Far East Daily Blog #4

September 16, 2014 Perhaps the highlight of this day is the opportunity Carolyn and I had to travel from Yokohama toTokyo Narita Airport aboard a Japanese fast train. It has been a while since I have had the opportunity to experience the smooth ride of a Japanese train. When we got to the airport it was a pleasure to have met up with so many of the other bishops and their spouses whom Carolyn and I had not seen for several months. The camaraderie between the members of the House of Bishops and their spouses is truly impressive. It is not that we are all in agreement with one another or even in harmonious relationships. We are very different, but those differences give us the opportunity to appreciate one another through an appreciation of our differences. Carolyn and I found that having been in this time zone for over 4 days, we had a significant advantage over most of our peers. Though we are still experiencing some of the effects of jet-lag, for the most part we can sleep when we want to sleep, and be awake and alert when we need to be awake and alert. Though usually most of us take alertness for granted, overcoming the effects of moving through 13 time zones in one day makes for a enlivened appreciation. More tomorrow. +Jay

Far East Daily Blog #3

September 15, 2014 The day began for us under clear skies at Naval Station Yokosuka. Chaplain Cam Fish and I met early and made the trek over to the ships piers where we boarded the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), the command ship for the U.S. Seventh Fleet. After a brief tour of the ship we paid a call upon the Seventh Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Robert Thomas. My greatest amazement came at the briefing he gave me on the extent of his responsibilities in the Far East: essentially from China and Taiwan to Australia and New Zealand. Though the number of ships and Sailors in the fleet is growing, it will always be a tremendous challenge to ensure freedom of the seas for that large an area. As is the case with almost every senior commander with whom I have visited during the past 4+ years, Admiral Thomas is clear that one of his greatest challenges is to keep his people mentally, physically and spiritually sharp. He and Chaplain Cam Fish emphasized to me how important the chaplains of the Fleet are when it comes to the achievement of that goal. After meeting with Admiral Thomas I had a brief visit with his Chief of Staff, Captain Jeffrey Griffin. Like his commander, Captain Griffin emphasized to me how essential it is to have chaplains who can provide very competent religious support to the men and women of the Fleet. Next, we disembarked from the ship and walked over to the offices of the Commander Navy Region Japan where we met with Chaplain Mil Li, the Regional Chaplain. Chaplain Li, a chaplain of the Evangelical Covenant Church, also gave me a good overview of the vast territory for which he is responsible. His task of providing broad religious ministry support is a significant challenge. Yet, he impressed me as a committed and capable leader who is equal to the task. Our meetings for the day concluded with a meal with a number of senior chaplains who had expressed a desire to talk with me about their concerns and my perceptions. The topic of our conversation kept coming back to the question of the quality of chaplains. The expectation is that persons like me who fulfill the role of the Ecclesiastical Endorser will give recruit and access only the best clergy to serve as military chaplains. If I had to pinpoint one take-away from this last meeting it would be that the spiritual care of the men and women of the sea services is in the hands of some very competent Chaplain Corps officers. Tomorrow is a travel day when we will go from Yokosuka, Japan to Taipei, Taiwan for the House of Bishops meeting that begins on Wednesday. More to follow. +Jay

Far East Daily Blog #2

September 14, 2014 This morning Cam and Paulette Fish, and Carolyn and I launched at 0900 in route the Ikego Navy Housing complex where I was scheduled to be the preacher for the Ikego Church. Ikego Church is a new concept Navy chapel community that meets in the combination cafeteria/auditorium of a Department of Defense School. The Navy chaplain-in-charge of the congregation is Saul Burleson. I call this a "new concept" worship service for several reasons. First of all, the service has only been in existence for 5 weeks, and this was the first Sunday that they held worship in the school. Also, the worship style is one with the form of a sacramental/liturgical polity combined with contemporary Christian music. In the service itself, I believe that most Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians would find things that are familiar and to their liking. Perhaps the outstanding part of this community is that it consisted of almost 90 people, at least 30 of whom were probably under the age of 8. I know that about the children because I gathered them together for a kid-talk time just before the sermon. Thinking about what I experienced this morning, several questions come to mind for me. As priests of the church how do we maintain our Anglican sacramental identity when we engage in worship such as this? What is the validity of the sacrament when the presider at Eucharist is a clergy person who is neither “…Ordained by Bishops of Churches in Communion with This Church” nor by “…Bishops in Churches in the Historic Succession but Not in Communion with This Church.” (Quotes are taken from Title III, Canon 10 of the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church [2012]) Is the focus of our worship upon us or upon the people who we said we would serve? There are numerous other questions that could be asked, but these serve as a good starter for our contemplation. It is my intention to raise them with those of you who attend the annual Chaplain and Spouse/Partner Training Symposium that will be held this fall at San Damiano. The context and environment of our ministry is changing, and I believe we must do everything we can to stay ahead of the changes by engaging in honest and productive conversation. Tomorrow I’ll be making command calls at Naval Station Yokosuka with Chaplain Cam Fish and then having a conversation with a number of the chaplains who are assigned to commands based here. +Jay

