like Don Youse, who gave up a medical career to serve the people of the North Side (now North Shore.)  I think of Scott Quinn who has led Nativity Crafton for 23 years, building it from the devastation that followed earlier clergy mis-conduct, into a vibrant, healthy, well-endowed community church, with generations of seminarians shaped by the witness of Scott’s steadiness.  I think of Cathy Brall, Cathedral Provost, who has led our Mother Church  -- with spiritual wisdom and pastoral grace -- through one of its most difficult seasons towards a renewed sense of vocation at the center of our City and our Diocese as we prepare to celebrate our 250th Anniversary.  

Among the laity Dr. Diane Duntley completes years of service on our Commission on Ministry and as Chair of the Continuing Education Committee.  Having finally found a way to put a term system into place in that very important Commission, the most senior members are all rotating off.  Completing service with Dr. Duntley are Fr. Don Bushyager, Mo. Ann Paton and Fr. Carl Neely.  Tremendous thanks are theirs from us all.  

Dave Hoover of St. Peter’s Uniontown completes his term as President of Diocesan Council with this sitting of Convention.  Provost Cathy Brall completes her term as President of Standing Committee.  Other elected leaders completing terms, and who are ineligible to serve longer are:  Bill Roemer of Standing Committee, Susan Pollard of Trustees (along with Sky Foerster whose travel schedule has dictated his inability to serve again), and Jim Forney, Paul Sutcliffe, Shiela Burkholder and Ed Hay of Council.  All of these leaders deserve our gratitude and appreciation.

Special attention should be paid by this Convention to the departure of Archdeacon Greg and Mrs. Joan Malley.  This extraordinary couple moves to Christ Church, Savannah, Georgia, later this month.  We will miss so very much about them both, not least Joan’s service as Secretary of Convention.  We wish them both Godspeed.  

The vision God gave us shortly after I was elected to be your bishop was of “One Church of Miraculous Expectation and Missionary Grace.”  Despite the troubles of the times, and more especially of the Episcopal Church, we have tried in this decade to make our decisions with the notion that,
first, “We are all in this together.”
    second, “Everything ultimately depends on God.”  And
    third, “Our focus is on those not yet our members.”
We built structures, a budget, clergy and lay leadership, and a diocesan staff and senior leadership team committed to the vision.  One of the subtexts for the Diocesan Office has been the goal to be “The best diocese we could be.”  I shared a similar subtext with our clergy early on:  “Being ourselves at our best.”  

With the call of Mr. Jack Downie to be Director of Administration and Chief Operating Officer of the Diocese,  I came to understand that we were at an important moment in being able to live into both the original vision and the sub-texts of being the “best” that we could be.  Let me explain.  I think we, with our God’s very gracious help and protection, have assembled a fantastic diocesan staff team.  I also think we have assembled the best cadre of clergy anywhere in the Episcopal Church.  What was necessary next, was to share the skills and competencies with our lay leadership in the parishes across the diocese.  It is to that end that the diocesan team now sees itself especially directed.  For several years now, the list of unaudited parishes has grown.  Enter Marsha Tallant, who has developed and tailored an auditing process appropriate to our smaller parishes, precisely those congregations whose books were not being regularly examined.  Similarly, and even more significantly, Marsha has gone on the road to help congregations put in place automated bookkeeping systems, and appropriate financial procedures.  One by one, the lay leadership of the congregations are being given the tools and resources necessary to “being the best that they can be.”  The Ministry Leadership Days offered each winter, designed and championed by Canon Hays, have become significant moments, especially for lay people, to become more skilled and better trained for the daunting work of congregational leadership at the beginning of the 21st century.  Mary’s leadership letter is another sign of the heart God has given her for building stronger and more effective parish teams across the diocese.   Bishop Henry Scriven has spent countless hours encouraging the laity – and the clergy – of our small congregations, and guiding the Transformational Networks and the anti-racism and professional conduct seminars that help us to be more nearly what the church is supposed to be.  Jenny Bartling’s work, as a lay leader assessing, training and coaching other lay leaders and clergy for the challenge of church planting, has been very much before this Convention.  Anyone who gets called to any role of leadership on behalf of our congregations also comes to know Melanie Contz, wonder worker, and, soon enough, Bonnie Catalano.  Peter Frank does an amazing job of telling the story, and the focus is always on what God is doing among us here in Western Pennsylvania: stories of encouragement, stories of missions accomplished, stories that inspire ordinary people to risk extraordinary things.  With these champions are Lynne Wohleber and Nicole Pollard and Janet Cummings and Heather Jacoby.  

