Part Two of my interview with the Rt. Rev. Rustin Kimsey.
If you missed Part One, you can read it here.
Matt: When was Coalition 14 at its apogee, and how did it evolve, and what did it evolve into?
Rustin: I was a part of all of that. It began to be weakened by diocese’s that began to be self-supporting. They did not feel the need to continue with the Coalition. It’s the old way of thinking that my judgment about it that when we become “strong enough” to be self-perpetuating, monetarily self-sufficient, then we will withdraw. I think Hawaii was one of the first who opted out and to some degree there was some logic to that, it was because of distance, but we also had diocese’s that became self-supporting but they continued to send representatives to the coalition because they believed that the process that we used, it didn’t matter whether they were self-supporting or not, they felt that it was a very important way of being a church, so they continued on. But, some of that went away when there was new leadership, and some of those jurisdictions didn’t stay the course. The thing that was odd to me was, that in 1945, Arizona and Eastern Oregon, were pretty much the same. There were no large cities in Arizona at the time and Eastern Oregon certainly didn’t have any either. The demographics were similar, we each had about the same ratio of parishes that were self-supporting to a multitude of smaller churches that were not self-supporting. Well, look what happened in Arizona, Phoenix happened, and Tucson happened, and Flagstaff happened. So, you get this huge influx of people, plus all of the winter crowd. The diocese, it’s a cash cow, it became self-sufficient almost overnight. Now, Arizona was one of those that stayed with the Coalition for some time because the bishop and the deputies who were part of the coalition structure really believed that they needed it. That was the first major things that occurred as dioceses began to be more and more self-reliant, there was a sense on their part that they didn’t need it.
Matt: Why is that, do you think?
Rustin: I think again, the old structure of top-down leadership is very forceful. There is something within us that if we have been raised a certain way, where the rector really has the last word on whatever, that people can generate and feel very enlivened by the community of people discussing issues and so forth and entering into a kind of interactivity that is exciting and challenging, often disappointing and hurtful. Still, that kind of interaction they join in it, but it doesn’t take much for them to revert back to relying upon a particular person, usually a priest, or a lay pope who comes along and acts as though and seems to have the answers that everyone needs. It’s very beguiling, you know what I mean?
The other thing that happened in the Coalition history that was there were four major areas where a lot of the funding, about half the funding, went to those jurisdictions with Native American work, North and South Dakota, Alaska, and Navajo land. The rest of us, had native populations, but we did not have the kind of central ministries that those four jurisdictions had. At least half of our budget from General Convention, several million dollars, at least half of that was going to those jurisdictions. There came a time where the department in New York that was responsible for Native American ministries, it also had that desk, the people who were a part of the leadership also had other responsibilities, but their primary focus was on Native American work. They thought would be helpful if they had their own funding, that it would be not up to the Coalition 14, but that it would be up to those four jurisdictions to determine how much they would get. That happened, and it happened during my watch, I was chairman of the coalition at the time, and I really was trying to listen to the native people and their voice and be supportive, of whatever they wanted to do, but I also had this sinking feeling that if they pulled the plug, if they pulled out of it that it would seriously jeopardize the coalition’s ability to go forward with the same strength that we had known. I think I was right about that.
Matt: Why do you think that?
Rustin: Well, because that’s what happened, they did pull out and some of those jurisdictions, Navajo land certainly, and North Dakota and Alaska, three out of the four, continued to come to Coalition 14 meetings and be a part of that and it was very helpful, but that was the initial response. That over the years, they began to be pulled away by their own, I mean they had other issues in the fire that drew them away from the coalition structure, because they were building up their own kind of interactive council. So, the coalition began to be more and more fragile. We also moved into a period where were beginning to invite other jurisdictions into it, especially when the native dioceses pulled out, we began to recruit other jurisdictions that were small and fragile, not unlike Eastern Oregon and try to show them the value of that kind of interactive experience that we’ve been describing, and with some success. When I retired as Bishop, the Coaliton was still pretty viable. Bill Gregg, my successor’s take on it was that the diocese should become self-supporting and he believed that we could. He really stepped up the process of saying that diocese needed to be free from any kind of budget support, from the National Church within five years, so I think we were receiving about $100,000 at the time. So, it was mater of making cuts to the tune of around $20,000 a year. So, that began to occur…and well, I think that’s all I want to say about that. It’s so complex and it’s not really for me to judge some of that.
