Living Stones celebrates the "ministering community"
By the Right Reverend Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont
Mountain Echo, March 2001

In early February, I attended the annual meeting of Living Stones, a partnership of over twenty dioceses from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada engaged in mission and committed to the ministry of all the baptized. Vermont is a partner diocese. This year, several observers from Great Britain were present, bringing even more of an international flavor to the gathering.

Our Diocesan Coordinators are Bill Rayner and Genie Rayner. The Reverend Jeanette Tweedy also attended this year’s gathering to be part of our case study presentation on ministry development in the Northeast Kingdom. We heard some very wonderful and moving stories of ministry development going on throughout the church, even as we shared some of the exciting things going on in Vermont.

Living Stones recognizes the reality in the Church today that the most familiar Anglican model of ministry—in which a congregation is "ministered to" by a full-time priest—is changing very rapidly. Living Stones celebrates the emergence of the "ministering community" model of church life that is taking hold in all corners of the Anglican Communion, as well as in other denominations. Baptism is at the heart of this model of ministering community, as is the theme of collaboration by all Christians who serve God with their gifts and skills. For some, this leads to ordained ministry. For most, it means identifying and carrying out our ministries as the People of God in the midst of our daily lives.

One joy of the Living Stones partnership is to see how this model of baptismal ministry is being lived out in many different ways and to bring those stories back home. One story we heard included the creation of an exciting process for Christian ministry formation, known as Life Cycles. This process can be adapted to congregations of all shapes and sizes. Another story we heard involved the creation of a diocesan program called Equipping the Saints, which accents both learning and the practical application of what people are learning. Many stories, such as our case study from Vermont, involved opportunities for deepening cooperation amongst congregations in a region.

For me, one of the challenges coming out of this meeting of Living Stones, and one that has particular relevance here in Vermont, is the issue of how we connect our concern for the environment and ecology more closely to the Baptismal Covenant. The Baptismal Covenant has much to say about our relationship with God and with other human beings, and yet God’s creation includes more than we humans, and God’s reconciling mission involves more than our human relationships with God and each other. This set me to thinking that perhaps we need to add some language to the Baptismal Covenant that will help remind us of this. Perhaps the Baptismal Covenant should ask us, "Will you seek and serve Christ in all creation, loving God’s world as yourself?" And what about, "Will you strive for justice and peace in all of creation, and respect the dignity of everything God has brought into being?" The wordsmiths and the liturgists can play with the language, but I think you get my point.

Ministering communities are called to be engaged in the whole of God’s Mission and this Mission includes the well being of the world in which we are privileged to live. I am no expert in environmental and ecological matters, not by a long shot. I am, however, doing a good bit of reading on the subject of the environment and ecology. What is most clear to me is that the world God created, the world we inhabit, is indeed a very fragile place these days, and we need to pay better attention to our relationship with all of God’s creation. I hope that we as a diocese will be in deeper conversation about all this and that we will bring our considerable gifts for ministry to bear on the environmental and ecological crisis facing us and "this fragile earth, our island home."
+ Thomas

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