Bishop finds the episcopacy wanting: dysfunction nutured by attitudes.

The following is adapted, with permissions from the author and publisher, from an essay entitled The Episcopate which Bishop Michael Ingham wrote for the book All Who Minister, edited by Maylanne Maybee (Anglican Book Centre, $19.95). The full text of the essay can be read at www.anglican.ca

The image of bishops as supreme monarchs--occasionally fostered by bishops themselves -- is perpetuated by the church. We exhibit some of the co-dependent behaviour of a dysfunctional family. We create the very conditions we want to reject. Both ordained and lay alike are complicit in supporting a system that disables talented individuals, inhibits healthy relationships and frustrates reform.

The newly ordained bishop is given a shepherd's staff to symbolize the office as chief pastor of the diocese, and a Bible as a sign of authority. Other elements in the rite stress the self-discipline required of a bishop, prescribing habits of regular prayer and study, the ability to listen and to take counsel, qualities of compassion and truthfulness, and a desire to nourish the spiritual lives of the whole people of God.

It is a daunting task, and those who are given it know its weight. Yet the actual living out of these expectations is fraught with difficulty because they both express and reinforce inherent contradictions in episcopacy itself and in the church as a whole.

I remember a day early in my episcopate when I entered a room full of friends and colleagues. I was astonished when they all stood up. In the next few weeks, my jokes became funnier, my casual observations strangely more profound, and great interest was taken in my well-being in a way never shown before.

Even though I had been elected from "inside" the diocese and was personally known, the process of distancing and elevating had begun.

I was overwhelmed with demands. Every organization wanted me to articulate my "vision" for the church. Every priest and deacon wanted time with me. Every lingering parish conflict turned up fresh at my door. Volumes of mail arrived. I was asked to make decisions about matters of which I had no understanding.

Bishop Steve Charleston of Alaska recently resigned his see because of the stress of episcopal ministry on his family life. He said this:

"The episcopacy really needs reform.... I believe the majority of the House of Bishops would say the greatest frustration in their ministry is that they don't feel able to live out a spiritual style of leadership. They find themselves constantly enmeshed in the managerial sides of leadership.... Times for reflection, quiet prayer, daydreaming, conversations, storytelling, listening, walking, looking at the earth -- all of those things are not prized. So the temptation is to minimize the spiritual and to maximize the managerial."

Charleston's comments illustrate the dysfunctional family system that is sometimes the church. We ordain bishops to be spiritual leaders, for which they are generally well equipped, and then give them responsibilities of corporate management, for which they are quite untrained. We dress them in purple and fine linen, and then complain about aloofness and hierarchy. We expect them to be people of prayer, wisdom, and learning, and then to attend endless meetings and reply to an avalanche of letters. We make them caregivers to the pastors, then give them great power over appointments and careers, setting up patterns of dependency and resentment for many clergy and their families. We encourage them in a ministry of transformation, but reward them only for actions that promote system maintenance.

The actual practice of episcopal ministry today does not allow for the fulfilment of episcopal vows. It is no secret that many bishops are unhappy with their roles, just as many in the church are unhappy with their bishops. What can possibly be done?

I want to make some practical suggestions for reshaping episcopal ministry. This must mean recovering the primary apostolic purpose of the office as expressed in the ordinal. This can be summarized in four principal functions.

1. To proclaim and interpret the gospel of Christ to the church and to the world.

The church has a profound need for gifted teachers and skilled communicators of the word of God. And in fact, there is a remarkable number of them in our midst. Bishops should be elected from among them. Rather than looking for the candidate most able to represent our theological party, or least likely to offend the largest number, we should call into leadership those whose evident faith in Christ communicates itself authentically and commands the deepest recognition, or else those who can call forth faith in others by inspired instruction and persuasion. Bishops should be teachers of the gospel first of all.

This requires a large degree of freedom from administrative and managerial functions. Supervising offices, spearheading programs, hiring staff, sitting on boards and committees, performing bureaucratic tasks, wading through legal work, preparing budgets, being consulted about every decision, unless these tasks are clearly related to the proclamation and interpretation of the gospel, they are not part of a bishop's purpose, and should not be part of a diocese's expectation.

2. To guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the church.

This sounds like an inherently conserving role. Certainly, in our dysfunctionality we interpret it as such, and discourage bishops from forays into new theological territory. The effect can be deadly on creative minds. It threatens to reduce the episcopal bench to slumbering elders in the grip of terminal caution. But there is nothing about guarding the faith that necessarily requires an overwhelming prudence.