Matt: So, Eastern Oregon opted out of the Coalition, then what happened?
Rustin: Well, the Coalition changed its name to the Domestic Missionary Partnership (DMP). It was an attempt to have a new identity and still keep some of the same rules of cooperation that we had gathered over those years, but I think the internal discipline of a lot of that went away. I think that the challenge and the response of the annual meeting that I’ve described -- which was really the central part of our life that by getting into one another’s budget, we really got into each other’s life in big ways -- I mean we weren’t just talking of dollars signs, we were really talking about the guts of mission and purpose and where people knowing some joy and celebration, and also where they were hurting.
Matt: That must have been difficult for some to go there.
Rustin: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think the more they drifted away from that particular moment of our life together that they lost something of the intimacy and really sharing the journey in a way that had been known before. But, there’s a lot that still lives on, I think that Eastern Oregon was deeply affected and impacted by the kind of honesty and interactivity that occurred. I think that remains in large part throughout the diocese. I have been out of it for thirteen years.
Matt: How involved is Eastern Oregon with the DMP today?
Rustin: How much it is involved today, I’m not very clear, because I have drifted.
Matt: What do you believe is the legacy of MRI and C-14?
Rustin: I think the legacy is that we need to be people who are for one another. I think that what Jesus was about was reminding us that we are all the children of God, and that we all deserve a place in the sun, and that we all really need one another that is not paternalist or manipulative but rather we’re needing one another to really pay close attention to who we are in the context to which we find ourselves and being able to affirm our lives but also to ask for the kind of help where we need it. That kind of interdependence is really dependent on mutual responsibility. If you take the words of the document and try to give life to them it manifests itself rather quickly. The legacy is to be found in how much I am your keep and you mine and how well we listen to one another and how well we can continue to be in communion even when we disagree. How we take context, I think context is everything. I think Jesus, well, if I were to say a one-word description of his life, I would say that he was a contextualist. I don’t think he came to us all ready with the answers, I think he learned from his people by listening, and by being appropriate to situations in different ways, because he learned new context and new ways of understanding. I think that’s the legacy for me of MRI and the coalition.
Matt: The secret is in the exchange between cultures; through a cross-cultural exchange.
Rustin: That’s right, because there’s a great teaching about that. If you are really alive -- I like your word, of exchange -- If you’re really alive through the exchange then you don’t have much trouble knowing that you don’t have all of the answers. That you really need that exchange in order to live more into really the mystery of life rather than the bottom-line truth. If we don’t have that exchange then often times we do believe we have the bottom-line truth, you know that the world would just be great if it agreed with everything I believed. That’s the danger of newspapers today are full of that, the inability of people to fully see that your change has been holy and necessary.
Matt: Let’s talk briefly about the Mutual Ministry Development, how does that relate to Coalition 14?
Rustin: Well, one of the things that we were concerned about in the Coalition from the get go was the how we would provide the kind of presence that The Episcopal Church had embodied over the years with leadership. How did we continue to have the kind of integrity with that that was consistent with what we had known but probably different in the way that we were going to go about it. Parish commissions on ministry were formed in every congregation and there was a diocesan commission on ministry that was to be the developer of all of this and the parish commission on ministry was charged with what is the first canon under the ministry of canons in our national canons in that was to make sure that every member of the episcopal church has access to the encouragement of their baptismal ministry, whatever that is. Obviously, we were not just talking about ordination, we were talking about baptismal ministries that whatever people were called to be in their workaday lives, how can the church support them in that? How can the church reflect the support for all the people of God in the way that we were structured in the congregation?
This is a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. The key to all of this was T.E.A.M. (Teach each a ministry), was the acronym. The Parish Commission on Ministry, if it did its job, was to assist every member of the church to know their worth, to know that we were paying attention to their story, to know that what they were being formed into as Christian people that we wanted to be a part of that. So, what was their calling? Those are questions that were never asked. My father was a life-long Episcopalian, served on all kinds of vestries, help started a new church, but no one ever asked him, Loren, what’s your calling as a Christian? How do you see your ministry? I mean, my dad would have thought, you know somebody asking that, what planet did you come from? Those are questions that people asked for people who were preparing for ordination. The challenge was great, but it began to take hold. One of the ways in which was manifested in some congregations was that we thought this is the way we want to establish our leadership locally, would be to say to the congregation, you need to find out what areas of church life are important for this congregation. So, we did this in St. Paul’s years ago, probably about 1995, maybe a little earlier. The bottom line was that we had the congregation, after a lot of discussion and dialogue and prayer, list what are the areas where leadership was needed. You can guess what they would be, evangelism, education, stewardship, pastoral care, clergy (both lay and priest), catechists, people who would prepare other for consecration and baptism, those were essentially the seven or eight categories that were chosen.
