Fellow Episcopalians, I am at a genuine loss for words. Our beloved Episcopal Church in the presence of Christ the King Community Episcopal Church has been removed from the church rolls and left members to their own devices! Better yet, out in the cold and with no Episcopal Church to live within. My family and I are in deep, deep mourning for our loss. The bishop of San Joaquin (yep, the Episcopal Bishop, yep Bishop David Rice) has violently and without regard to many of us ripped our religious/spiritual world to shreds. Am I, are we upset? Oh, you bet! Is there any thing that we can do about it? Apparently not.
Shall we begin at the beginning. In 2007, our nightmare began. We lived unattended and un-served until March of 2008. Joyously we came together in the diocese and from 5 parishes up sprang new life in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin! Pretty much everyone from all sorts of places including the Presiding Bishop came to celebrate our new life. The members of these parishes and of the diocese were told of a new beginning -- no more hidden agendas, full transparency, and love and grace all around! We were ecstatic at Christ the King Community Episcopal Church. Bishop Lamb came to serve and usher in this new age of openness and "all are welcome". Bishop Lamb then handed off the diocese to Bishop Talton, Bishop Talton continued to remake our diocese and our parishes into new life in Christ. Bishop Talton then handed the reigns over to the new Anglican bishop from New Zealand, Bishop David Rice. With this "election" we were slipping back into the nightmare we had so many months ago thought was gone. The Bishop was brought to our diocese by the Standing Committee without any input from the parishioners of the diocese from New Zealand. He was elected by the standing committee without any widespread knowledge of who this person was. Bishop Rice was hailed as the new "missioner bishop" from wherever and before we the parishioners of the diocese knew we had a bishop. When the convention was asked to approve his eection Bishop Rice had moved everything from New Zealand to our diocese and had lived here for months. At no time did Bishop Rice make a visit to Christ the King and yet we were asked to "ratify" his election. He was not even approved to practice in our diocese before he was elected. The Standing Committee (of which no one knows exactly who is because the names of the Standing Committee have never been posted to the diocesan website) simply said to us, here is your new bishop. Let me clear a little of the water, the Standing Committee and the Diocesan Council have not had their names posted on a diocesan website. If you from our diocese recall, we were in a new beginning, a breath of fresh air?
In the meantime the bills for the continuing lawsuits against those parishes and the faux diocese continued to mount into the millions of dollars borrowed from the National Church. Then, out of the blue, came the need for the diocese to close the episcopal Church of Christ the King and "merge" with the renegade parish of St. Paul in Modesto. Votes were taken, visits were made, private meetings were held, secret deals were made and then un-made. One of the five parishes that stood with the National Episcopal Church through thick and thin was to be closed and merged with a renegade church that had just been hauled back into the diocese. It was at this point that I put several questions to the Rector of Christ the King, the bishop of the Diocese, and the Chancellor of the diocese. These questions included when was the last time the diocese, Christ the King and St. Paul's books and records were audited? Why, well, in accounting in order to merge to entities it is only fit to understand the current financial pictures of both parishes prior to merging. Turns out Christ the King had not had a financial audit in over 6 years. Turns out neither has the diocese. According to the constitution and canons of our church audits are REQUIRED on an annual basis. The parishioners of CTK were told that our parish was in a horrible state and that St. Paul's was "not that bad". So I asked anyone and everyone to have an audit done -- and nothing happened. We, CTK, could not even see the financial records of either the diocese or St. Paul's. See, the diocese has a ton of borrows from the National Church. The money that has been sent from the National Church to the diocese is in the millions and can be accounted for it in the books in only one of two ways. First, an outright gift is income to the parish and outgo from the National Church. The National church gives the Local parish a dollar. The national church the lowers their net worth by a dollar and the parish increases their net worth by a dollar. But wait! These millions were mostly loans! That means that in order to maintain the same net worth at the National level there needs to be a due to/due from entry to show that the loans have not decreased the National Church's net worth. Think we could see the books and records? Well, hell no. None of our business, don't worry, everything is okay. If something fast and loose has not gone on at the diocesan level then the diocesan Bishop and the Chancellor want us to think there is.
Now comes the "cone of silence". First Bishop Rice said that the two parishes were going to merge and CTK will be closed. The parishioners rose up and said, uh, do we get a voice in this here sing-along? The bishop backs up and has the CTK vestry vote on the merger. Then, no, no vote was taken, the vestry needed to have parish input. The single page flier that was distributed said that the paln for restructuring the diocese called for the merger and the vestry was asking the parish to support this plan. Well, I asked the bishop, the rector, the chancellor, the standing committee and no one could produce any kind of "plan" at all. Apparently it was all in the head of Bishop Rice and the Standing Committee but no one could see it because ?? Well, it flat out did not exist. But, the parish voted on the merger with almost all but 4 approving the merger but all said, "What else can we do?"
The railroad had left the station just like in December of 2007.
Over the course of several written emails and messages to the Chancellor I asked for audits, financials, for explanation of how our merger met with the constitution and canons since I had read them and as far as I could tell the process was really truly screwed up. I asked for all sorts of explanations in April of of 2014 from the Chancellor of the diocese. He told me he was just too busy to deal with such questions. I wrote to the Bishop. I wrote to the Rector. Then, in the Fall, August, I wrote an other letter to the Chancellor and copied the National Church. The National Chancellor told me that she had spoken to the San Joaquin Chancellor and sure enough, Mr. Glass was going to take care of it. I wrote a third letter to the Chancellor. I then had the audacity to use messaging to contact Mr. Glass. Mr. Glass wrote back and said do not use messaging, that is my social outlet. And, he said he did not even remember what I had written to him about. So, I went back, re-examined my sources and cites and then sent him another letter. He emailed back he was just too busy but he would get back to me. Needless to say he has not to this day! Some of those questions and citations had to do with the procedural way in which Christ the King was closed and the way in which St. Paul had agreed to merge. O well, so much for the openness, transparency, for long range planning, for short range planning, for punishing the parish that stuck with the National Church while rewarding the parish that not only left the Episcopal church but linked up with some diocese in Africa!
Needless to say my spouse has MS, I have a 100% complete and total disability assignment from the VA and the VA wrote to the the DMV and the DMV revoked my license. See, we have no transportation. This is a huge thumbing of the collective Episcopal nose and a family that really has no voice, no vote, and that family has been virtually removed, no excommunicated, from the Episcopal church.
My gosh, evryone is welcome -- everyone except those not welcome by Bishop Rice, Father Glenn Kanestrom and some silly officious senior warden from St. Paul Parish in Modesto.
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