Far East Daily Blog #1

13 September 2014 This is my first blog entry for my two-part trip to the Far East. The initial part of the trip is to Yokosuka, Japan to visit with Chaplain Cam and Paulette Fish. Recently Cam took up his duties as the U.S. 7th Fleet Chaplain. The second part of the trip will be in Taipei, Taiwan for the Fall 2014 House of Bishops meeting. On occasions Carolyn is able to travel with me. This is particularly appropriate when we will be visiting with the spouse of a chaplain. Hence, Carolyn came with me on this trip. We left Reagan National Airport on Thursday morning and traveled to Japan/Narita via Minneapolis. On Friday night the 12th of September we met up with Cam and Paulette and made the trek to our quarters at the Naval Station Yokosuka. After a 13 time zone trip, we have had spent the first part of our day today just catching up on sleep and getting our bearings at this sprawling naval base. One of the things that I have learned over the last 4 1/2 years is that one of the most efficient ways to overcome jet-lag is to have a significant amount of physical activity on the day after arrival. My "fit-bit" monitor tells me that we have walked over 22,000 steps today. We should sleep well tonight. The major event of the day was an afternoon of relaxed visit time with Cam and Paulette. One of the strong points that I re-learned today was just how much stress there is in an around the globe permanent change of station move. Cam, being assigned to an operational forward-deployed command, had to hit the decks running. As I understand it, he and Paulette arrived on a Friday, and he was at work bright and early on Monday morning. Shortly thereafter he went to sea with his command aboard the USS Blue Ridge. He has been maintaining the port-to-sea-to-port-to-sea schedule ever since. In the mean, time Paulette has been in Yokosuka setting up the household and accomplishing the many, mostly invisible tasks that our spouses perform. My take-away today is that we have some absolutely amazing priest/chaplain families. Bravo Zulu! +Jay

