This past weekend culminated an interesting trip to Walter Reed Hospital (which deserves its own blog later) and then out to the Midwest to visit friends followed by a longish stay at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. (Photo, three Episcopalians, other saints. Front row: l to r, Kathy Miller, Rosemary Mallan, Vanessa McMillan, Elizabeth Smith. Back row: Ken Miller, me, David McMillan, Scott Smith. )
Somehow in all my travels I had never made it to "Wood", as they call it, so I was eager to go. Isolated as it is on Route 44 midway between Springfield and St. Louis the Army has plunked down a significant investment on this real estate. In case you weren't looking besides Basic Training, the engineer, chemical, and military police schools have been moved here. It's called "maneuver support" and it makes for a busy place.
My guide, Chaplain David McMillan, was generous with his time showing me not only state-of-the art classrooms but also the combined museums and "memorial groves" where newly trained officers and NCOs swear a kind of allegiance to their branch. I thought that part was little overdone and curiously Masonic but as David observed, "it is another time they ask for a chaplain." The real interest for me was the continuing congregation there. Four lay persons valiantly continue on with or without a ready supply of Episcopal chaplains. In this instance they received a significant boost from Chaplain McMillan who deserves his own story.
David is a Reformed Episcopal Church chaplain. Not one of mine. His church split from the Episcopal Church in 1878 over a doctrinal issue and have been faithful to their own evolution ever since. In truth, the service I visited last Sunday was a Reformed Episcopal rite though you'd never know the difference since they use the BCP with a preference for Rite I.
What to make of this? I am grateful for Chaplain McMillan's leadership and his pastoral presence. Somehow David had brought together the combination we had been striving for in this episcopacy: a continuing faith community in support of many trainees. One could make the argument--indeed I did to Bill Humphreys about a supply priest "from a less than Episcopal background" for Ramstein a few years ago--that this is an adulteration of an Episcopal congregation. But what, I ask you, is the definition of that? I am nearing a decade in this job and the boundary between our sister denominations and us seems very indistinct to me in an operational area.
Oh sure, when I go to House of Bishops meetings I receive a fresh view of how a good tightening up of things will add definition and clarity but when I'm in the field with committed persons trying to reserve a building and time slot for Sunday worship things get down to basics. You abide with friends and do the best you can. It's not the time to be unilaterally Episcopalian.
So, such a realization came to me on Sunday at Specter Chapel, Fort Leonard Wood in a celebration with four lay Episcopalians, about 60 basic trainees from a multitude of faith groups, and the Reformed Episcopal chaplain David McMillan and his wife, Vanessa. It was billed as his service, i.e., Reformed Episcopal, but he graciously had invited me to celebrate and preach. At least his generosity was not lost on the shoals of being preciously correct.+gep
Somehow in all my travels I had never made it to "Wood", as they call it, so I was eager to go. Isolated as it is on Route 44 midway between Springfield and St. Louis the Army has plunked down a significant investment on this real estate. In case you weren't looking besides Basic Training, the engineer, chemical, and military police schools have been moved here. It's called "maneuver support" and it makes for a busy place.
My guide, Chaplain David McMillan, was generous with his time showing me not only state-of-the art classrooms but also the combined museums and "memorial groves" where newly trained officers and NCOs swear a kind of allegiance to their branch. I thought that part was little overdone and curiously Masonic but as David observed, "it is another time they ask for a chaplain." The real interest for me was the continuing congregation there. Four lay persons valiantly continue on with or without a ready supply of Episcopal chaplains. In this instance they received a significant boost from Chaplain McMillan who deserves his own story.
David is a Reformed Episcopal Church chaplain. Not one of mine. His church split from the Episcopal Church in 1878 over a doctrinal issue and have been faithful to their own evolution ever since. In truth, the service I visited last Sunday was a Reformed Episcopal rite though you'd never know the difference since they use the BCP with a preference for Rite I.
What to make of this? I am grateful for Chaplain McMillan's leadership and his pastoral presence. Somehow David had brought together the combination we had been striving for in this episcopacy: a continuing faith community in support of many trainees. One could make the argument--indeed I did to Bill Humphreys about a supply priest "from a less than Episcopal background" for Ramstein a few years ago--that this is an adulteration of an Episcopal congregation. But what, I ask you, is the definition of that? I am nearing a decade in this job and the boundary between our sister denominations and us seems very indistinct to me in an operational area.
Oh sure, when I go to House of Bishops meetings I receive a fresh view of how a good tightening up of things will add definition and clarity but when I'm in the field with committed persons trying to reserve a building and time slot for Sunday worship things get down to basics. You abide with friends and do the best you can. It's not the time to be unilaterally Episcopalian.
So, such a realization came to me on Sunday at Specter Chapel, Fort Leonard Wood in a celebration with four lay Episcopalians, about 60 basic trainees from a multitude of faith groups, and the Reformed Episcopal chaplain David McMillan and his wife, Vanessa. It was billed as his service, i.e., Reformed Episcopal, but he graciously had invited me to celebrate and preach. At least his generosity was not lost on the shoals of being preciously correct.+gep
3 comments:
"David is a Reformed Episcopal Church chaplain. Not one of mine. His church split from the Episcopal Church in 1878 over a doctrinal issue and have been faithful to their own evolution ever since. In truth, the service I visited last Sunday was a Reformed Episcopal rite though you'd never know the difference since they use the BCP with a preference for Rite I."
Ceratinly not true if one knows the evangelical, Low Church history of the REC for the first 100 years. The current leaders have abandoned the founding precepts of the REC in facor of the "Big Tent" as long as that ten does not include homosexual bishops. Women ministers - O.K. Charismatics - O.K. Anglo-catholicism - O.K. Almost anything goes. A far cry from the struggles of the Founders - Cummins, Cheney, etc.
Joe is welcome and sort of right. Fortunatley the differences between denominations are luxuries the operational side can't afford to toil over. For its part the REC relativizes liturgy just to make it through a field environment and so do we. Sorry but that's the way it is. There is a misconception that schismatic churches are just waiting for unsuspecting troops to stroll by so they can be ambushed with bad doctrine when all they really get is good pastoring. George Packard
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