We talked a lot about that, what that might look like in terms of those responsibilities would be. Again, the Parish Commission on Ministries would be primarily responsible for that, but so was the parish priest at the time. Then we asked the question, how do we name people who might fulfill those leadership positions? So, we talked about that a lot. What we would look for in people with those gifts, the congregation had named what I said and under pastoral care they had named healers that they wanted to see lay people who were not to be ordained but who had the gifts for a healing ministry. So, after several months that we talked about this and agreed about procedures and so forth, and at a service of worship that I came to, I had visitation, we had parish lists available for everyone in the congregation and we had a list of those leadership positions that they had agreed to and prioritized. We said, look down the parish list and put people’s names beside the positions that we are needing to fill, so they fit that. Those tabulations were gathered and the rector and myself were they only ones who saw that and it was amazing. It was amazing the consensus that the congregation as a whole had for certain people in those slots.
Let’s talk for a moment about the priests. That was of course the big issue for most Episcopalians, well what about the priest? If they’re not going to go to seminary, then how can they be a priest? So, we talked a lot about priesthood, we talked a lot about, well, what is priesthood? What are the essential qualities of that? I told my story, when I got out of seminary, there were about thirty seven priorities that were given to the office of the priesthood. All the way from Sacramentalists to Eucharists, other sacraments of the church, worship, all the way through how to run a mimeograph machine and be the secretary. I mean the parish priest, we inherited an incredible amount of jobs, most of which, any number of the people could have done a lot better that I did it. So that was my story. I said that I think priesthood needed to be more tailored, it needed to fit, not only the needs of the congregation, but it also needed to be tailored to the people who had the gifts that the congregation perceived to be needed in a priest. The whole issue of training, which was always on the front burner. We talked about all the courses that were than becoming more and more available through the internet. That was really just beginning, but it was obvious that that would going to be a really huge resource for people, and the diocese had a experiences with high desert school of theology, is what we called it was situated in Trinity Bend, and we trained a lot of people, not just lay people, but later people that were ordained though those weekly, weekend meetings that lasted a long time, we had that going for several years.
The central issue for me for the priest, for all of us to understand, was that the priest was not to be isolated and to act in a vacuum, that what we were trying to get away from was the isolation of most priesthoods often become. Let me give you an example of a priest in another congregation that was called in using this essential process. Dan (Gardner) was one of the best priests that I had ever known and in some ways, I think good priest are born priests, that there’s certain intuition about their relationship to God and their ability to interact in such a way that they become a mediator, people who some are way able to help people find their way, and their own vision of God that it’s so inclusive and so welcoming that they are, well, intermediaries. Dan was very much that. He also knew that he was a part of a team, so when people came to him for counseling, because he wore a collar on Sunday and was called by some Father, not many, but some, and he was the priest of St. Luke’s, people would come to him seeking counseling, he would say that it’s not a part of my calling, I mean, I could talk to you about certain things in a friendship kind of way, can give you whatever insights I have to offer, but I’m not going to be your counselor. If you need professional help that’s where you need to go, and you need to not be mistaken about who I am as a priest and think that that is a part of my bag. So, he was very disciplined about that. There were other priest’s that were not very good preachers, and a part of their calling was to say the pulpit is going to have to be shared by people in this congregation who have more of a calling to speak the word of God.
You can imagine, all of this turned everything upside down for people, but for the most part it went well when we did a good job of, well, again, interactivity; of talking about this and of being straight ourselves. I’m a firm believer in that kind of mutual ministry development and I see the role of seminary trained clergy and our grand plan was that they would be rectors and vicars of congregations, but they would also covenant in contract with the diocese and give a fair portion of their time to being mentors of other clergy in the diocese who were not going to be able to go to seminary and who were not going to avail themselves of hands on theological education that we know to be very important. I can’t imagine my life without my seminary education, but I also know that there’s got to be other ways we can do this or we’re just not going to have a presence in many of our communities. That covenant with seminary trained clergy, that worked, it would have worked more if there had been more commitment on the part of leadership to all of that. We were going to do that by deaneries.
