Tend to flock, Presiding Bishop states in Hobart lecture

'Bless the ideas that get floated in your congregation,' Jefferts Schori says

By Neva Rae Fox, September 30, 2008 [Episcopal News Service] Weaving themes of shepherding, tending to flocks and the critical nature of the ecosystem, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori addressed the importance of pastoral responsibility at the September 30 Hobart lecture.

"Pastors have a responsibility to challenge the spiritually unhealthy," she told the 150 clergy assembled in New York City for the lecture.

Sponsored by the Diocese of New York, the Hobart lecture, named for the third bishop of New York, John Henry Hobart, is an annual address that acknowledges and encourages pastoral ministry.

Jefferts Schori connected the needs of the flock to the tender ecological balance of the earth. "When communities (or flocks) begin to dig… they discover the connections between food and justice, environment and poverty, corn and starvation in sub-Saharan Africa.  And another pastoral ministry ensues -- learning how to do political work, which is an essential part of building the Reign of God."

Full text of the Hobart Lecture is here.

She urged the clergy to work with their congregations on environmental concerns. "Discovering how much waste a congregation produces, and how much can be recycled, is another way of teaching and even changing community norms," she said, "There are still too many local communities that make no provision for recycling, or have only inadequate programs."

The Presiding Bishop added, "Bless the ideas that get floated in your congregation."

In this election season, she offered, "Effective pastoral ministry equips parishioners to share the political labor, in the ministry of developing just and peaceful communities.  I hope your sermons in the next few weeks will encourage all your flock to share in that pastoral work and cast an informed ballot."

She concluded, "Remember to share the pastoral work -- learn from your parishioners, encourage their creative forays, and keep going in and out by the gate.  Our task is to cooperate with the abundance that God has given us, in ways that will lead to a feast for the whole created order.  Then we may indeed hear, 'well done, thou good and faithful shepherd.'"

Previous Hobart Lecturers include Rowan Williams, the then-Archbishop of Wales, Archbishop Michael Peers of Canada, Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies George Packard, Bishop of London Richard Chartres, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, and former Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

 

-- Neva Rae Fox is program officer for public affairs with the Episcopal Church.

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