Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I spent much of the past week in a consultation with Church Pension Group in New York discussing changes in the Church and how to position both CPG and the wider Church for those changes.

CPG is the institution that maintains the retirement plans for both lay and clergy employees of the Church, oversees our health plans and property insurances, and also manages Church Publishing which produces our hymnals and prayer books along with many other materials.

It’s a venerable institution that was started by families like the Astors, Morgans, and Pierponts.

One of the questions they asked in a session was how to encourage younger Church employees to invent and save. They were emphasizing the security such a plan provides. They saw that security and stability as the chief virtues they were offering.

I asked them a simple question. I asked, “security to what end?” Of course, the value of security was seen as a self-explanatory good. I pushed back and said that Christians don’t pursue security for its own end — they pursue security so they can take greater risks. They seek stability to have a firm foundation upon which they can build lives that reflect their core values.

The virtue of stability in a Church is only a virtue if it enables you to dream bigger and dare more boldly. I’ve seen many churches with huge endowments that never take risks because the value of security is too ingrained in them. They hoard resources at the expense of mission, evangelism, and growth. The Episcopal Church has more than a few institutions that are cash and property rich, resources they’ve shepherded for the sake of security, but poor in boldness for the sake of the Gospel.

All of us long for some kind of security and stability — but security to what end? What new risk are we taking in our lives that makes the security worth building? What great hope are we following for the sake of others? How are we living our values rather than just valuing living for the sake of it?

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert