What is the appropriate attire for an Episcopal priest at the events associated with the service in the Book of Common Prayer, the “Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage?” What does it mean to be an icon of Christ at a cocktail party? How does one live with sensitive confidential information from a parishioner? These questions might seem almost trivial yet are deeply serious. The Episcopal Church is a distinctive culture: effective ministry needs an understanding of the distinctive Episcopal culture.
At one level, this is a book that introduces and explains the Episcopal faith to a potential priest who wants to be effective in this world. At another level, this book is a reflection on the meaning and nature of the holy mystery of priesthood.
Drawing upon his rich parish experience in the Episcopal Church, Hawkins distils a wealth of practical experience and tips to enhance the training of seminarians and the ministries of established priests. Hawkins takes the reader through the pastoral offices with theological reflection and vignettes in order to encourage “good priestly habits.” Ideal reading for anyone wishing to serve the Episcopal Church in an ordained capacity.
What is the appropriate attire for an Episcopal priest at the events associated with the service in the Book of Common Prayer, the “Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage?” What does it mean to be an icon of Christ at a cocktail party? How does one live with sensitive confidential information from a parishioner? These questions might seem almost trivial yet are deeply serious. The Episcopal Church is a distinctive culture: effective ministry needs an understanding of the distinctive Episcopal culture.
At one level, this is a book that introduces and explains the Episcopal faith to a potential priest who wants to be effective in this world. At another level, this book is a reflection on the meaning and nature of the holy mystery of priesthood.
Drawing upon his rich parish experience in the Episcopal Church, Hawkins distils a wealth of practical experience and tips to enhance the training of seminarians and the ministries of established priests. Hawkins takes the reader through the pastoral offices with theological reflection and vignettes in order to encourage “good priestly habits.” Ideal reading for anyone wishing to serve the Episcopal Church in an ordained capacity.
Episcopal Etiquette And Ethics: Living The Craft Of Priesthood In The Episcopal Church
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Overview
What is the appropriate attire for an Episcopal priest at the events associated with the service in the Book of Common Prayer, the “Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage?” What does it mean to be an icon of Christ at a cocktail party? How does one live with sensitive confidential information from a parishioner? These questions might seem almost trivial yet are deeply serious. The Episcopal Church is a distinctive culture: effective ministry needs an understanding of the distinctive Episcopal culture.
At one level, this is a book that introduces and explains the Episcopal faith to a potential priest who wants to be effective in this world. At another level, this book is a reflection on the meaning and nature of the holy mystery of priesthood.
Drawing upon his rich parish experience in the Episcopal Church, Hawkins distils a wealth of practical experience and tips to enhance the training of seminarians and the ministries of established priests. Hawkins takes the reader through the pastoral offices with theological reflection and vignettes in order to encourage “good priestly habits.” Ideal reading for anyone wishing to serve the Episcopal Church in an ordained capacity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819224064 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2012 |
| Pages: | 117 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
EPISCOPAL ETIQUETTE AND ETHICS
Living the Craft of Priesthood in the Episcopal Church
By Barney Hawkins
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2012 Barney HawkinsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2406-4
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Case Study
Being a priest has been worth my life.
My path to Holy Orders and my life as a priest is uniquely mine. I offer my path as a "case" in ministry, as the context for my theological reflection on ministry practices. I have reflected upon my priestly formation and tried to make sense of the difficult path it was. To me now, the path to Holy Orders was as important as priesthood itself, the journey as critical as the destination. The craft of priesthood was forged in a fire, "always burning but never consuming," in the words of Catherine of Siena.
Let me begin with my baptism. I grew up in the northwest corner of South Carolina. The church nearest to the small farm on which I lived was Reedy River Baptist Church. It was there in a chilly tank of water that I was "dunked" three times with the ancient words: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." I was told that I was "born again" and I believed the preacher. In her short story "The River," Flannery O'Connor tells of a river baptism at which the preacher said to the one being baptized: "You count now. You did not even count before." When I was baptized at age nine, I really believed that I counted. It was a serious passage for me, but I soon forgot my new identity and went on with my life much the same as before. My baptism did not cross my mind in my high school years. I had other fish to fry.
