Report to Diocesan Conventions 2023
Our Committee began this journey of discernment over a two day retreat in Kokomo in March of 2023. Our first steps were getting to know one another and sharing our experiences of the Episcopal Church here in Indiana and wherever we had come from. We talked about how much this Church means to us, the role Episcopal communities of faith have played in our lives, the breadth of ministries through which we have served, and the curiosity and hope we bring to this work. That first weekend we were reminded that at its core, the work of this Committee is about prayerful, spiritual discernment. We have been invited to listen. Together. To what the Spirit is calling us to.
Bishop Doug Sparks of Northern Indiana and Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis were ordained just a year apart, in 2016 and 2017 respectively. While there had been no formal conversation within or between our dioceses regarding shared ministries, our Bishops were intentional about collaboration. After a few years of walking together as colleagues, they began to expand the circles of collaboration into the dioceses. As a step in that direction, the Bishops planned a joint clergy conference in 2020, led by The Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, Bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania and Provisional Bishop of Western New York. That clergy conference was joint, but it happened via Zoom because the pandemic interrupted that flow and everything else too.
In 2021, Bishops Baskerville-Burrows and Sparks met for what is now fondly referred to by our Committee as “The Coffee House in Kokomo: An Episcopal Summit.” Over coffee, the Bishops agreed that it was time to share the questions they (and leaders from their respective dioceses) were asking about the future of the Episcopal Church in Indiana with other leaders, leadership bodies, and the people of our dioceses. They began talking with their Standing Committees and Executive Councils about initiating a discernment process on reunification. In 2022, they met together with missioners and staff and with the support of an outside facilitator, discussed the possibility of reunification.
In their first video to our dioceses announcing that such a discernment was on the horizon, Bishops Baskerville-Burrows and Sparks invited us all into the questions at the heart this process, the questions stirring our hearts, minds, and souls to seek God’s way for us: “What might God be calling us into as we live and engage God’s mission as Episcopalians in the state of Indiana?... How can we make the most of what God has given us?... How can we further communicate the witness of reconciliation in the world…to be beacons of Christ in a more powerful way?... [Our dioceses] have closely aligned core beliefs, values: inclusion, racial justice, living of the mission of the Episcopal Church….iI’s natural to ask, ‘How much further are we called to take this?’”
These questions are big and faithful ones for us to raise. They involve prioritizing mission and stewardship. They acknowledge the relationships and the faith we share as Episcopal Christians in Indiana. And they call us to listen together for how the Spirit is working among us, shaping us anew for the challenges and joys of being Church today.
In 2023 the Bishops appointed a twelve-member Reunification Discernment Team with six people from each diocese representing the Councils and Standing Committees and members at-large. The Bishops brought in an outside consultant, The Rev. Jennifer Adams, Rector of Grace Church in Holland, Michigan to serve as facilitator. The Standing Committees and Councils of both Dioceses approved “a period of intentional exploration of the possible reunification as one diocese” and the Reunification Discernment Committee was charged with “the exploration of opportunities in the areas of program, general operations, formation, finance, pastoral care, stewardship, staffing, and outreach and social justice ministries as well as the gifts, strengths and priorities of each diocese.” In this process, the Committee is to “consider full reunification, as well as any interim sharing of resources and, if feasible, seek to provide a draft timetable for those efforts.”
And so our work began and will continue. To date we have met as a full Committee three times in-person and four times virtually. Our four sub-teams have been gathering and organizing data, information, and stories. Our work in this initial phase included entering into conversation with other dioceses who are currently involved in similar processes of discernment, interviewing previous bishops of our dioceses, doing a line by line comparison of our diocesan Canons, reading through parochial report data and comparing diocesan budgets, exploring ministry areas and programs, and witnessing the many beautiful ways in which faith is expressed through the people, programs, and congregations of our dioceses.
Following the conclusion of this year’s diocesan conventions, the Reunification Discernment Committee will be launching a website, episcopalindiana.org to serve as the hub of information about ways to participate in this discernment process. We will also host a series of Listening Sessions early in 2024 through which the clergy and people of our dioceses can offer the potential they see in this process, any concerns they have around the possibility of reunification, and their dreams for the Episcopal Church in Indiana.
It became obvious at the very beginning of this process, that this work is necessarily done in community. None of us alone has answers to the questions that sparked this discernment, nor do we have a clear vision of where we are headed. Together, though, we can gather information and data that describe aspects of our current reality. We can collect stories that show us who we have been, tell us something about who we are, and shine a light on where we might head. We can wrestle with hard realities and seek new ways forward that tap into old and abiding strengths. And together, with the people of our dioceses and those on similar journeys, we can pray.
Brief reports from the sub-teams of our Committee are included below. We go about this work with thanksgiving and a great deal of hope for what is to come.
