Link doesn’t work.

I went to the Diocese of Missouri website to read the sermon and I’ll tell you Toots is a hoot!  Perhaps this link will work: http://www.diocesemo.org/news/2011/11/19/presiding-bishop-katharine-preaches-at-convention-eucharist/ 
There’s not a consistent bone in her entire body.

It’s worth saying the health insurance thing - towards which she briefly gestures -  is potentially catastophic for average sized parishes with married clergy and kids. Not that there are too many of those, of course.

Speaking of overpaying and being hungry for good news - I wonder if the PB might find her way to speak “good news” about this.

Otherwise - she may indeed get what she apparently desires - not just no building, but no clergy and no congregation.

BTW did anyone else taste a soupcon of irony in her discussion of welcoming being tossed out of buildings?

I actually could not focus on the whole piece.  I lost it at

Our message remains the same as it always has, but we need new ways of telling it and showing an effective response to the hungry outside our doors.

Uhm…No actually your message has not remained the same and that is precisely why you are bleeding morale and membership. But you already really knew that right?

Driver8, the new insurance mandate won’t affect much the small/medium sized parish with married clergy and kids, as nearly every diocese already requires family coverage in clergy minimum compensation standards.  The DHP plan in some places will be a little more expensive, in some places a little less expensive.  What the mandate will mostly affect will be larger parishes with full time lay employees—educators, musicians, secretarial and janitorial staff.  As of 01/01/2013 those lay employees, if they work more than 1500 hours per year (30 hours per week) must have coverage, and the terms of that coverage must be equal to whatever is offered to the clergy.  (That is, no “two track” offering.)  So if the rector gets full family coverage and isn’t required to contribute to the premium, then the same full family coverage without contribution must be offered to all the lay employees. 

Bruce Robison

And to illustrate, here in Pittsburgh (Episcopal) we participate already in the ECMT DHP program, and the plans we offer have a premium of approximately $20,000, or just a tad less, for family coverage.  A parish thus with five full time lay employees, if these hadn’t been covered at all before, could see a $100,000 bump in personnel expenses.  Note however that the CPG survey showed that the vast majority of parishes with full time lay employees already did provide some coverage, though not always on equal terms with the coverage provided full time clergy.  The “equalization” in those cases will be costly, of course, but not quite so dramatic as a leap from 0-60.

Bruce Robison

My two favorite quotes from her sermon are: “As long as we understand our primary mission as preserving buildings,....”

and

“remember the great dream of God,....”

Actually, the “occupiers” represent a form of ‘soft nihilism.’

Their movement is nihilistic in the sense that it calls for ‘a tearing down.  It also calls for ‘a redistribution.’

‘Tearing down’ and ‘redistribution’ will only serve to dig the current economic hole that we are in even deeper than it already is.

Much deeper and and possibly ‘non-returnably’ deeper.

In the church in which I worship moving to the new plan for the Rector and family will increase insurance costs over $10,000/year and provide inferior coverage. Quite an achievement.

Try telling that to a parish let alone to a Rector.

Yeah, Fr Ed, you’re right!  So, Kate, what’s wrong with the traditional way of reaching out to the unchurched; you know, like preaching and teaching God’s word from the Bible, and then putting into practice what it teaches?  It’s never failed yet!