Every jurisdiction was committed to the mutual ministry development. Not all of them, in the same way I have described to you just now, there were different models of that, but the education component was very alive and very real. We used to incredibly good debates about this and a lot of anger expressed of people dabbling into an area that was very sacrosanct in all of our minds in some ways as we began the process. Wes Frensdorf, who was one of the architects of Coalition 14 and the Bishop of Nevada, killed in a tragic plane crash in the Grand Canyon long before he should have died, Wes used to say, what do people need to know? He said, when we went to seminary, it was as if they unzipped our scalp and poured in all of this stuff, I mean, tons of stuff, and then sent us out in a generic manner, saying you’re not prepared to be a priest of the church and you can serve anywhere in the world. Wes said, where is the wisdom in that? I mean, good night, if you’re going to be a college professor, that kind of thinking might work, although college professors that don’t pay attention to their constituents, don’t know their classroom community at all, are probably going to make some pretty bad mistakes as well. I think people need to know the basics of what any baptized Christian ought to know. I believe in life-long learning, that people are not just going to be confirmed by a bishop when they’re twelve and lock it up and don’t worry about it for the rest of their lives, and that was kind of true about my youth. I think that in a good ministry development program like I have tried to describe, that congregations can grow together, the clergy, ordained people as well as the lay body, growing together in a community into a commonality, a cooperative way of doing ministry that would avert a lot of the dead ends we get into, like the buck stops with the priest, or, there have been all kinds of horror stories for me.
Matt: Well, it sounds like the conversation was essential considering the fact that you were addressing so much change, I mean, it was a necessity to address these issues. Everyone needed to be on the same page.
Rustin: Yeah, we were driven to be on the same page because of bucks, you know even though we had several million dollars at our disposal, we had incredible needs out there. If seminary trained clergy was going to be the norm for all of the congregations it would have busted us, we couldn’t have afforded to do that. That kind of echoes what you were saying.
Matt: It sounded like a fascinating experience and I have enjoyed learning all about it. Thank you again for meeting with me, I really appreciate it.
Rustin: You’re very welcome, thank you.
If you missed Part One, you can read it here.
Matt: When was Coalition 14 at its apogee, and how did it evolve, and what did it evolve into?
Rustin: I was a part of all of that. It began to be weakened by diocese’s that began to be self-supporting. They did not feel the need to continue with the Coalition. It’s the old way of thinking that my judgment about it that when we become “strong enough” to be self-perpetuating, monetarily self-sufficient, then we will withdraw. I think Hawaii was one of the first who opted out and to some degree there was some logic to that, it was because of distance, but we also had diocese’s that became self-supporting but they continued to send representatives to the coalition because they believed that the process that we used, it didn’t matter whether they were self-supporting or not, they felt that it was a very important way of being a church, so they continued on. But, some of that went away when there was new leadership, and some of those jurisdictions didn’t stay the course. The thing that was odd to me was, that in 1945, Arizona and Eastern Oregon, were pretty much the same. There were no large cities in Arizona at the time and Eastern Oregon certainly didn’t have any either. The demographics were similar, we each had about the same ratio of parishes that were self-supporting to a multitude of smaller churches that were not self-supporting. Well, look what happened in Arizona, Phoenix happened, and Tucson happened, and Flagstaff happened. So, you get this huge influx of people, plus all of the winter crowd. The diocese, it’s a cash cow, it became self-sufficient almost overnight. Now, Arizona was one of those that stayed with the Coalition for some time because the bishop and the deputies who were part of the coalition structure really believed that they needed it. That was the first major things that occurred as dioceses began to be more and more self-reliant, there was a sense on their part that they didn’t need it.
Matt: Why is that, do you think?
Rustin: I think again, the old structure of top-down leadership is very forceful. There is something within us that if we have been raised a certain way, where the rector really has the last word on whatever, that people can generate and feel very enlivened by the community of people discussing issues and so forth and entering into a kind of interactivity that is exciting and challenging, often disappointing and hurtful. Still, that kind of interaction they join in it, but it doesn’t take much for them to revert back to relying upon a particular person, usually a priest, or a lay pope who comes along and acts as though and seems to have the answers that everyone needs. It’s very beguiling, you know what I mean?
