Katy's Speech at My Retirement Party :)

When Peter’s colleague Charlie Mason retired from his church in Muncie his wife, a trained soprano, sang a song at his retirement party.  Don’t panic- I’m not going to sing! But if I were going to sing a song for you, Peter, it would be Gladys Knight’s You’re the Best Thing that ever happened to me.

With Peter’s retirement from active ministry, I want to share a few highlights of his impressive career. Because he’s retiring from campus ministry there are only two people who were at Good Shepherd when Peter arrived me and Ruth Dowden, who just turned 99.

I think you all know that Peter started his career as a Roman Catholic Priest. After getting a Masters of Divinity at the University of Toronto he was ordained by a liberal catholic bishop, Walter Sullivan, in Virginia. 

In 1980 about the time the Roman Catholic Church took a right turn, following the selection of Pope John Paul II, Peter began to question whether he wanted to remain a Catholic Priest. He was mentored by a priest at Sweet Briar College named Mike Bloy who was Episcopalian. About the same time, he befriended a college senior from Arkansas who was taking a break from boyfriends to ensure that she graduated on time. Peter will tell you this friendship had nothing to do with his decision to leave the Catholic Church! At my retirement party I’ll tell you the real story!

After leaving the Catholic church and retooling at an Episcopal Seminary for one year. He was offered a job at a wealthy Episcopal church in Rochester NY, but turned it down because he wanted to return to the South.  We didn’t know it at the time but this was one of a string of good jobs Peter would turn down in his career. The perfect offer came within a month. A chance to return to beautiful Virginia and serve as a college chaplain at Robert E. Lee memorial Episcopal church. After the riots in Charlottesville this church changed its name back to the original name Grace Episcopal.

Four years later Peter wanted to try a Big Ten University Chaplaincy and I reluctantly agreed to move to Indiana for 3 years.  We moved to West Lafayette, bought a house on Northwestern Avenue, I found a job at Purdue and we had our first baby, Molly and then 3 years later our second baby, Emily. Like many of you in this room, we always intended to move someplace prettier than West Lafayette, someplace with mountains or lakes or an ocean. But “community” got in the way.

Over the decades Peter had job offers across the US, we almost moved to Alabama, St. Louis, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hattiesburg MS.  Hattiesburg was the heartbreaker for Peter. At the time he got this offer his “church” was the basement of a rented house on Hayes Street. Hattiesburg had a gorgeous church building lots of Episcopalians and it was both a parish and a campus ministry. That time it was hard to STAY.

Each time Peter received a job offer we thought we’d move but, since we weren’t unhappy we looked hard at the church, could they handle his liberal sermons?  As those of you from Good Shepherd know most of Peter’s sermons share the same theme, if you want to go to heaven grab a poor person and hang on. This isn’t super popular in wealthy suburbs full of gated communities.  We looked at the public schools, do the people in the church send their kids to the public schools? In Hattiesburg they recommended a boarding school for our 10-year-old that was only 2 hours away! We had Westside 4 blocks from our house?! We asked ourselves if I would be able to find meaningful work without a long commute?What we learned on all those job interview trips was what a rare and wonderful situation we had in West Lafayette. We had a progressive church, a stable diocese that paid well, great public schools, a good house and I had a job I liked and could walk to work.

So time after time Peter chose to STAY! Choosing to stay here and work to improve our church and community. Peter did great things for Good Shepherd like moving the church to its own church building, making it both a parish and a Campus Ministry. He also worked hard to make our neighborhood strong finally securing a land use plan and historic review board for the New Chauncey Neighborhood.He worked hard at something else, making it look easy to STAY, Easy to run a church, and be a college chaplain and serve on City Council. 

He became a priest to work for social justice and a college chaplain to shine light on issues of social justice for students, faculty, and the institution. That focus never changed.   

·      When we first arrived in WL he presided at an evening service for gay people who were not welcome to take communion in other churches because everyone was so worried about AIDs

·      Also in the 80s he worked with Hillel to help Jewish people get out of Russia.

