Be not alarmed! This is neither an article predicting the second coming nor an update on the religious cult group with a similar name from Sioux Falls that moved to Florida a few months ago.
This month’s article is rather a reflection on a vision, theme and mission statement that has guided our Diocese for the past five years: T.LM.E. — To Increase Ministry Effectiveness.
As we come to the end of this five year period and the end of a decade, it is a good “time” to review T.I.M.E. as we anticipate L.I.F.E., Leadership In Faithful Evangelism. L.I.F.E. is our diocesan response to the worldwide Anglican, national Church and Province VI call for a Decade of Evangelism.
It is my firm belief that T.I.M.E. has prepared us for L.I.F.E. Furthermore, I am convinced that it is T.I.M.E. for L.I.F.E. — To Increase Ministry Effectiveness for Leadership In Faithful Evangelism.
As I shared several years ago in a “Twenty-Twenty Vision for the Diocese of South Dakota’, ministry is not accidental, it is intentional. T.I.M.E. has been our intentional response to God’s call to us as a Diocese to be faithful ministers of the Gospel.
While T.LM.E. has emphasized fund raising, stewardship, education and unity, intentional ministry has at its core faithful and competent ministers.
Jesus prepared His disciples for ministry by teaching, training and equipping them for the vocation of servanthood. But service or servanthood to what end or objective? So that they might proclaim “life”, the good news of salvation and redemptive life or, as we could say, to evangelize.
Jesus’ T.I.M.E. program was approximately three years, a period in which He called, trained and readied His disciples for L.I.F.E. Leadership In Faithful Evangelism.
Such evangelism was the shared vocation and common work of His disciples; it is likewise ours.
Five years ago, as a Diocese, we were short of ordained ministers, poorly trained in many areas and aware that some of our institutions and diocesan committees had become ineffective. Our clergy were the poorest paid in the Episcopal Church in the United States. The deacons in the Diocese could be counted on one hand and there were no coordinated lay training programs in the Diocese.
T.I.M.E. has brought a dramatic change in these conditions, a change beyond our hopes and expectations.
God has blessed us with the addition of four new full-time clergy positions within the Diocese and significantly increased salaries for the clergy.
God has blessed us with a strong and growing ministry of twenty deacons in the Diocese, versus only four in 1984, and fourteen more in the process of preparation.
God has blessed us with six persons in seminary and two scheduled to begin seminary next fall.
God has blessed us with five years of Niobrara Summer Seminary which now draws students throughout the Diocese and from other dioceses in Province VI.
God has blessed us with strengthened commissions and committees and one of the most caring, committed, and competent Commissions on Ministry in the Episcopal Church.
God has blessed us with exciting lay ministry workshops, which have held before us the priesthood and pastorate of all baptized ministers.
God has indeed blessed us and that blessing has been T.I.M.E. And now it is T.I.M.E. for L.I.F.E.! It is time to receive and celebrate the blessings of T.I.M.E. by sharing them with others in providing Leadership in Faithful Evangelism (L.I.F.E.).
T.I.M.E. will continue; it will not end because on-going preparation for ministry, effective ministry, will not end until the end of time itself. The subject of such ministry is the ministers, disciples, baptized, who share a vocation called ministry.
The object of such ministry is evangelism, proclamation, conversion, and the shared L.I.F.E. that we call redemption.
T.I.M.E. is not an end in itself. Effective ministry is a means, the means for the life of reconciliation that salvation.
Subsequent to the Lambeth Conference last summer and in a call for a world-wide decade of evangelism, the following definition of Evangelism was developed. I share it with you for your prayerful consideration as we celebrate T.I.M.E. in anticipation of new L.LF.E.
Jesus commanded His disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” and to be His “witnesses. . . to the ends of the earth” (Matt. 28:19, Acts 1:8).
To evangelize is to make known by word and deed the love of the crucified and risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that people will repent, believe, and receive Christ as their Savior and obediently serve Him as their Lord in the fellowship of His Church. (See also John 20:21, Luke 4:l8ff.)
The primacy of evangelism derives not from a desire simply to increase Church numbers, but from God’s unique provision of eternal life in Jesus Christ.