Bishop's Remarks to the House of Bishops

The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness To the House of Bishops Kanuga Conference Center Hendersonville, NC On March 12, 2013 Good afternoon. Jay Magness: Armed Services and Federal Ministries. I want to use the next few minutes to update you on some things I am doing and in which my small staff and I are engaged. For the benefit of those of you who are new to the House, I was elected three years ago at the spring HOB meeting in Camp Allen, IAW Article II, Sec. 7. of The Constitution of TEC: "It shall be lawful for the House of Bishops to elect a... Bishop (Suffragan) who, under the direction of the Presiding Bishop, shall be in charge of the work of those chaplains in the Armed Forces of the United States, Veterans' Administration Medical Centers, and Federal Correctional Institutions who are ordained Ministers of this Church." This is my episcopacy on federal lands in this and in foreign countries. Having been elected by the House, I make periodic reports to you on the ministry you have called me to do in support of my Priest/Chaplains who serve in the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and in the (Federal) Bureau of Prisons. In the interest of time, let me tell you a story. In the 1970s I served at one of my first parishes which was in this county of this diocese. The parish, St. Paul's, is about 15 miles north east of here. St. Paul's is surrounded by some beautiful commercial apple orchards. In the autumn each year thousands of tourists frequent the area to buy apples and see the fruit laden trees. On one warm sunny September afternoon a man and his wife from Atlanta in their long black Lincoln were driving past one of the local orchards when they saw a very peculiar sight: a farmer standing beneath an apple tree with a pig upon his shoulders which pig was eating apples off the limbs of the tree. At first the man and his wife passed by, but upon doing a double-take had to return to check out this strange sight. They pulled up beside the man with pig, rolled down the driver's side window to inquire about what the man was doing. The quick and curt reply was, "The pig was hungry." The man from Atlanta, who fashioned himself as having great knowledge of how to do things in the most efficient way, said, "Wouldn't it take a lot less time if you just put the pig on the ground and shook the tree so the ripe apples could fall within snout's reach of your hungry pig." The farmer, without so much as a slight pause said, "Time don't mean nothing to a pig." When I came into this episcopacy I reasoned that I had plenty of time to do what we needed to do to perform our highest priority task: recruiting priests and seminarians to serve as military, VA and Bureau of Prisons chaplains, but particularly military chaplains. I have since determined that time is not on our side. Recent events have demonstrated that we are in a dire need to increase our numbers of very capable and thoughtful clergy of this church to serve as chaplains within the branches of the armed forces. Why, you might ask, do we still need more clergy to serve as chaplains when we have shut down the war in Iraq and are winding down the war in Afghanistan. Though I could cite many, there is a primary reason. Even though Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan is drawing to a close, my chaplains are serving in an environment that is increasingly dominated by severely conservative to fundamentalist clergy, who are on one hand bent on expressing all of what they see as their First Amendment liberties to impose their version of the Christian faith upon everyone with whom they come into contact and also who embrace a sense of imperialistic nationalism by means of which they are eager to bless and condone almost any expression of armed warfare in any situation. In contrast, our clergy offer a very important reasoned influence to the environment. That influence is increasingly important because in all of the military services, not only are chaplains expected to provide pastoral, liturgical, and sacramental care to service members and to members of their families, also chaplains also expected to provide advisement to command leaders. When more so than ever before our military units are being employed as agents of international stabilization and diplomatic power projection, it is very important to me, and I hope to you and the people you serve, that their senior command leaders have the best moral and spiritual advise that is available to them. Last year for the first time we recruited more chaplains than we lost. Though it took us longer to change the loss trend, a trend that had been in place for the last 6 to 8 years, now we have the momentum to move forward, and I do not want to lose this momentum. This week we have talked about grief, pain and catastrophic personal loss. I can think of few environments where such loss is any greater. We need your best and most capable young priests. We need bright and young seminarians who can enter our student programs. While I am very thankful to all you who have supported this episcopacy, please continue to send us the excellent applicants. My second point is to let you know how much I appreciate your collaboration in receiving active duty military chaplains of other faith traditions through Title III, Canon 10 and enabling them to transition into the priesthood of this church. This is a crucial part of our recruiting effort. Currently we have 5 other-faith-tradition military chaplains in 5 different dioceses who are in some stage of transition into Holy Orders in The Episcopal Church. I recognize how difficult this can be for you and your Commissions on Ministry. I can and will assist you through this process. We know how the military system works and what is crucial for the soon to be priests to function in their operational environments. Call me and I will help you. You do not need to do this in isolation. Finally, very recently the Presiding Bishop received an email through the TEC web-site from the rather disgruntled spouse of a National Guard officer. Katharine passed the email on to me so I could contact the woman. To make a somewhat long story short, during her husband's second 14 month deployment to Southwest Asia she became very frustrated and hurt that she had become invisible to her parish priest as she struggled to be a working mom who was raising two small children on her own. After talking with her I got in touch with one of you, her priest's bishop, and we worked through the situation. What I found that what this young wife and mother wanted more than anything else was for someone to compassionately listen to her, both while her husband was away and after he had returned home; she did not need to be "FIXED," but to be heard. She wanted, as my former bishop Ted Gulick taught me, to carry her and her needs on my heart. In the end, this problem ended up being something we could work with and help. My take away is that some of the most invisible sacrifices in these long and tragic wars are being made by Reserve and National Guard service members and members of their families. Barry Bisner, who was for many years a National Guard chaplain, undoubtably can give you many examples of such situations. Unlike their active-duty counterparts, hometown Guard and Reserve people don't have the luxuries of being near large military installations with many family support resources. Please encourage your clergy to identify the Reserve and Guard families in their congregations and to monitor them. I know that it is important to remember that for these folk the war will not be over until long after the last round is fired and the last service member comes home. Many have experienced some horrendous sights and sounds, and have done some unthinkable things. The afterlife of their pain will endure for months and for years. Trust me, as a Vietnam veteran I know. In closing, more so than ever before I am fully aware that I can't do this without you. The work of Armed Services and Federal Ministries is a collaborative effort I do with your assistance and cooperation. Thank you for all you are doing to support the people you have asked me to serve.