·      He advocated to have our diocese divest of stocks that benefitted apartheid in South Africa

·      He was always a strong advocate for gay rights and this led to a partnership with Purdue Convocations in 2013 that brought Bishop Gene Robinson, the first gay Bishop in the Episcopal Church to Good Shepherd and Purdue. I was proud that he got called out for this by a conservative evangelical pastor in the Journal and Courier

·       
        More recently he has become a champion for the food insecure and given both time and money to FF He’s marched to end gun violence, attended the woman’s march, carried petitions to raise school taxes and renovate the High School, and supported so many other causes that I can’t name them all.

I’m proud of him for never backing down on an issue no matter how uncomfortable it was to stand up for it.

At the same time that he was supporting important causes he was also providing and safe and inviting environment to students who were trying to find themselves/ “try on” a new religion or a new version of the religion they had grown up with.  Peter helped and counseled LGBTQ students before we used those initials. It was not always ok to be gay at Purdue. He helped kids who were from hometowns that were smaller than their Purdue residence hall find their way at Purdue. He helped students who were failing, he helped students who were awkward, he helped lonely students that had accents that made them hard to understand. He helped students with relationship problems. He helped students who felt oppressed by religion.

Two weeks ago a lot of former Good Shepherd students travelled long distances to attend Peter’s final service at Good Shepherd.  Many who couldn’t attend wrote letters and I was struck by the fact that they all said essentially the same thing, you changed my life and made my years at Purdue so much better.  

And how many weddings have you done?

So Peter, at the end of your church career I want to say in front of our friends and family, thank you for STAYING. Thank you for the impressive job you have done in building Good Shepherd, making our neighborhood and city better, giving our girls the opportunity to walk to school for 13 years, and for making career choices that gave me the opportunity to build my own career.

These days we admire those who pass through and move on to build ever more impressive careers. I want to honor and thank those who have STAYED and made this community a place where people want to STAY. I love you.   Cheers!

Final Sermon 8/4/19 - Video

Final Sermon Video - August 4th 2019 - Final Sermon 8/4/19

Purdue Exponent Article

Purdue Exponent Article 1/24/19

A Final Address

A  Final  Address

4 August 2019

“… and I applied my mind to search and investigate in wisdom all things that are done under the sun”

- Ecclesiastes 1:13 (Proper 13 – Year C)

Every year for thirty-four years I have begun the academic year with an opening address that explains why we are here; why we have been here at Purdue since 1956. We’re not quite at the beginning of the “fall” semester, but I thought I would do this sermon one last time. It is my valedictory.

We begin, as always, with a paraphrase of Søren Kierkegaard. (I’m going to put the original quote in the on-line version of this sermon.¹) Kierkegaard carried out a relentless verbal attack on the Lutheran state church in Denmark, even though His older brother Peter was later to become a bishop in that same state church.

He complained that each Sunday the citizens of Copenhagen, dressed in their finest, would come into church and take the seats they had rented as though they were attending the theater. Then as they went from church to home, they would comment on the quality of the music associated with the performance, critique the day’s liturgical arts, the minister’s message, and perhaps his delivery of his lines.

It was as though the speaker was an actor.

Kierkegaard moved the religious professional from center stage. He argued that the priest was merely a minor player, sitting in the wings, prompting, giving a word to the real actors, those who were sitting in the pews. They were called to act out the gospel on those stages where they lived and worked. God, said Kierkegaard, was the critical theatergoer. God was the theatergoer. The congregation is the actor.

That is the point of a ministry in higher education, “the solemn charm of the art”. How do we teach each successive generation to give flesh to the Word on the stage of the world? The endless dilemma of how the Word is to be brought into the world is always at hand.

It is a missionary work.

It is different, not better, than the usual work of our churches. Parishes, parochial organizations, as ordinarily conceived and executed, focus on maintenance and attendance. Listen to how much better the new organ sounds. Our Sunday school has swollen. See all the people here in the pews. We have grown the staff. We have built a home. We have arrived.

All of these are good things.

But our job is to carve out a visible presence in a place that is NOT the church’s own. It is a missionary work.

It is an uncomfortable place. It is an uncertain life. Good Shepherd has lived in five buildings; house, church, center, house, church. I have done ministry from three of them under three Bishops. It is an uncomfortable place. It is an uncertain life.

