All About the Company

Remember, the destination isn’t nearly as important as the company on the journey.
Chose to travel with good and kind people!

By Bp. Joseph Will Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

Many people have asked me about the reasoning behind the jurisdictional affiliation choices we have made over the last few years. It strikes me that now would be a good time to describe my thought process and how we ended up leaving Continuing Anglicanism for the Anglican Vicariate, and what this means about the episcopal ministry in my own mind. 

In 2015, after several failed attempts to bring our mission in East Asia under episcopal oversight in any meaningful way, I came to a painful realization. Even if I was well-intended and was prepared to sacrifice myself personally for a good cause, there were many people who were only interested in using me and my church for their own ends, taking whatever they could get out of the relationship, and not investing in our lives or futures. I also noticed that these same people used projected guilt over things for which I did not have control as an excuse for this abusive behavior. Educational background, culture, race, or “convert” status was used to dismiss what we were trying to do, and constantly brought up as a way to control us and insist that we were eternally deficient. We could only have grace or be saved if we submitted to them, personally or institutionally, and the more oppressive they were to us, the more we were expected to “piously” submit to it. 

While I was (and still am) more than willing to repent over personal faults, the unchangeable things that we were faulted for had no possibility of "atonement," and I saw that they were merely “handles” used to psychologically control us and instill a constant fear of rejection. I came to see that they were evidences of dysfunctional church cultures, not truly “Christian” objections to the work that we felt called to do. Unfortunately, this manipulative and abusive culture exists in many of the churches that we approached, and I have since found that it is common in many episcopal settings. Such behavior undergirds clericalism, and is one of the major reasons that ethnic churches do not attract converts and cannot keep them when they “convert.” The mission has to be about helping and saving others, not about what benefits we can extract from other people’s submission to us based on fear of God’s judgment or exclusion from grace. 

It was at this time that I had a real breakthrough in my ministry and started to take personal responsibility for what I knew had to be done, which no one else would prioritize or even attempt. After several “canonical” bishops in large jurisdictions scorned a missionary outreach to East Asia, I finally realized that they were unable or incapable of actually bringing Orthodox Christianity to poor, oppressed and disadvantaged people. They had lost the basic instinct that had made Early Christianity so effective. In its place was an imperial instinct to create taxable units of people over which their partisans and friends could “rule.” Seeing this, I stopped being idealistic and trying to make the world fit into the nuances of my abstract theological categories, and I started to see how things actually worked, where the real biases, dysfunctions, and lack of vision and mission were rooted, and how I needed to challenge these wrong assumptions. This process of discernment that started when I was a layman has just continued now that I am a bishop. 

As Fr. George Florovsky wrote, "The [Bishop's] teaching authority is given to him as the power to bear witness to the catholic experience of the Church. It is limited by this experience. Consequently, in questions concerning faith, the people must judge his teaching. The duty of obedience ceases to exert power when the bishop departs from the catholic standard and in such cases the people have the right to condemn and even depose him.” (Fr. George Florovsky, Themes in Orthodoxy Theology, publ. Artos Zoes, Athens 1989, p. 207) 

This painful realization of dysfunction didn’t change my doctrine, but it did allow me to see that there is “no perfect church.” The most canonically correct of the churches that I personally interacted with were some of the most toxic and least able to disciple young Christians or do mission work in non-Christian areas. Instead, the only way to “convert” to one of these Churches was to be introduced to Christ and the Bible somewhere else, mostly in Protestant groups. What does it mean when an organism ceases to be able to reproduce itself? It is ready to die! This inability to reproduce stems from the fact that many within the system have made canons into idols and used them to serve human interest rather than our Lord God. You cannot propagate the Church in idolatry. By obsessing on the canons, many Churches “Strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24) Canons are pastoral standards, often contradicting themselves, and only used for pastoral discipline, never as infallible or revealed categories used to excuse bad behavior. When canons are your excuse to exist,  you cease being a real, functioning Church. 

My decision to leave several of these poisonous affiliations was not meant as a judgement against these various hierarchs or their Churches, and I sincerely wish them all the best. I had to come to painful conclusion that I was called to uphold integrity and truth, the Apostolic and Orthodox Gospel in a missionary context, not just a semblance of conformity to a set of clerically imposed and institutionally protecting internal agreements. Loyalty is first to God, secondly to the People of God, and thirdly to an Episcopal succession and polity. Canonical regularity flows from the widespread acceptance of the Gospel and the flowering of Apostolic Churches throughout a land, gradually leading to a recognition of the Church's relationship with secular power and the establishment of laws that protect the integrity of the Church's teachings. Canons do not lay the groundwork for missions, and canonical categories can often inhibit the spread of the Gospel by placing an undue burden on the people for supporting and propagating a non-pastoral episcopacy. The Church is about real ministry, Christ-like service and humility, not about titles or claims to power. Bishops are Apostles, called to do the work of an Apostle, which is the work of serving, evangelizing, catechizing ("rightly dividing the word of truth") and pastoring people in the fullness of the Faith once delivered, not adding their own opinions or personality cults in the process. When this basic understanding is lost, the Church ceases to be able to evangelize the world in the way that it once did. This doesn't mean that we abandon the canons or the canonical tradition, just that we work towards the regularity of ecumenically recognizable practice, rather than trying to establish strict regularity as a prerequisite to conversion. "Economia," which is the expression of God's love and the Church's desire for our salvation, is the basic function of the Church ministry. If God is strict with us, who can stand? (Psalms 130:3) This is why we always cry, “Lord, have mercy!” 

Since then, when we have gotten into toxic situations with various prelates who try to use and abuse the people for their own benefit, I have taken clear steps to remove myself and our congregations from those situations and people. Synodal rule and the equality of bishops is the way that the Early Church protected its people against such centralized toxicity and clerical abuse. One of the most interesting facts about my experience has been that the larger, more established ethnic jurisdictions, as uninterested in missions and corrupt in matters of finance as they can be, all pale in comparison to the mean-spiritedness of small, schismatic bishops who attempt to use the episcopacy as a platform for a Mob-like protection racket based on fear and anger. Lord, protect us from self-appointed mini-Papacies! 

It hasn’t been easy, but in the last few months, during my recovery from a life-threatening episode of Sepsis, I have learned to live with selfish, aggressive, angry people genuinely hating us and trying to undermine our Church. Almost dying gave me better perspective on what truly matters. I am now extremely grateful that these people are removed from our lives, and I rejoice that so many of them made their intentions clear sooner rather than later. It is much better to live with some online negativity than to let their poison wreck the spirit of our mission, or struggle to minister under their self-interested and toxic leadership. Our Diocese is now free to follow God in the Anglican Vicariate, do what we are called to do, and focus on cooperating with and learning from the many holy and virtuous people that God has brought by His Divine Mercy into our Church. We are privileged to have so many truly kind priests in the Archdiocese to now work with, and good bishops who truly function as pastors to their priests and people. 

The time that we have on earth is short. The journey of Theosis is long. Make sure you are on the path with the right people. It will make a world of difference!