Bishop Gregory O. Brewer

March 2012

For obvious reasons, I have been thinking about my upcoming ordination/consecration as diocesan bishop.  There are more questions than one can possible imagine:  who should be asked to serve?  What signal will I send if I pick this person versus that person?  What am I trying to say by this choice or that one?  What about liturgical and musical decisions?  What image is being projected here?

I am keenly conscious that this is a very public act -- a tone and a pace are being set.  People will talk about this event and its parts.  Decisions will be parsed for clues about my episcopacy.  Some will like what they see, and others may find fault.  In truth this is a diocesan celebration and there should be something for everyone in the diocese. 

How could all of the parts of the consecration please everyone, given the liturgical and musical breadth of the diocese?  These events are not unlike family reunions where we anticipate (sometimes with joy and sometimes with a certain unpleasantness) whom we might see and what might happen. My hope is that everyone will have a terrific time, but there may be those who, as Paul says, will need to make allowances for one another.  It’s OK.  We are, and will continue to be, a very human diocese.

So the questions for me center on what do I want to say at the consecration, and what do I want the message to be?  I have a terrible recollection of a particular ordination/consecration of a bishop that haunts me.  Everything appeared to be going along very smoothly during the service until just after the new bishop was vested.  He stood at the center of the stage (this was not held in an Episcopal Church) to the applause of the congregation and was absolutely preening with pride.  And from that point on, he was the entire center of attention.

Those moments were chilling for me.  What kept echoing in my head was that passage in Acts where Herod stands in front of the crowd receiving their idolatrous adulation and God strikes him down.  I wanted to escape the building for fear God might strike it with lightning. Tragically, it proved to be a prophetic moment that foretold the focus of his episcopacy.

One of my deepest passions is worship -- specifically worship that invites us all to turn our attention to the One who is the sole object of our worship:  the God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.  Aesthetics are not unimportant, but they are not our rulers. In the end, all liturgical choices, manual acts and musical selections should clearly and intuitively call us beyond ourselves and into worship, They should speak a word that echoes with the invitation of God’s Holy Spirit to gratitude, adoration, confession and prayer.   Worship calls us to attention and asks that we bring all of who we are -- mind, emotions, body and will -- to the most important of human tasks, bringing glory to God.

My hope is that this celebration will invite us to joy. The decision has been made to offer this celebration outside of the liturgical season of Lent. The First Baptist Church will ring with “alleluias!”  The liturgical color will be red -- speaking of God’s power, suffering and sacrifice, of which we are the happy recipients.  May we enjoy one another’s company, glorify God and deeply unite as God’s diocesan family.

+Gregory O. Brewer, Bishop of Central Florida