The other thing that happened in the Coalition history that was there were four major areas where a lot of the funding, about half the funding, went to those jurisdictions with Native American work, North and South Dakota, Alaska, and Navajo land. The rest of us, had native populations, but we did not have the kind of central ministries that those four jurisdictions had. At least half of our budget from General Convention, several million dollars, at least half of that was going to those jurisdictions. There came a time where the department in New York that was responsible for Native American ministries, it also had that desk, the people who were a part of the leadership also had other responsibilities, but their primary focus was on Native American work. They thought would be helpful if they had their own funding, that it would be not up to the Coalition 14, but that it would be up to those four jurisdictions to determine how much they would get. That happened, and it happened during my watch, I was chairman of the coalition at the time, and I really was trying to listen to the native people and their voice and be supportive, of whatever they wanted to do, but I also had this sinking feeling that if they pulled the plug, if they pulled out of it that it would seriously jeopardize the coalition’s ability to go forward with the same strength that we had known. I think I was right about that.
Matt: Why do you think that?
Rustin: Well, because that’s what happened, they did pull out and some of those jurisdictions, Navajo land certainly, and North Dakota and Alaska, three out of the four, continued to come to Coalition 14 meetings and be a part of that and it was very helpful, but that was the initial response. That over the years, they began to be pulled away by their own, I mean they had other issues in the fire that drew them away from the coalition structure, because they were building up their own kind of interactive council. So, the coalition began to be more and more fragile. We also moved into a period where were beginning to invite other jurisdictions into it, especially when the native dioceses pulled out, we began to recruit other jurisdictions that were small and fragile, not unlike Eastern Oregon and try to show them the value of that kind of interactive experience that we’ve been describing, and with some success. When I retired as Bishop, the Coaliton was still pretty viable. Bill Gregg, my successor’s take on it was that the diocese should become self-supporting and he believed that we could. He really stepped up the process of saying that diocese needed to be free from any kind of budget support, from the National Church within five years, so I think we were receiving about $100,000 at the time. So, it was mater of making cuts to the tune of around $20,000 a year. So, that began to occur…and well, I think that’s all I want to say about that. It’s so complex and it’s not really for me to judge some of that.
Matt: So, Eastern Oregon opted out of the Coalition, then what happened?
Rustin: Well, the Coalition changed its name to the Domestic Missionary Partnership (DMP). It was an attempt to have a new identity and still keep some of the same rules of cooperation that we had gathered over those years, but I think the internal discipline of a lot of that went away. I think that the challenge and the response of the annual meeting that I’ve described -- which was really the central part of our life that by getting into one another’s budget, we really got into each other’s life in big ways -- I mean we weren’t just talking of dollars signs, we were really talking about the guts of mission and purpose and where people knowing some joy and celebration, and also where they were hurting.
Matt: That must have been difficult for some to go there.
Rustin: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think the more they drifted away from that particular moment of our life together that they lost something of the intimacy and really sharing the journey in a way that had been known before. But, there’s a lot that still lives on, I think that Eastern Oregon was deeply affected and impacted by the kind of honesty and interactivity that occurred. I think that remains in large part throughout the diocese. I have been out of it for thirteen years.
Matt: How involved is Eastern Oregon with the DMP today?
Rustin: How much it is involved today, I’m not very clear, because I have drifted.
Matt: What do you believe is the legacy of MRI and C-14?
Rustin: I think the legacy is that we need to be people who are for one another. I think that what Jesus was about was reminding us that we are all the children of God, and that we all deserve a place in the sun, and that we all really need one another that is not paternalist or manipulative but rather we’re needing one another to really pay close attention to who we are in the context to which we find ourselves and being able to affirm our lives but also to ask for the kind of help where we need it. That kind of interdependence is really dependent on mutual responsibility. If you take the words of the document and try to give life to them it manifests itself rather quickly. The legacy is to be found in how much I am your keep and you mine and how well we listen to one another and how well we can continue to be in communion even when we disagree. How we take context, I think context is everything. I think Jesus, well, if I were to say a one-word description of his life, I would say that he was a contextualist. I don’t think he came to us all ready with the answers, I think he learned from his people by listening, and by being appropriate to situations in different ways, because he learned new context and new ways of understanding. I think that’s the legacy for me of MRI and the coalition.
Matt: The secret is in the exchange between cultures; through a cross-cultural exchange.