Every parish should have – and many do have – similar heroes.  What Jack Downie is committed to do, and all the rest of us with him – and Jack brings a formidable career in business and a living faith in Jesus together -- is to bring the incredible resource that are the human resources of the Diocesan Office alongside the human resources that are the leadership of our parishes – whatever the needs are – so that our parishes can flourish more than ever, pruned (reshaped and refocused) as appropriate for an unbelievable harvest of fruitfulness.  I am reminded of a famous epitaph of the period of the English Civil War:  “Sir Richard Baxter:  In the worst of times he was the best of men.”  Our call is to be “One Church of Miraculous Expectation and Missionary Grace,” and our goal is “to be ourselves at our best.”    I remain extremely hopeful and wonderfully glad to serve in this place.

I end with the theme of partnership.  Ten years ago we began to speak of establishing missionary partnerships as a means to much greater fruitfulness.  We spoke of 20,000 partnerships.  This goal we shall surely attain and exceed.  There are hundreds of practical partnerships just between the diocesan office and the congregations and networks of our diocese.    

The parish partnership that, in many ways, became the wellspring and the model of partnership for us across the diocese was the one initiated by St. Paul’s Mt Lebanon with Grace Church Mt Washington back in 1992.  So many of our churches are fruitful again because of the pattern pioneered there.  This past summer there was talk among the people of Christ the King Beaver Falls about whether their season of fruitfulness might have reached its end.  The people of St. Christopher’s Cranberry, led by Fr. Paul Cooper, thought they could help.  The infectious fruitfulness of St. Christopher’s, represented not only by their reach to Beaver Falls but also by their sponsorship of Grace Anglican at Slippery Rock, is now significantly shaping a future for Christ the King.  What is so encouraging to me as bishop is that the partnership spirit now runs so deeply among us that this kind of relationship has sprung up without the idea having come from “headquarters.”  This past summer Christ Church North Hills also came forward once again to partner with All Saints Brighton Heights, in hopes that, with essential hard pruning, fruitfulness might be in be their future rather than end of life.  Calvary Church has also partnered with both Holy Cross Homewood and St. Stephen’s Wilkinsburg to assist at critical decision points in the life of each.  And then there is Fox Chapel which partnered with and rebuilt St. Paul’s, Kittanning – which, in turn, has partnered with St. Michael’s, Wayne Township and St. Mary’s, Redbank.  And Fox Chapel has partnered and given yet again to restore full-time ministry and great hope to St. Andrew’s, New Kensington.  Another, and very exciting kind of partnership, has emerged among congregations in District 8, where St. Thomas Oakmont, St. Stephen’s McKeesport, St. Martin’s Monroeville, St. Alban’s Murrysville, St. James Penn Hills and All Saints Rosedale have all gone together to call Kim Louis as a Youth Ministry Trainer.  It is all about embracing and increasing fruitfulness.  

Foreign partnerships have become ever more numerous and ever more apart of the story that we can tell.  We welcome the Rev. Dr. John Senyonyi to this Convention, as a spur to our diocesan partnership with Uganda Christian University, and as a reminder of our missionaries, Steve and Peggy Noll, who lead that school whose vision is ever expanding fruitfulness for the whole of Africa.  Matt and Mave Walter have borne extraordinary fruit from Jordan, impacting the whole Muslim world.  Colin and Julie Larkin are sent out by our diocese, in partnership with the Diocese of Singapore, to reach the youth of Cambodia with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I could also name Marc and Suzanne Jacobson in the Philippines, Frank and Anne in North Africa and John and Susan Park in South America.   Our Happeners made their second “transplant” in as many years, following up on 2005 in Peru with 2006 in Recife.  Hundreds of other missionaries and missionary partners could be named by those gathered for this Convention.


Our purpose here has been to consider our life together here and to embrace, with reference to our diocesan goals, the measure of our fruitfulness in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.  It is on this theme that I have gladly reported to you.  We are still far from the fruitfulness our Lord has in mind for us, but in the context, crisis and challenge of these days we have, by God’s grace and much faithful effort, made significant advance.

I am thankful beyond words for the privilege of serving our Lord and you in these days.