Our Work Ahead: The Lives and Legacies of Two Women Can Help Guide Us
January 25, 2012
This coming General Convention, to be held July 5–12 in Indianapolis, will be my first convention without my role model and mentor, Dr. Pamela Chinnis. Pam died last August, and I'm keenly aware of how I will miss her distinctive voice speaking truth with humor and wisdom to me when the going gets rough.
Pam was a tireless advocate for the full inclusion of women in the life and leadership of the Episcopal Church, and for that we owe her a debt of gratitude. She also was a champion of including the voices of all the baptized in the governance system she cherished and helped to lead. In the remainder of my current term as president of the House of Deputies, I want to recall and reclaim the ground on which she stood and from which she led.
I've also been thinking about the life and witness of another great laywoman of the church, Sister Margaret Hawk of the Church Army, to whose family I presented the President of the House of Deputies Award for Exemplary Service last September. Sister Margaret was a missionary on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations in South Dakota, and after retirement she continued her work in her home community of Red Shirt Table. She was also one of the first women seated in the House of Deputies in 1970.
We're having a lot of conversation recently about mission and how to structure the Episcopal Church in order to commit ourselves fully to God's work in the world. I think we could learn something from Sister Margaret.
She was born in 1913 on the Pine Ridge Reservation and recalled growing up in a family of 11 children, all of whom went to church every Sunday. Before the advent of the Model T Ford, they walked, rode horseback or used a wagon to get to church a mile away.
Until 1963, Sister Margaret raised her four children on the Pine Ridge Reservation and worked on and off at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church. But God called her to do more. So, at the age of 50, she joined the Church Army. In Pine Ridge, at Holy Cross Episcopal Mission, she was involved in ecumenical ministry with Catholics and Presbyterians. They started the Wowakakiye Center, a helping center for Lakota people that offered counseling, child care, food and other necessities. Sister Margaret set up a shelter for abused women, was an advocate for day workers and tirelessly served the people of the congregation.
When she died, her nephew, the Rev. Robert Two Bulls, wrote that Sister Margaret "served the Pine Ridge Episcopal Mission doing evangelism of hope, reaching out to people in despair and feeding the hungry." She realized the needs of the people among whom she lived and worked, and she answered those needs through mission developed on a local level.
I believe that the lives and legacies of Dr. Pam Chinnis and Sister Margaret Hawk point the way forward for The Episcopal Church. Their stories serve to illustrate two of my fundamental beliefs: first, our governance system, in its fundamental form, works; and second, mission is best done by congregations and dioceses.
But the fact that our governance system works doesn't mean that we don't need to make some changes and tighten some belts. Right now, over 50 percent of The Episcopal Church's budget goes to program offices at church headquarters in New York.
As this issue of Episcopal Journal goes to print, the Executive Council of the church will gather in Baltimore for a meeting at which we will consider the church's draft budget for 2013–2015. At its last meeting, I asked the council to consider how we might realize savings by focusing the work at headquarters more narrowly on governance and coordination, thus leaving more money in congregations and dioceses to do the mission that we know God is calling us to do.
I am for supporting mission and ministry where it happens most — at the local level. I will keep you updated on how this process unfolds.
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