In college I felt the "nudging" that often goes with the call to priesthood. At Furman University, across the road from my childhood home, I encountered the Reverend L. D. Johnson, who was the university's chaplain. He was the first real liberal in my conservative life. In 1968 he talked about pacifism and the role of women in the church's leadership. He looked beyond the color of a person's skin to the image of God deep within. He was the first person I ever heard speak of gays and lesbians with dignity and affection. He had a prophetic voice that stood squarely in the face of the powers and principalities of this world, and in his case that would have included the hierarchy of the Southern Baptist Church. If baptism got me thinking for awhile about God and my life, Chaplain Johnson's mentoring of me became the second great passage for me, a passage in which I was searching for what I would do with my life.
Because of a liberal Baptist chaplain at a university that was differentiating itself from the narrow-minded Southern Baptist Church (the monolith that hovered over the whole of the South in those days), I found the Episcopal Church. I told the chaplain that I did not feel at home in the church of my baptism. It was too stark. There was too much talk of sin and hell. Dr. Johnson said, "You must visit Christ Church downtown." I visited Christ Church the first time on Christmas Eve. I could not believe the pomp and ceremony, the vestments, the grandeur. I listened to and liked the sermon. I could not miss the mystery of Holy Communion. Perhaps for all the wrong reasons, I fell in love with the Episcopal Church—and through the liturgy I came to the deep well which is Anglican theology.
Through Dr. Johnson's encouragement, I entered Duke Divinity School. Linda Dell Wofford and I married in 1975, both of us discerning a call to the priesthood—a very difficult thing for women at that time! Linda entered the Divinity School at Duke as I took graduate courses and pondered my future. Linda's faith and courage in beginning her theological training with no assurance that the craft of priesthood would ever be opened to women in the Episcopal Church was inspiring. Settling once again into an academic life was made quite complex by my decision to pursue Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. As a graduate student at Duke, my life was increasingly shaped by my ministry as the Lay Pastoral Assistant at St. Philip's, Durham. I preached often, read more and more Anglican theology, and got to know a cast of caring priests who became important conversation partners as I began a formal path to Holy Orders.
The year 1976 was a confusing time in the Episcopal Church. We were finding our way through a long revision of the Book of Common Prayer. There was a listening process about the ordination of women to the priesthood, an issue which had polarized the church. The prior decades had been a bewildering season for mainline churches as the civil rights movement traveled blood-stained streets in many American cities. The Vietnam War divided the country and left us uncertain about the future. The Episcopal Church mirrored the world's conflict and chaos. The cultural changes experienced by the Episcopal Church were not always the church's own choosing. Social change was momentous and the church was shaken loose from her moorings. It is sad to assert, but the Episcopal Church did not lead the way in civil rights or women's rights. The church reacted more than it acted. Of course, there were clarion prophets along the way: John Hines, Verna Dozier, and John Walker, to name just three. But for the most part, the Episcopal Church protected the status quo. If the church was unsure about its own identity and role, so much more was the case for Episcopal priests. In the period between 1960 and 1980, priests went from being highly esteemed in their congregations and communities to being almost without portfolio in the same bailiwicks. The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War tore at the fabric of the well-established Episcopal Church. The craft of priesthood was under construction—and many were overly cautious about those claiming a call or discerning a vocation. For would-be ordinands, suspicion was as common a response as affirmation.