Exploring Programmatic Areas
Team Members: Ms. Joan Amati, The Rev. Canon Jodi Baron (lead), The Rev. Clay Berkley, Mr. Paul Kincaid
Phase I of this process for our Team involved getting to know one another, establishing our approach to this work, breaking it out among our members and establishing a sufficient holding place for the information we’re gathering. Once our basic framework was in place, we began to gather information and stories (written and oral) related to various program areas: Children & Youth Ministries, Social Justice Ministries, Global Partnerships, Formation (including the ordination process,) and more. We interviewed staff and committee chairs. We began to read through documented processes and the website content of our dioceses. We have discovered how much we have in common and also begun to highlight some of our differences.
The most significant discovery we would like to share at this early stage in the process is that there are many robust expressions of Episcopal faith alive and well here in Indiana. As we on this Committee have begun to do, we invite you to look around with us so that you enter this process with open eyes and hearts willing to notice the faith that abounds throughout the Episcopal Church in Indiana. We invite you to see one another and the many ways in which the people of the Episcopal Church in our state are serving God, this church, one another, and their communities too. There is inspiration to be had here.
Episcopalians here are united in common prayer. There are a range of incredible ministries that take us out into the world with a message of God’s love and our shared passion for justice. There are generations of people in our Church, all with gifts to share, and a faith that runs deep all across and through the faith communities of our dioceses. And all of that makes for a beautiful place for us to begin this discernment, together.
Finally (for now,) notice as we have that both of our dioceses are blessed with staff who care deeply about our Church and the Hoosiers among whom they serve. See as we have that our committees and the teams of our dioceses are made up of faithful Episcopalians who come from a range of different sizes and configurations of the congregations that are ours. Notice that within our programmatic areas there are successes and challenges, redundancies, differing approaches, gaps and areas in which we might build something better than either of us has now, together.
We will have more to share as we analyze and integrate the data and stories we’ve gathered in ways that are meaningful to this discernment, identifying issues and potential collaborations for our Committee and others in our dioceses to consider.
Exploring Organizational Areas
Team Members: Mr. Evan Doyle, The Rev. Canon Ted Neidlinger (Lead,) Ms. Stephanie Pawlowski, The Rev. Allen Rutherford
During this first phase of work, our Team has gathered a great deal of information on both dioceses. We have explored parochial report data, studied diocesan budgets, compared communication systems, and read through the canons of both dioceses. We look forward to the next steps of evaluating and organizing the data in ways that serve our discernment. For the purpose of this report, we offer some basic numbers and initial impressions.
There are 48 congregations in the Diocese of Indianapolis and 31 in Northern Indiana. The initial impression of the state-wide Episcopal Church is of a community composed predominantly of very small worshiping bodies with only a few churches having average Sunday attendance (ASA) above 100. Approximately eighty-nine percent of the Episcopal parishes in Indiana average under 100 ASA. Sixty-eight percent of the parishes are below 50 attending on Sundays. As is true throughout the Episcopal Church, and in other faith bodies too, the long-term future of a number of faith communities in both dioceses are precarious due to declining attendance and membership.
Of the seven parishes with an ASA of 100 or more, six are in the Diocese of Indianapolis and all of those averaging more than 200 are in the Indianapolis metro area. The make-up of the two dioceses is very similar except for the dynamic introduced by four of these large and well-resourced parishes. The needs, resources, potential and influence of these churches which represent over one half of the state’s Episcopalians will need to be acknowledged and better understood in any collaboration or reunification proposals coming out of this discernment.
It is significant to note that with the four largest parishes in the Indianapolis area not included in the totals, the ASA in the Diocese of Indianapolis is 41. In the Diocese of Northern Indiana, the average ASA is 35. As the Episcopal Church in Indiana, we are, for the most part, a community of small congregations.
Besides exploring this parochial data, our Team has also undertaken a thorough analysis of the funds and operating budgets of both dioceses, noting how the funds are structured and how they relate to the overall financial operation of each diocese. We have also gathered information on staffing, policies, and benefits provided to staff. We can see in this initial phase that the Diocese of Indianapolis and some of its parishes are blessed with financial resources to a degree that is unusual given their respective sizes. This has allowed for staffing levels and other organizational sophistication not found in Northern Indiana. In another comparison we found that on average, the congregations of Northern Indiana have higher percentages of their operating budgets funded by pledged giving than in the Diocese of Indianapolis.
While there are broad similarities and specific areas of difference, both dioceses appear to be organizationally, structurally, and financially sound.
In this initial phase of exploring organizational areas of our dioceses, one member of the Team has done an extensive review and side-by-side comparison of the Constitution and Canons of both dioceses identifying areas of similarity and divergence. Another member has studied the communications systems and practices of these dioceses. Our Team has gathered a tremendous amount of information. Next steps involve focusing the questions we apply to that information, in order to best serve the overall discernment process.