It is a missionary work with a peculiar language.

It is about the journey.

Parishes speak of arrival. You came here to start a job. You joined the choir. You bought a new house. Then there is the arrival of the baby. The babies. “Family” is the metaphor.

Here we are all going somewhere else. The image of the pilgrimage is a powerful one. We are between homes. “Peers” become friends. “Friends” make truth.

It is about the work.

There is no “academic village”. We don’t have a home. We live above the store. We sleep in the office. We eat at the plant.

Our calendar is not Julian nor Gregorian but “Purduean”. Fall begins in August. Our relationships are contractual. Self-worth depends on the utility of our field, and our achievements within that field. No one on any campus has sufficient moral credibility to proclaim what the better life might be other than the security provide by a good income. The campus as moral inspiration is a nostalgic vestige².

It is about an experiment in community.

Parishes are a dependable source of consolation, which enjoy a certain discipline in organization. They have a history.

Here, each year is a Nativity. Can we build a mentoring community, a sacramental community in this generation?  Can we then repeat the experiment?

Can we combine the emerging truth of the young adult, with the example and encouragement of a mentor, and ground both in an ideologically compatible social group³?  Or in the language of an apostle, “can scribes trained for the kingdom bring out of their storeroom the best of the new and the old”? (Mt. 15:32)  Can there be a new home? Can there be a new home, a new polity, and a new collective identity?

 

If this is a missionary work, then who are the natives?

The Students.

Students as they look for love and work.

Students as they continue to mimic their parents religion. Students as they take a hiatus from organized religion. Students as they search, either accidentally or intentionally, for new or renewed religious languages. Most of our church language is a puzzle. “Episcopal”? “Diocese?”

Students as they search for any coherent language around identity, intimacy, and mortality; birth and copulation and death. “I’ll be the missionary”, writes T.S. Eliot. “… all the facts when you get to brass tacks, birth and copulation and death, birth and copulation and death, birth and copulation and death.^4”   Who am I? Am I lovable? What will happen when I fail? When I am broken?

The Faculty and The Staff.

We provide pastoral care. We care for those who work in the educational industry. There is no middle class in higher education any longer. Our members here have often been migrant workers, without place or power. Post-docs, adjuncts are on short- term contracts, with no hope of tenure. Staff positions are reduced or outsourced. Other academics are demoralized by their lack of influence on the business of higher education and its managers.

We prophesy. The successful may see themselves as self-employed entrepreneurs above the churn below. Perhaps most believers are eager for a separate spiritual life, one apart from the corporation for which they work. We challenge these woman and men to say how it is their faith affects their work. How they research or teach mimes their values to the university. You don’t have to say a word. Every syllabus is a creed. We say there must be more to this than a contractual obligation to transfer a skill set. The core of teaching is that the teacher lets their disciples take part in their life, and thus grasps the mystery of their life’s work⁵.

The University and The Church.

We work with the corporate person that is the university, to whom we are usually invisible, as it proclaims to society’s next generation what is valuable. Is it only the security that can be achieved by a high-paying job? So it seems. Are there any higher obligations a student might have to the world beyond the campus?

In 1884 a friend told Cornell’s Andrew White that he doubted that any of Cornell’s graduates could be elected to office in an America that so distrusted expertise. White responded, “nobody expects to get a majority of the men (sic) educated as I propose into office at first, but if we only had plenty of them to stand outside and fire into the people, and especially into those in office, they would certainly be obliged, sooner or later, to surrender.⁶” If only . . .

We work with the body that is the church, which looks at us with both suspicion and lust, so that it may better know the wideness of the world into which the gospel is to be taken and within which it is to be preached; the world outside its aesthetic, its linguistic bubble.

In the turbulent 60’s then Presiding Bishop John Hines, a heroic figure, wrote:

 “Against even the worst of possibilities, must be set the inescapable obligation of Christians, that the Body of Christ must be prepared to offer itself up for the sake of the healing and the solidarity of the whole human family, whatever its religious or racial identities. Especially must the Body of Christ risk its own life in bearing and sharing the burdens of those who are being exploited, humiliated, and disinherited!”^#7

Campus ministers applauded. Hines forever changed the Church’s definition of “domestic mission” to “social engagement”.