Rustin: That’s right, because there’s a great teaching about that. If you are really alive -- I like your word, of exchange -- If you’re really alive through the exchange then you don’t have much trouble knowing that you don’t have all of the answers. That you really need that exchange in order to live more into really the mystery of life rather than the bottom-line truth. If we don’t have that exchange then often times we do believe we have the bottom-line truth, you know that the world would just be great if it agreed with everything I believed. That’s the danger of newspapers today are full of that, the inability of people to fully see that your change has been holy and necessary.
Matt: Let’s talk briefly about the Mutual Ministry Development, how does that relate to Coalition 14?
Rustin: Well, one of the things that we were concerned about in the Coalition from the get go was the how we would provide the kind of presence that The Episcopal Church had embodied over the years with leadership. How did we continue to have the kind of integrity with that that was consistent with what we had known but probably different in the way that we were going to go about it. Parish commissions on ministry were formed in every congregation and there was a diocesan commission on ministry that was to be the developer of all of this and the parish commission on ministry was charged with what is the first canon under the ministry of canons in our national canons in that was to make sure that every member of the episcopal church has access to the encouragement of their baptismal ministry, whatever that is. Obviously, we were not just talking about ordination, we were talking about baptismal ministries that whatever people were called to be in their workaday lives, how can the church support them in that? How can the church reflect the support for all the people of God in the way that we were structured in the congregation?
This is a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. The key to all of this was T.E.A.M. (Teach each a ministry), was the acronym. The Parish Commission on Ministry, if it did its job, was to assist every member of the church to know their worth, to know that we were paying attention to their story, to know that what they were being formed into as Christian people that we wanted to be a part of that. So, what was their calling? Those are questions that were never asked. My father was a life-long Episcopalian, served on all kinds of vestries, help started a new church, but no one ever asked him, Loren, what’s your calling as a Christian? How do you see your ministry? I mean, my dad would have thought, you know somebody asking that, what planet did you come from? Those are questions that people asked for people who were preparing for ordination. The challenge was great, but it began to take hold. One of the ways in which was manifested in some congregations was that we thought this is the way we want to establish our leadership locally, would be to say to the congregation, you need to find out what areas of church life are important for this congregation. So, we did this in St. Paul’s years ago, probably about 1995, maybe a little earlier. The bottom line was that we had the congregation, after a lot of discussion and dialogue and prayer, list what are the areas where leadership was needed. You can guess what they would be, evangelism, education, stewardship, pastoral care, clergy (both lay and priest), catechists, people who would prepare other for consecration and baptism, those were essentially the seven or eight categories that were chosen.
We talked a lot about that, what that might look like in terms of those responsibilities would be. Again, the Parish Commission on Ministries would be primarily responsible for that, but so was the parish priest at the time. Then we asked the question, how do we name people who might fulfill those leadership positions? So, we talked about that a lot. What we would look for in people with those gifts, the congregation had named what I said and under pastoral care they had named healers that they wanted to see lay people who were not to be ordained but who had the gifts for a healing ministry. So, after several months that we talked about this and agreed about procedures and so forth, and at a service of worship that I came to, I had visitation, we had parish lists available for everyone in the congregation and we had a list of those leadership positions that they had agreed to and prioritized. We said, look down the parish list and put people’s names beside the positions that we are needing to fill, so they fit that. Those tabulations were gathered and the rector and myself were they only ones who saw that and it was amazing. It was amazing the consensus that the congregation as a whole had for certain people in those slots.
Let’s talk for a moment about the priests. That was of course the big issue for most Episcopalians, well what about the priest? If they’re not going to go to seminary, then how can they be a priest? So, we talked a lot about priesthood, we talked a lot about, well, what is priesthood? What are the essential qualities of that? I told my story, when I got out of seminary, there were about thirty seven priorities that were given to the office of the priesthood. All the way from Sacramentalists to Eucharists, other sacraments of the church, worship, all the way through how to run a mimeograph machine and be the secretary. I mean the parish priest, we inherited an incredible amount of jobs, most of which, any number of the people could have done a lot better that I did it. So that was my story. I said that I think priesthood needed to be more tailored, it needed to fit, not only the needs of the congregation, but it also needed to be tailored to the people who had the gifts that the congregation perceived to be needed in a priest. The whole issue of training, which was always on the front burner. We talked about all the courses that were than becoming more and more available through the internet. That was really just beginning, but it was obvious that that would going to be a really huge resource for people, and the diocese had a experiences with high desert school of theology, is what we called it was situated in Trinity Bend, and we trained a lot of people, not just lay people, but later people that were ordained though those weekly, weekend meetings that lasted a long time, we had that going for several years.