Exploring Our History and Learning from Other Dioceses in Discernment
Team Members: Ms. Brenda Rigdon, Mr. Greg Seamon, Ms. Katherine Tyler Scott (lead)
Our Team is exploring in two directions both of which take us outside of our current experiences in the Episcopal Church in Indiana. We are reaching back to learn about and from the histories of our two dioceses and we are reaching beyond our dioceses to learn from and share with other Episcopal dioceses in similar processes of discernment.
We are researching the documented and remembered histories of the relationship between the Diocese of Northern Indiana and Diocese of Indianapolis from their inception to the present. We have identified and are in the process of interviewing retired and active clergy and lay leaders with knowledge of these histories while we also read through various documents and books. Our primary sources include:
John Beatty, Historian in the Diocese of Northern Indiana
Brett Roberts, Historiographer for the Diocese of Indianapolis
“Our Heritage,” The first 150 years of the Diocese of Northern Indiana
Journals of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Indiana (1838-1899): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008634660; missing years available in print
Journals of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis (1899-present): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008634661; missing years available in print at diocesan offices and Indiana State Library
Joyce Marks Booth, A History of The Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis 1838-1988 (1988).
Sarah Pratt, Episcopal Bishops in Indiana: A Churchwoman’s Retrospect (1934), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005947906
While we look back to learn more about how we got to this moment in the life of The Episcopal Church in Indiana, we are also reaching out to learn how other dioceses are navigating process of discernment of either reunification or junction (the canonical term for dioceses who were never previously one and decide to unify.)
We are interviewing and have entered into conversation with the Dioceses of Eastern & Western Michigan who have been in intentional discernment since 2019 and will vote on juncture next March, Northwestern Pennsylvania and Western New York who have been sharing a bishop and collaborating in mission since 2019, Bethlehem and Central Pennsylvania who began a formal discernment process on reunification earlier this year, the three dioceses of Wisconsin who recently voted to pursue reunification with a final vote to take place next April, and Minnesota, a diocese that is not in discernment but is the result of a reunification decades ago and is currently a geographically large, midwestern diocese with a range of congregations and cultures from whom we thought we could learn.
To date we have completed twenty-one interviews with several more pending. We are busy gathering valuable information and insights, perceptions and facts about each Diocese’s history, identity, mission, structure, and strategy. We are busy learning from beyond our dioceses too. We’ve begun to identify themes and issues for further study and discussion as we get a sense of what will be most important to this work of discernment. We know this will take time; and are committed to giving it the time it needs.
Exploring the Ministry of the Episcopate
Team Members: The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Bishop of The Diocese of Indianapolis, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Douglas Sparks, Bishop of The Diocese of Northern Indiana, Mr. George Eastman
As shared earlier in this report, the Bishops of our dioceses have been in conversation for several years about current and potential collaborations between our dioceses, including but not limited to the possibility of future reunification. Within that possibility and the discernment surrounding it are very real questions around the ministry of the Episcopate and what shape that might take should reunification occur.
This moment in the life of our dioceses is an opportunity for us to learn from and reflect with Bishops Sparks and Baskerville-Burrows about the wide range of ministries contained in their roles and the ways in which they live their calling as bishops of the Church. The ministries of our Bishops include parish visitations, supervision of staff, the pastoral care of clergy, confirming, receiving, and ordaining, being present to canonical processes such as those for ordination, their roles within the House of Bishops and the greater Episcopal Church, serving as a public presence and voice in our communities and our state, relationships with governance and ministry groups, participation in other organizations with whom our dioceses partner in mission, and more.
This Team has just begun the work of reflecting with and learning from our Bishops regarding this essential dimension of their and our collective discernment. Further along, we will explore the challenges and possible shapes the ministry of the Episcopate might take in a more collaborative and potentially reunified diocesan environment.
More to Come
Over the next several months, this Reunification Discernment Committee will continue to analyze and organize all that we’ve gathered, increase communications, and invite your further participation. The website dedicated to this process indianaepiscopal.org will launch soon! Visit the site for FAQs, updates and reports from this Committee, information and registration for Listening Sessions, and a means by which you can communicate your thoughts and questions to us.
We remain very grateful for your support, your participation, and your prayers.
The Reunification Discernment Committee
The Dioceses of Northern Indiana The Diocese of Indianapolis
Bishop Douglas Sparks Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows
The Rev. Clay Berkley, At-Large Ms. Joan Amati, At-Large
Mr. Evan Doyle, Council The Rev. Canon Jodi Baron, At-Large
Mr. Paul Kincaid, Standing Committee Mr. George Eastman, Standing Committee
The Rev. Canon Ted Neidlinger, Council Mr. Greg Seamon, Executive Council
Ms. Brenda Rigdon, Council The Rev. Allen Rutherford, Executive Council
Ms. Stephanie Pawlowski, At-Large Ms. Katherine Tyler Scott, At-Large