And Hines wrote this:

“I did say, and I still conclude, that ministry in higher education is the last, best hope of the Episcopal Church in our time. I believe that because I believe that the university and college chaplaincy is the most difficult, and the most rewarding, of the responsibilities of this Church. Nowhere else, in comparable fashion, is the clear presentation and the effective interpretation of the Christian gospel more likely to bear fruit than on the college campus, where ideas in conflict and embattled Truth attempt to capture the best minds of this generation. Nowhere else is the Christian faith as likely to be seriously challenged – or as gratefully received.”

At the same time money for higher education ministries was cut from the national church budget. (Hines was also considered, unfairly, the chief cause of the church’s shrinking population and the loss of confidence in its national structure.) In my colleague Sam Portaro’s excellent phrase, campus ministry was “dis-appointed”. ^#8   Good Shepherd left its church building behind and moved into the Wesley Foundation.

That irony continues to dominate campus ministry’s life in our evolving church.

Like St. Paul, we mark out the grace to be found in the transition of the ages.

To the fearful and the anxious, to those on pilgrimage, we proclaim God’s loving, faithful word. We proclaim it to those often never exposed to the vitality and the richness of that word, particularly as it is expressed in the Anglican tradition.

We preach the Incarnation.

We proclaim God’s prophetic and righteous word to those so satisfied with their lives that they seem to have no need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

We preach the Cross.

We proclaim God’s life giving and animating word to individuals and institutions, to personalities and corporate persons. We proclaim love and friendship to each one. We proclaim community to all.

We preach the Pentecost.

Finally, the next year or so will resemble, I think, Good Shepherd’s experiences between 2004-2005. Then, we moved from the Hayes St. house and Good Shepherd Chapel to Meridian St. and Good Shepherd Church. In November 2004 Steve Shook jumped out of his Audi and tried to sell me this building. In February 2005 the diocesan approved buying the Frist Church of Christ Scientist. Thanks Steve Fales. On March 30 2005 we closed on the property. Thanks Tom Wood. On May 1 2005 we moved in and held our first service. Thanks to so many of you. On September 18, 2005 Bishop Waynick dedicated the church. Thanks Bishop Cate.

Then, you switched buildings. Now, you switch priests. August 4, 2019 was Father Peter Bunder’s last Sunday, and then . . . . . . .

Let me predict that the new person you select will be younger, sleeker, and far more pious. I bet you buy new vestments. They will stay less than 34 years.

But they cannot think university work more important than I have thought it. All the more important because college, and then grad school, made me very much who I am today.

They will not have had Ted Jones for their bishop. Ted married a co-ed. You can’t do that anymore. Ted and Anne were the definition of grace. They cannot have the same commitment to the community outside these doors I have had, an involvement I thank you and Peder Berdahl for facilitating. (That’s a good story. Mayor Jan Mills asked me to run for city council. I called the diocesan office to ask if I could run for city council. Bishop Cate was on sabbatical. Peder Berdahl, then Canon to the ordinary, said I guess so - just don’t put any campaign signs on the church lawn!)

They will not have been married to Katy O’Malley; who, as it has happened, is more important to this larger community than I am. Katy left beautiful Lexington, VA and swallowed all the ugly that came with mid-north central Indiana to let me be my own boss and get a corner office with not one, but two, windows. I love you Katy. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you. Thanks too to Molly and Emily who kept me “cooler” longer than I had any right to be. Molly, thank you for “Friday School”. Emily, who can forget our “Drink Beer, Make Love? Be Episcopalian!”

t-shirt? I hope you both liked growing up here.

There are too many people to note as I close. Each gave me, and all of us, some special joy. Let me single out Ruth Dowden who was on that search committee in 1984/85 that called me here, and is still around to evaluate what sort of choice I turned out to be. I did well here, I think. This career, as I said in January in my annual chaplain’s report, has been a privilege. I leave, happily, with a sense of satisfaction, confidence. To quote Winnie the Pooh, how lucky I am having something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

God bless you.