So my years of seminary education took place in the midst of tumultuous change in the Episcopal Church. The path to Holy Orders ended for me in the Diocese of Western North Carolina. St. Luke's in Boone became my sponsoring parish, and I was ordained a deacon at a diocesan service held at my new parish, Trinity Church in Asheville, in the summer of 1979. My family and Linda's family were part of the service, though oddly, I remember very little about it. As strange as it may seem, I remember best the deep blue carpet upon which I knelt. The day after, I served as deacon at the high marble altar for the two Sunday services. I had trouble getting my stole pinned and over the correct shoulder. I retreated to my office at one point that Sunday to read the unframed ordination certificate on my desk. Above the episcopal shield of Bishop Weinhauer, which was set in red wax on a purple ribbon, were the words that the bishop did "ordain as Deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, our beloved brother in Christ, James Barney Hawkins IV, B.A., M.Div. of whose pious, sober and honest life and conversation, competent learning, knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and soundness in the Faith we are well assured...." The certificate also noted that in the bishop's and congregation's presence the ordinand "freely and voluntarily declared that he believes the Holy Scriptures, of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of GOD, and to contain all things necessary to Salvation; and having solemnly sworn to conform to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Church...." I tried to take in the description of me as "pious, sober, and honest." Did I possess "competent learning"? What about "soundness in the Faith"? I marveled at what I had "declared" about the Bible. I was perplexed by my oath to "conform to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Church." I thought: What have I gotten myself into? Is this what I have been praying about for so long? Has the path to Holy Orders brought me to this serious moment?
If St. Luke's, Boone was a mentoring parish, Trinity Church will always be a "home place" for me. I lived so much life in the two years I was there. Trinity is home to us primarily because of the birth of our Ellen. She was born with Down syndrome and our lives were changed forever on July 1, 1980. Linda was thirty years old and there was nothing high risk about the uneventful pregnancy, although Ellen was three weeks late. We were shocked when Linda's childhood friend and our pediatrician told us within hours of her birth that dear Ellen had a congenital condition about which we were unaware. I thought the worst thing that could happen to us had happened. Over the years of our life with Ellen, I have come to see that the day of her birth may have been one of the best days of my blessed life. If I am honest, up to July 1, 1980, my life was totally about me. Ellen's birth changed that—to a certain degree. If the path to Holy Orders had been arduous, I suddenly confronted the biggest challenge of my life.
Ellen is Tuesday's child. I had been a priest for fifty-eight days when she was born. I was scheduled to preside at the Holy Eucharist in Trinity's Redwood Chapel on the Friday following Ellen's birth. My rector and first mentor in my priesthood, the Reverend Grahame Butler-Nixon, offered to assist me as the deacon, and I gratefully accepted. After that simple weekday service with about a dozen of the faithful attending, Grahame said something to me as memorable as the words I heard on the day of my ordination to the priesthood. He quietly observed: "Barney, you truly became a priest today." Of course, we both knew in that tender moment that the press of holy hands and the continuity of apostolic succession mattered on June 30, 1979 and May 3, 1980. But I also knew what Grahame meant. In a holy moment, covered up with sadness and facing an uncertain future, I raised my hands over bread and wine and they became the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For one brief moment, I knew that I was doing what I was made to do. My priesthood would be worth a life. I was a priest after the Order of Melchizedek and presiding at the altar in Redwood Chapel that day was the important work of my life.
During the years at Trinity, I was carefully shaped as a priest—at the altar and in the pulpit—by my rector. Grahame was precise in his sacramental duties, and he knew well the theology which underpinned every action. After services, he would gently reflect with me on the celebration. He wanted me to "own" my presiding practices. He wanted me to master the craft. Grahame's priesthood was deeply centered in the pastoral offices. If I am a pastor, it is because I learned from one whose priesthood was people-centered because it was God-centered. I found my preaching voice and style in Trinity's pulpit—encouraged by a congregation that listened and affirmed.
Indeed, I got to preach a lot at Trinity. Strangely enough, regular preaching awakened my faith and my love of the Bible. I assume most people in the pew conclude that a lively faith and knowledge of Holy Scripture precede good preaching. But in the regular practice of preaching, I found God (or God found me). My faith became stronger as I served as a deacon and then a priest at the altar, taught in church school, visited the sick, presided at celebrations of marriages, and participated in the reading of the burial office. But it was in preaching that my faith was the most stretched.