The central issue for me for the priest, for all of us to understand, was that the priest was not to be isolated and to act in a vacuum, that what we were trying to get away from was the isolation of most priesthoods often become. Let me give you an example of a priest in another congregation that was called in using this essential process. Dan (Gardner) was one of the best priests that I had ever known and in some ways, I think good priest are born priests, that there’s certain intuition about their relationship to God and their ability to interact in such a way that they become a mediator, people who some are way able to help people find their way, and their own vision of God that it’s so inclusive and so welcoming that they are, well, intermediaries. Dan was very much that. He also knew that he was a part of a team, so when people came to him for counseling, because he wore a collar on Sunday and was called by some Father, not many, but some, and he was the priest of St. Luke’s, people would come to him seeking counseling, he would say that it’s not a part of my calling, I mean, I could talk to you about certain things in a friendship kind of way, can give you whatever insights I have to offer, but I’m not going to be your counselor. If you need professional help that’s where you need to go, and you need to not be mistaken about who I am as a priest and think that that is a part of my bag. So, he was very disciplined about that. There were other priest’s that were not very good preachers, and a part of their calling was to say the pulpit is going to have to be shared by people in this congregation who have more of a calling to speak the word of God.
You can imagine, all of this turned everything upside down for people, but for the most part it went well when we did a good job of, well, again, interactivity; of talking about this and of being straight ourselves. I’m a firm believer in that kind of mutual ministry development and I see the role of seminary trained clergy and our grand plan was that they would be rectors and vicars of congregations, but they would also covenant in contract with the diocese and give a fair portion of their time to being mentors of other clergy in the diocese who were not going to be able to go to seminary and who were not going to avail themselves of hands on theological education that we know to be very important. I can’t imagine my life without my seminary education, but I also know that there’s got to be other ways we can do this or we’re just not going to have a presence in many of our communities. That covenant with seminary trained clergy, that worked, it would have worked more if there had been more commitment on the part of leadership to all of that. We were going to do that by deaneries.
Every jurisdiction was committed to the mutual ministry development. Not all of them, in the same way I have described to you just now, there were different models of that, but the education component was very alive and very real. We used to incredibly good debates about this and a lot of anger expressed of people dabbling into an area that was very sacrosanct in all of our minds in some ways as we began the process. Wes Frensdorf, who was one of the architects of Coalition 14 and the Bishop of Nevada, killed in a tragic plane crash in the Grand Canyon long before he should have died, Wes used to say, what do people need to know? He said, when we went to seminary, it was as if they unzipped our scalp and poured in all of this stuff, I mean, tons of stuff, and then sent us out in a generic manner, saying you’re not prepared to be a priest of the church and you can serve anywhere in the world. Wes said, where is the wisdom in that? I mean, good night, if you’re going to be a college professor, that kind of thinking might work, although college professors that don’t pay attention to their constituents, don’t know their classroom community at all, are probably going to make some pretty bad mistakes as well. I think people need to know the basics of what any baptized Christian ought to know. I believe in life-long learning, that people are not just going to be confirmed by a bishop when they’re twelve and lock it up and don’t worry about it for the rest of their lives, and that was kind of true about my youth. I think that in a good ministry development program like I have tried to describe, that congregations can grow together, the clergy, ordained people as well as the lay body, growing together in a community into a commonality, a cooperative way of doing ministry that would avert a lot of the dead ends we get into, like the buck stops with the priest, or, there have been all kinds of horror stories for me.
Matt: Well, it sounds like the conversation was essential considering the fact that you were addressing so much change, I mean, it was a necessity to address these issues. Everyone needed to be on the same page.
Rustin: Yeah, we were driven to be on the same page because of bucks, you know even though we had several million dollars at our disposal, we had incredible needs out there. If seminary trained clergy was going to be the norm for all of the congregations it would have busted us, we couldn’t have afforded to do that. That kind of echoes what you were saying.
Matt: It sounded like a fascinating experience and I have enjoyed learning all about it. Thank you again for meeting with me, I really appreciate it.
Rustin: You’re very welcome, thank you.