Amen

NOTES

#1 What goes on between the speaker and the hearer in a genuine edifying discourse? It is so on the stage, as you know well enough, that someone sits and prompts by whispers; [he is hidden;] he is the inconspicuous one; he is and wishes to be overlooked. But then there is another, he strides out prominently, he draws every eye to himself. For that reason he has been given his name, that is: actor. He impersonates a distinct individual. In the skillful sense of this illusionary art, each word becomes true when embodied in him, true through him—and yet he is told what he shall say by the hidden one that sits and whispers. No one is so foolish as to regard the prompter as more important than the actor.
Now forget this light talk about art. Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor—not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not, he is at fault) stands before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor's repetition of it is the main concern—is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. But the main concern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.
The address is not given for the speaker's sake, in order that men may praise or blame him. The listener's repetition of it is what is aimed at. If the speaker has the responsibility for what he whispers, then the listener has an equally great responsibility not to fail short in his task. In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to: hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener ... is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.
—Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, pp. 180-81 (SV XI114-15); reprinted in Parables of Kierkegaard, Thomas C. Oden, ed.
#2 “Moral Dimensions of University Economies” – William M. Chace  President Emory University Emory Magazine Summer 1998
#3 p.89 Sharon Parks The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith, and Commitment
#4 FRAGMENT OF AN AGON – T.S. Eliot
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: SWEENEY. WAUCHOPE. HORSFALL. KLIPSTEIN. KRUMPACKER. SWARTS. SNOW. DORIS. DUSTY.
(All PRESET IN SCENE)

SWEENEY: ....................I’ll carry you off
To a cannibal isle.

DORIS: You’ll be the cannibal!

SWEENEY:
You’ll be the missionary!
You’ll be my little seven stone missionary!
I’ll gobble you up. I’ll be the cannibal.

DORIS: You’ll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?

SWEENEY: I’ll be the cannibal.

DORIS: ....................I’ll be the missionary.
I’ll convert you!

SWEENEY: ....................I’ll convert you!
Into a stew.
A nice little, white little, missionary stew.

DORIS: You wouldn’t eat me!

SWEENEY: ....................Yes I’d eat you!
In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender little,
Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.
You see this egg
You see this egg
Well that’s life on a crocodile isle.
There’s no telephones
There’s no gramophones
There’s no motor cars
No two-seaters, no six-seaters,
No Citroën, no Rolls-Royce.
Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.
Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way
And the sea the other way,
Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.
Nothing at all but three things

DORIS: ....................What things?

SWEENEY: Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all,
Birth, and copulation, and death.

DORIS: I’d be bored.

SWEENEY: ....................You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.

DORIS: I’d be bored.

SWEENEY: ....................You’d be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I’ve been born, and once is enough.
You dont remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.
#5 p.102 Parker Palmer To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education
#6 p.85 Laurence R. Veysey The Emergence of the American University.
#7 https://episcopalarchives.org/church-awakens/exhibits/show/leadership/clergy/hines
#8 p.  Portaro/Pelosi Inquiring Minds and Discerning Heart: Vocation and Ministry With Young Adults on Campus.

Annual Chaplain's Report 2019

Annual  Chaplains Report - 2019

13 January 2019

 

“… and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

-       Isaiah 42,9

Now for the announcement you have all been waiting for; yes, I will be running for a fourth term representing the Second District on the West Lafayette City Council. Thank you. Thank you very much. Looking for a chair for my finance committee, FYI.

Not the announcement you were expecting? How about this; this summer, at age 68, I will be retiring as your chaplain after 34 years of service here in West Lafayette, 37 years in the Episcopal church, and 42 years as a priest.

Thirty–four years at Good Shepherd. Nobody does that in ministry anymore, particularly not in campus ministry.

Practically, the Vestry has picked Kevin Edmundson, Leta Kelley, Debbie Knapp, Patti O’Callaghan, and Samantha Courtemanche to be the kernel of a search committee. Kevin will be the group’s convener. My job in this process is to get the diocese to take this congregation as seriously as they might St. John’s (Lafayette) or Christ Church Cathedral, or as seriously as the diocese did a much smaller Good Shepherd in 1985. The church’s history is on the inside left page of your bulletin.