At Trinity I did not learn a lot about the intricacies of a parish's administrative life. That was my own fault. I was still not convinced that ministry included administering. I did learn at Trinity what it meant to "conform to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Church in these United States of America," to quote my ordination certificates. Grahame was a strong patriarchal figure who knew doctrine, respected discipline, and loved the worship of the Episcopal Church. While serving as curate and later associate at Trinity Church, I came to appreciate both the order and discipline of the Episcopal Church. I had always questioned authority; but after ordination, I slowly accepted episcopal oversight and the rector's authority—and in so doing, I think I opened myself for the first time to the rule of God in my life. As my life and ministry were conformed to the solemn vows of my diaconal and priestly ordinations, I discovered my true relationship with a loving and gracious God. As a new priest, I learned to accept people, being more about conversation than conversion. My earliest priestly habits derive from a theology that has its roots in creation and is grounded in the goodness of God.
The Church of the Ascension, Hickory
I was thirty-two years old and the Church of the Ascension was my first rectorship. I had no idea of the work that was ahead of me! I loved the Celebration of New Ministry, though in those days it was a service focused more on the priest and less on the congregation. Mutual ministry was a concept being articulated but not fully formed in the Diocese of Western North Carolina. By the time I departed Ascension in 1995, the services celebrating new ministries were about shared ministry, the new ministry of congregation and leader together. My ordaining bishop gave me a "letter of institution" as rector of Ascension. This all seemed rather official. I will never forget the comment at the door after the service celebrating "my" new ministry: "You will please everyone here: some the day you come; some while you are here; and some the day you leave." Much wisdom!
The Church of the Ascension was ready to grow, yet not ready to change. It was a pastoral-sized church that could not avoid becoming a program-sized church with substantial resources for ministry. I enjoyed celebrating, preaching, and teaching. Pastoral care took much of my time, and this soon became a challenge as the parish grew younger with new members and older with stakeholders who were aging rapidly. I was not skilled at administering a parish, supervising a staff, or leading a vestry. So I made many mistakes, even as most of the congregation forgave me and encouraged me as I continued to grow into the many roles associated with the craft of priesthood.
At the Church of the Ascension, I developed leadership skills to complement the liturgical and sacramental skills which I discovered while serving at Trinity, Asheville. I learned how to work with a vestry. I was forced to develop fund- raising skills when the vestry and parish decided to purchase a Flentrop organ. I saw at Ascension that the craft of priesthood includes community leadership and community organizing. As a priest serving as a rector, I stepped fully into the all-purpose garment or habit of priesthood. Over and over again, I realized that leadership was also about being a faithful pastor, tending to the myriad needs of a congregation growing and changing. Being at the bedside of the dying gave credibility and depth to my administrative work with the vestry. Working closely with wardens and the lay leadership of Ascension informed and shaped my preaching and teaching. I learned that administration is part of ministry and not an unwelcomed intruder. What the priest does on Tuesday is as important as what the priest does on Sunday.
If I preached mostly about God the Creator, God the Father, while at Trinity, Asheville, my sermons at Ascension were very much focused on Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. For almost fourteen years I preached at least once a week, save the times when I was on vacation. I often taught a course in adult education. Confirmation classes, EYC, and vacation Bible school were part of my brief, even when an associate was on staff. In all the busyness of parish life, I drew consolation and strength primarily from a healing service with the Holy Eucharist and homily every Wednesday afternoon. At first I thought that healing with the laying on of hands was "hocus pocus" and too far off the path of my "reasonable" Christianity. I knew I believed in sacred mystery, but I wondered if the laying on of hands was related to magic. Yet as I laid hands on the heads of the faithful one Wednesday after another, week after week, I became a believer in the power of Jesus to heal memories, bodies, minds, souls, and relationships. I saw with my own eyes that Jesus, the Great Physician, heals and sustains the faithful. I experienced Jesus driving from bodies and minds "all sickness and disease," as we would say in our Prayers of the People. Wednesday's healing service at the Church of the Ascension expanded my relationship with Jesus as my Lord and Savior, my brother and my physician.