Maintaining the unity of the church today requires acts of courage and risk taking. In this rapidly changing spiritual environment, old approaches won't do. Genuine faithfulness requires openness to new knowledge, willingness to re-examine accepted orthodoxies in the light of compelling truths in other disciplines such as the arts, sciences, philosophy, and other religions. Guardianship need not mean simply "holding the traditional line." It should also mean preventing spiritual decay and intellectual atrophy. It should mean tossing the occasional hand grenade into the closed rooms of dogmatism that so often passes for Christian education.

Christian orthodoxy, properly understood, has always been open to contemporary thought, and has sought to use it as a vehicle for the gospel. But there is a massive intellectual fraud being perpetrated on the church today by those who claim orthodoxy to be co-terminous with the repression of theological creativity. The alacrity with which any bishop who utters a speculative idea gets pounced upon deprives the church of the bold leadership it needs.

There is certainly no place for theological recklessness within the episcopate. Rather, a corollary of guardianship is that the church should be equipped to engage the modern world in debate on its own terms for the sake of salvation. The church needs to encourage adventure-some bishops as well as conservative ones.

3. To provide for the administration of the sacraments of the new covenant.

Bishops are to ensure sacramental ministry is everywhere provided for so that the church may be fed and loved.

This means the bishop must continue to have authority to ordain and to license. But it also suggests the essential skill of delegation.

One of the duties that ought to be delegated is confirmation. In the Orthodox tradition, confirmation is administered by priests. This is a practice to which we should move, or rather return, for in the Western church confirmation was reserved to bishops only after the sacrament of Christian initiation was divided in two -- into what we now call baptism and confirmation. Confirmation by priests would both restore the original unity of Christian initiation and free the bishop to exercise a more apostolic ministry.

Other duties can be delegated too. Most bishops spend inordinate amounts of time in career counselling and personnel redeployment. Parish search committees consume hours of travel and consultation time. Undoubtedly, these can be opportunities for good pastoral contact, and can build a spirit of trust and confidence in the diocese and parish. But few bishops are trained in this increasingly complex field. Every diocese needs to examine its practice of human resources appointment and development, and where possible, release the bishop from direct responsibility.

4. To be a faithful pastor and wholesome example for the entire flock of Christ.

As well as the usual things this implies -- the striving towards exemplary personal conduct that is the vocation of every baptized Christian -- there are some quite specific things it would be helpful for bishops to model.

One is a healthy attitude towards work. The church resembles a dysfunctional family partly because it rewards and reinforces destructive patterns of work. How often do we praise the faithful pastor who spends all night by a hospital bed, or the parish secretary who doesn't mind being phoned at home? How often do we criticize the priest who has an answering machine in the rectory or doesn't come to every meeting? There is no other profession in Canada where such expectations would be tolerated.

Bishops have heavier work pressures than almost anyone in the church, so one of the most helpful forms of leadership would be for them to renounce compulsive work habits and become wholesome examples of balanced healthy lifestyles.

Another aspect of episcopal modelling has to do with accountability. People of the church legitimately require good stewardship of what they entrust to their bishop. This should take the form of regular annual performance appraisals. The church ought also to look seriously at setting terms for bishops, as for all clergy. The stress of episcopal ministry is such that this should be seen as a preservative measure to free the bishop to move on to other ministry. It also frees the diocese to seek fresh leadership or to renew its relationship with the present incumbent.

Finally, we need to look for ways to diminish the distance that separates bishops from their flock. Why do bishops need to dress in purple? Roman and Orthodox bishops don't, except on liturgical occasions. For ordinary dress, they retain the black stock of the priesthood. Perhaps this is an Anglican distinctive we might rethink. It is a small sign, but then we live by signs.

In a word, barriers of all sorts must come down. The reshaping of episcopal ministry requires a restoring of the apostolic nature of the office and the abandoning of historical accretions that have attached themselves to the role, to the detriment of the incumbents and the church. It should begin with a rethinking by bishops of the jobs they have accepted. It will have to be supported by clergy and laity, who must stop expecting bishops to be more than the human beings they are. Such healthy rebellion could help put an end to the dysfunction of our present system, and encourage the liberation of the laos to exercise the ministry they have been given in baptism.