New Website

PLEASE GO TO OUR NEW WEBSITE AT WWW.BASFM.ORG TO SEE ALL THE NEWS AND EVENTS.

THE LAST DAYS OF ADVENT AND APPROACHING THE NATIVITY

I hope that you've all had a good Advent this year. Like many of you, my colleague Wally Jensen (my XO) tells me that Advent is his favorite season of the church year. If I've got it right, to Wally Advent is a season of penitential reflection without all the guilt of Lent. I get his point. Like Wally, this is one of my favorite seasons. I enjoy the emphasis upon disciplined reflection. One of my disciplines is to read The Anglican Theological Review. I'd be curious to know how many of you subscribe to (in paper or electronic form) the ATR. I find it to be a stimulating alternative to some of what we read that may be passed off as theological writing, when really it is a devotional exercise. Don't get me wrong. I know there is a place for devotional writings. I read them as well. However, I know myself well enough to realize that I need to do ongoing theological integrative work. In a recent issue (Spring 2011, V. 93, No. 2) I read an article by Jesse Zink about the work of Bishop Stephen Bayne who in 1959 was chosen to be the first Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion. One of his important tasks was to help the Anglican Communion confront their wistful legacy as somewhat ethnocentric missionaries from the west and to shift attention to very real mission challenges that confronted them. I have a couple of major take-aways from this well written article. The first is that Bishop Bayne was convinced that the Church exists for mission, and not the other way around. In other words, the church did not discover mission. Quite the contrary; because a mission oriented structure or organization was needed, the church was established. Look at the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Congregations grew up around the idea of living out the mission of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. The second take-away is that his words have been largely unheeded, at least until recently. Within the past decade or so it seems that everywhere I look people are talking about reclaiming the mission of the church as the primary reason for the church to exist. As I look at the writings of people who talk about the mission oriented and the emergent church (Brian McClaran, Phyllis Tickle, etc.) it is clear that this theme has a new life with a new urgency. Perhaps there has merely been a time lag between the utterances and taking Bishop Bayne's words to heart. I've often wondered if at times a visionary prophet can only be heard decades after uttering the prophesies. Perhaps we're being motivated to heed this all because we have reached the point of realizing that we are in the midst of a moment of crisis. The application of these mission oriented approaches to our federal ministry environments is at the very least a significant challenge. Yet, these challenges might well be easily met. For years it has been clear to me that in the federal entities in which you serve there is an ongoing challenge to be, in essence, missionaries. In the tradition of Bishop Jackson Kemper, first missionary bishop of The Episcopal Church (about whom I'll write on another occasion) and the Apostle Paul, your mission is to go to people and places our church and society have forgotten. You do this as members, at best, of the diaspora. Within the organizations where you serve you have little, if any, entitlement and you don't expect to be entitled. Unlike many of the chaplains with whom you work, you understand the dynamics of the Constitution's First Amendment and that you are not entitled to impose the Good News of Jesus on every person whom you meet; that you pray in Jesus' name when you are engaged in worship within the Christian worship community and OUTSIDE of the public square. Yet, you still know of and experience the passion to share and live out the essence of Christ's story with all the people whom you serve. In most of your federal ministry settings the body of Christ will never be formed in the same way it is formed in civilian congregations. So what differences are there between the ministry environments of civilian and federal cultures? I am aware that this week many of you are in the process of completing your Christmas Eve or Christmas Day sermons - as I am for a sermon I will preach on December 25th at Yongsan Garrison in Korea. How will your sermon differ from a sermon that you would preach to a congregation in your dioceses of canonical residence? What unique words and phrases do your people need to hear from you? How does your hermeneutic differ from one that would be applied within the diocesan congregation? I really would like to know, as would many of your colleagues. On this blog site it would be helpful and informative to read your comments and reflections. May the blessings of this Advent and the anticipation of the Nativity be with you. Bishop Jay