I am not quite sure what the diocese will do in this process. Everybody is new. I first raised the possibility of my retirement at an April clergy retreat with the then interim diocesan transition person, Jennifer Phelps. Bishop Jennifer announced my intention to retire at the Diocesan convention in November. The Rev. Kristin White, the transition canon and I met for the first time last Thursday. She will be in touch soon with our new senior warden and search committee chair. I am their first retirement. They don’t know me from Adam.

I think the diocese likes campus ministry. Bishop Jennifer did campus ministry at Syracuse. She will visit our Sunday evening ESA gathering on February 17^th.  But the Bishop also, in her convention address, talked about new models for campus ministry. (This is usually institution speak for “cheaper”.) Our program budget has been reduced year after year. But the diocese does pay the chaplain’s salary and Good Shepherd’s “mortgage”. (Not a loan against this building, but against a group of endowment stocks.) This is a level of support unequaled in the Episcopal Church. Of all the campus ministries in the diocese, we are best able to weather those program cuts. We have pledging units and a donor list and a near-campus parking lot. As you will hear at the annual meeting, our financial situation is sound. We have been putting aside money for three years for this transition.

It will all work out fine. At the end, you will have a bright young clergy person who will challenge you and inspire you and love you to death.

Personally, have I mentioned that I have been here for 34 years?

Thirty-four years. 3 – 4 years. Huh. How about that? A great wife. Kids. A grandkid. Local politics. Three bishops. Three buildings.

This is Anthony Trollope’s “realism and romance”. This is Jan Karon, Susan Howatch, Marilynne Robinson type stuff. Perhaps with Jane Smiley’s “Moo” and IU’s Scott Russell Sanders “Staying Put” appended. Now, you need not to have read any of those folks. What I mean to say is that there is a literary quality to my ecclesiastical history.

You will be stuck with reminiscences for the next few months. But let me begin here. I know what a privilege this career has been. I know what a privilege this career has been.

A window-washer’s son, I once had long hair, a religious studies degree, and an anti-authoritarian late 60’s college history. I once ran a series of college newspaper articles which quoted urban blacks in Rochester on the Catholic Church; “shit honey, they don’t do nothin’ for us.” That did little to endear me to the Roman church. I fled to Toronto for graduate school. I belonged to that liberal wing of the Catholic Church, which was wiped out, more or less, by John Paul II.

In campus ministry as a Catholic priest, I met good Episcopal priests. I met Sweet Briar and former MIT Chaplain Mike Bloy (he left me his ministry in higher ed. texts and novels filled with holy human stories), and George Bean (a Lynchburg, Va. rector, he called me a “man’s man”; the only time in my life that has ever happened), and Holmes Irving (the rector of R.E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church; he had a cross burned on his lawn), and John Van Brederode (he ran the last blue collar Episcopal church in Rochester N.Y. and married Katy and I. He gave me my first prayer book in 1982) and Bob Spears (a bishop who only wore a business suit and couldn’t believe I wouldn’t take a job at a large corporate church) and Ted Jones (a gracious man and my first boss here.). I was so lucky.

The history of campus ministry in the Episcopal Church, to use a phrase from my former colleague Sam Portaro, is one of dis-appointment. The self-confidence that spawned its post war boom was surrendered by the church, and by 1969 it’s elimination as a mission field was all but assured. Except in Indiana. Where they didn’t get the memo. Where an Anglo-Catholic tinge meant you needed a priest to say mass for young people (photo top right). Where Eli Lilly’s money propped us all up. So a bright young priest with a theory (stolen from Sharon Parks) that a mentoring community was the thing, that people sharing stories of identity, intimacy, and mortality (“birth and copulation and death; that’s all the facts when you get to brass tacks” – T.S. Elliot Fragment of An Agon) would inevitable take young adults to the transcendent, could get away with a Christian humanism and a social justice bias (photo bottom right). I could de-emphasize clerical performance and shout that the audience out here each Sunday was indeed the holy actor in the places where they lived and worked. You went along with that. It worked for 34 years. 1985 – 2019.

During that kind of run you get to know people. Some in a burst. Some forever. I am still an introvert (Though Nancy Tiederman once called me a “learned extrovert”.) I claim no counseling skills. But myself, I flourished in college and grad school and loved, then and now, the intersection of information and emotion that is the life of the young adult at university. I hope I shared that enthusiasm over the years.

