wfn.org | Presiding Bishop's message to Executive Council about 20/20

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2001-338

Presiding Bishop's message to Executive Council about 20/20

     November 27, 2001

     For the Executive Council

     My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

     When we received the report of the 20/20 Task Force during our October 
meeting in Jacksonville, I shared with you my sense that our church over these 
last years has been characterized by a renewed confidence and mission energy.  I 
said that the 20/20 movement has unleashed a vision of mission that celebrates 
and names, as well as challenges and directs, some of the energies abroad in the 
church for doing the work we have been given to do.

     And though the specifics change, the mission of the church is always the 
same, and that is to participate in God's work, God's project: which is the 
reconciliation of all things to God's own self in Christ through the agency of 
the Holy Spirit. We are being pushed to step outside our institutional safety 
zones and open ourselves to the driving motion of the Spirit in new ways in the 
service of God's project. 

     This mission is not an abstraction but is incarnate and made flesh in the 
lives of men and women who through baptism become limbs of Christ's risen body 
and share his work of drawing all things to himself. This work takes many forms, 
expresses itself in many contexts, using different vocabularies: Church growth, 
social justice, spirituality and holiness, personal growth and corporate 
responsibility, sin, the cross and forgiveness, redemption, resurrection, 
transformation.

     As we determined at our Jacksonville meeting, the next step is for the 
Standing Commission on Domestic Mission and Evangelism to help us look at all we 
do through the lens of 20/20. The Commission's work has already begun, and I am 
sending you now an important statement from the chair and vice-chair. You will 
note that, based on the counsel of my chancellor, it has been necessary to 
organize around the work in a way somewhat different from what Council 
envisioned. I commend the statement to you. 

     Yours sincerely,

     Frank T. Griswold
     Presiding Bishop and Primate
     Episcopal Church, USA