Recently Bishop Thad Barnum preached at the consecration of The Rev. Canon Billy Waters, Suffragan Bishop Elect of the Anglican Diocese of the Rocky Mountains. Barnum is a fiery preacher and has a clear passion to preach the Gospel to the lost. I have witnessed him in person and it reminded me of what it might have been like to hear Whitfield. Bishop Barnum is also famous for his book Never Silent, which unfortunately perpetuates an incomplete narrative about reconciliation in Rwanda.
Getting people saved and into the church is a wonderful thing, but what do they encounter once they are inside? The Christian life does not end, but only begins, when we are baptized. Clergy are supposed to be there to tend and care for the souls of those being added to the Kingdom of our Lord. As our ordinal says,
Remember how great is this treasure committed to your charge. They are the sheep of Christ for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you will serve is his bride, his body. If the Church, or any of her members, is hurt or hindered by your negligence, you must know both the gravity of your fault, and the grievous judgement that will result.
That is why it is so disappointing to hear that in his sermon, Bishop Barnum decried all the time that the College of Bishops is spending on problems that they have brought on themselves. Bishop Barnum blames the devil for distracting the ACNA from mission–and he is correct to do so–but he places the blame on the wrong parties.
And I fear we don’t have it. I fear that the devil is so, is so winning this day. His desire is to shut our mouth. That’s what his desire is. And so what he does with us on the provincial level, it drives me crazy at the College of Bishops, at the diocesan level, at the parish level. There are so many distractions. There are so many things we have to be thinking about. Another thing happens, it lands (in) the College of Bishops. It takes all of our time to deal with it. To try to process it. That’s exactly what the devil is. So we never get to talk about mission, about the burden of souls, for which we have actually committed ourselves. (We) don’t commit ourselves to church planting, we commit ourselves to winning the lost, by which church planting happens. That’s the movement of it. But we first need that burden for the souls, but we don’t have time. We’re so distracted.
And then, God help us, we start infighting, which is brilliant of us. We divide, we divide, and we’re good at dividing. And that’s again, the work of the devil to torment us. And then we watch people. They don’t understand the ungodly, the stirring of these ungodly people, who want to vent, and so what they do is they vent on social media, so that rather than the world hearing our burden for them, our love for them, the lost, they hear our mess ups, so that the world will look at us, and mock us, and mock our Lord, because they’re venting, venting to the world about their whatevers. And they’re bringing reproach upon our Savior and upon those of us to whom they slander.
These things should not be named among us. They should not be named among us, and that’s why there’s a fear somewhere, I think, inside, that we’re afraid to say, and to stand up and say, You can’t silence us anymore. Thank you very much. We’re done. We will put distractions, we will deal with those things. We will deal with our divisions and our need to reconcile one to another. But for me and for my house, we have got a work to do. The Lord is sending us to the lost. to the hurt, to the broken, to the stranger, to the hungry, to the thirsty, to the naked, to go, the hearts of the churches, to go, into all the world and make disciples. of all the nations.
The culprits responsible for these problems are not social media accounts, bloggers, or victims who report their abuse. The culprits are the clergy and leaders who have abused, lied, covered up, and betrayed the trust of their parishioners. Fix those problems and you can get back on mission, drawing people to healthy churches, not places led by uncaring institutionalists.
In his paper “Apology Received, Forgiveness Granted”
Assessing the Impact of the Sacred Assembly in Raleigh, January 2012, Bishop Barnum described his blindness to how the AMiA hurt ACNA. He wrote:
We, at AMIA, made the decision to forge ahead. Like us or not, we decided to devote ourselves to “Mission: Nothing more, Nothing Less.” It was a choice not to be distracted by our detractors, keep the focus on gospel mission, and trust the Lord would bring all things together in His time and in His way.
But it’s here, I believe, where my own heart began not to care…
Fast forward to Raleigh, January 2012, and I am face-to-face with the fact that our decision, my decision, caused hurt to my brothers and sisters in Christ in ACNA. I didn’t know that before. But far worse, I was suddenly aware of the dark, ugly condition of my own heart.
I had come to a place where I didn’t care…
I confessed my part in the May 2010 decision that led to deepening and widening the chasm between AMIA and ACNA. It was all too unrehearsed. I didn’t know how to say that there had been too many hurts over the last fifteen years and that for me, my heart had become cold and uncaring. For whatever reason, that didn’t come out.
I just knew to say “I am sorry for the hurt I’ve caused.” A real sorry. A real complicity.
I’d suggest to Bishop Barnum that he is once again blind to something going on in front of him and at times in his own structures.
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