You get to know the place. Unexpectedly, I have taken that to an extreme. Katy and I thought we would be here five years. Thirty-four years later I can tell you the size of West Lafayette’s storm water pipes. I can tell you the size of our storm water pipes with pride. I helped pick them. Land use. Historic preservation. The environment. Economic development. I know about neighborhoods. I know this community. Our children can return home. The culture does not reward staying put. There are advantages.

What are these kaleidoscopes doing on the pews? I’m offering them as a metaphor. What we have here today, the building, the people, the light in the room, is this toy. But turn the lense once, twice, and a new beauty is created. That’s the hope for this moment of renewal. It’s also a small souvenir of this announcement.

One word of advice. Hire somebody who doesn’t mind making the coffee. I’ve been making the Sunday morning coffee for years. But two years ago at a clergy gathering, an interim in the diocese was regaling the clergy at his/her table with a story about the rector this priest was replacing. Apparently, he mowed the church lawn. Even worse in this priest’s opinion, he made the coffee on Sunday morning. This person said they had put an end to that. Everybody around the table laughed at the practices of that ol’ burnout. I smiled. That’s me; “Mr. Coffee”. I even go and get the donated beans from Kitchen Art, “The Store for Cooks”. I did the owners wedding. Find someone who is more than a professional.

We have two awards and one scholarship to give out this morning.

First, the Nellie Johnston Award. Nellie wove our altar cloth decades ago, and it was good fun for a younger Peter Bunder to visit her at Westminster. You could join her at 4:00 for the medicinal scotch she had been prescribed. Her daughter Kathleen Johnston helped anchor this community for years, and paid for our upstairs kitchen. So this annual award goes to the “grown-up”, whatever that means, who has done something here above and beyond the usual and customary at Good Shepherd.

This year the award goes to Kevin Edmundson. I have to be careful that this award doesn’t just become the senior warden appreciation trophy. Certainly Kevin’s willingness to assemble a search committee for Good Shepherd’s transition removes that concern. But Kevin actually won this award while climbing to the top of our over-sized stepladder, reaching out with one end to grab the front edge of the proscenium arch, while changing the linear frosted socket lights with the other. That is a chore something like making the coffee.

Next, we have the Angela Falzone Student Leadership Award. Angela was elected our first (graduate) student senior warden in 1987, and she still pays for the trophies!  This year’s Falzone Award is given to Erin Sample. Erin has done a remarkable job as our peer minister, taking that position and turning it into something that has far exceeded my expectations; and I have a rich fantasy life. Vivacious, imaginative, she has taken our student ministry in several new directions; including to Recitation 303 for our mid-week Jimmy John’s sandwiches. Of all the factors that make me comfortable turning you over to new clergy leadership, her enthusiasm for this community is chief among them.

Our Good Shepherd Scholarship goes annually to a Purdue undergraduate who demonstrates need and/or is best able to propose a solution for this line found in the book “101 Reasons to be Episcopalian” compiled by Louie Crew; “#41 – “Where else can you be considered a young person until you’re forty?” The winner of our essay contest this year is Alex Adams (New Harmony, IN). Alex, who’s parents left the Episcopal church when she was small, believes college students (introverts especially) need a place where they won’t be judged on their appearance, their sexuality, or how often they come to church. If nothing else works, she suggests we emphasize the free food.

New things I declare, and before they spring forth I tell you of them.

Join us upstairs after the service for our annual parish meeting. There’s free food. Later the new vestry will meet back here in the chapel for an organizational meeting.

Amen.

"Dis-appointed"

 

Retirement has been going pretty well, thanks. Though I didn’t quite feel retired until after the November 2019 elections, when I won my West Lafayette district with 72% of the vote. The Democrats won 8 of 9 city council seats. That exceeded our expectations, even though the party’s “numbers guy” had said we might win them all. (We lost the ninth seat by five votes.) I will be council president again in 2020.

That job, plus babysitting granddaughter Rowan, has become my retirement gig. I also keep the house tidy.