My ministry at Ascension was a deeply shared ministry. Early in my time as rector I was reading a lot about mutual ministry, the up and coming "thing." Ascension was beginning to live into the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, with its increased emphasis on the ministry of all the baptized. Ascension was growing, and there was the need for more organizational structure and committees. The rector could not be everywhere, so lay leadership was encouraged and it flourished. I remember the day a senior warden said to me: "Well, it's time we focus on Jesus' disciples as well as Jesus." To borrow a phrase from Reynolds Price, it is also important to remember the "ardent spirits," those dear souls who help us live through the cold nights and long days that go with ministry.
The Church of the Redeemer, Baltimore
In the tenth year of my rectorship in Hickory, I became restless and reflective about my ministry at Ascension. A servant leadership workshop led by the Right Reverend Bennett Sims at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina, became a critical moment of discernment for me. For the first time I looked beyond my ministry at Ascension and in Western North Carolina and imagined a new place of service and leadership, a new place to live the craft of priesthood. In the spring of 1994, I began conversations with the search committee charged with finding a rector for the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore, Maryland, Bishop Sims's former parish. The chair of the search committee was one of the authors of the widely influential book Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community, and there was a prayerful, spiritual tone to the committee's interaction with me. Discernment had become a dirty word on my path to Holy Orders. Suddenly, discernment took on a new, positive meaning. As the months went by, I asked myself: Is this a call or am I fascinated with the size of Redeemer? Or could it be both? Three members of the search committee came to see me in Hickory. We talked over lunch in a booth at Applebee's. They came to services on Sunday at Ascension. I knew that day that I would be going to Baltimore.
In December of 1994, I was called to be the rector of this venerable north Baltimore parish, assuming my duties on Lent IV of 1995. I soon learned that it is not easy to move from a program-size church in a small Southern town to a resourcesize church in a major metropolitan area. Quickly, I learned that I wore pastoral garments more easily than the garments required of a corporate rector. After almost fourteen years, I knew the names of everyone in Ascension, Hickory. I soon realized I would never know all of the communicants in the Baltimore parish of some thirty-five hundred members.
The craft of priesthood is always about context. What works in one parish does not necessarily work in another. One "size" of priestly habit does not fit all situations. Context matters more than we think. Reflecting on my five years in Baltimore, I would call it a transitional ministry for me and an extended interim for the parish. I followed a rector who had served the parish with distinction for twenty-nine years. There was an interim, but his work was not completed before I arrived. I left before finishing my work. I never lived fully into my rectorship at the Church of the Redeemer.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from EPISCOPAL ETIQUETTE AND ETHICS by Barney Hawkins. Copyright © 2012 by Barney Hawkins. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 A Case Study 9
2 Coming to the Waters of Holy Baptism 24
3 Keeping the Feast 34
4 Confirming the Faith 44
5 The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage 54
6 Reconciliation and Ministration to the Sick 65
7 The Burial of the Dead 74
8 Administrative Stewards 82
9 Of Registries, Customaries, and Other Necessities 90
10 Dark Guests in the Craft of Priesthood 96
11 A Holy Craft 105
What People are Saying About This
"Episcopal Etiquette & Ethics is a welcome and fresh addition to the plethora of 'episco-speak/think/practice' books…In sum, Episcopal Etiquette & Ethics is worth having in your library, particularly if you don the collar, or work closely in leadership with those who do, and is a lively reminder that the priesthood is not simply about doing a job; it is about living a craft as a 'person who follows as faithfully as possible the Exemplar, Jesus Christ, who is our great high priest'."
—The Rev. Russell Levenson, Jr., rector of St. Martin's Church, Houston for The Living Church