Actually, the first two weeks of my retirement were exceptional!  My last Sunday service on August 4^th was remarkable in that so many of Good Shepherd’s alums traveled great distances to come and say “thanks”. I got to quote Kierkegaard once more, and reiterate why it was the church mounts a ministry in higher education. Gerry McCartney played folk hymns from our shared past. Carolyn Cooper snuck “Stairway to Heaven” in at communion.

The next weekend it was off to Chicago to see Molly’s bungalow renovations and the musical “Come From Away”. On the 18^th, Katy hosted a retirement party for me at the Lafayette Country Club and gave a heartfelt speech reflecting on the accident and intention of our 34 years in West Lafayette. It could serve as a primer on the meaning of community and its care, its maintenance. (Her text appears above on this blog page.)

Then things took a turn.

My retired University of Chicago colleague Sam Portaro had an excellent phrase for the fate of college work in the Episcopal Church, and perhaps in all of the old Protestant mainline; we have been "dis-appointed". 

Disappointed.

The church treasurer called to ask Katy and I if we had heard the news. What news, we asked? The Bishop had appointed Hilary Cooke to Good Shepherd. As the interim, I asked?  Nope, as chaplain.

Huh. That’s disappointing.

Hilary might have been a good choice, had she applied for the job, and if the search committee had picked her, and if the Bishop (perhaps even after nudging the search in her direction) approved her; that would have been swell.
 

BUT 

I was bitterly disappointed professionally that the Diocese of Indianapolis denied Good Shepherd the experience of developing a parish profile and running a national search for a new chaplain. A much weaker Good Shepherd was permitted that work 34 years ago. Three times over my last 18 months at Good Shepherd I had to have a "first" conversation on my retirement with some new member of diocesan staff. Each time I was told by this newest person that Good Shepherd would be treated "just like a parish". I assume this speech was not their own invention. The need for expediency at the end was a problem of the diocese's own making.

The condescension reported by the Good Shepherd leadership in this process is an embarrassment. The word "process" is a misnomer. That the parish was told it was to add $10,000 to Hilary's diocesan salary package, on top of recent program cuts, without any negotiation, is a misery. Add that to the aborting of the search process and this represents an organizational downgrade. Good Shepherd has lost any independence it might have had in selecting personnel or controlling its finances. Add to that Linda Johnson’s pressured early retirement at IU, and you have a general institutional downgrade of the higher education ministry.

New directions, usually cheaper directions, are anticipated in a declining church. But not without any consultation. With anybody. Ever. That’s disappointing. No wonder Sean Cox, my last diocesan transition officer, came to my final service, seemed nervous, said nothing, and left early. He knew. He has now left the diocese.

I was bitterly disappointed personally that I had to spend a Sunday morning and afternoon explaining to friends in texts or on the phone that in spite of the highly choreographed simultaneous announcement at Good Shepherd and St. John's of Hilary's appointment, no one (not Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Hilary Cooke, Sean Cox, the search head Kevin Edmundson, or the senior warden Don Lynam) thought I should be given a heads up about this significant change in approach, whatever their instructions from the church bureaucracy. That's insulting.

Worse, I had to tell the senior warden to please not tell people that we will be going to St. John's for the next two years. Katy and I cannot attend a church that spent nearly a million dollars renovating their organ/worship space and simultaneously closed their food pantry. We will be Lutherans at Christmas.

The duplicity. The incompetence. The imperiousness. I said as much to Don Lynam (Senior Warden) and Bill Hughes (Chair of the Diocesan Higher Education Commission). I thought I might just be able to hand on what I had been given 34 years ago before some inevitable dis-appointment. I could not. No kindness. No grace. No apology.

On to my next life.  I still feel important. The pension checks come regularly. There was a Christmas bonus. The family is well. Katy is teaching at Purdue. But I am disappointed. Disappointed in the institution I matured in, though I know institutions can't love you. Disappointed in people I thought were friends.

Chaplain Bio

Our Chaplain

 

The Rev. Peter Bunder has been the Chaplain and Vicar of Good Shepherd since 1985. (Yes, really; 1985.) He has been through three bishops and three buildings. He is married to Katy O’Malley-Bunder, the Executive Director of Food Finders’ Food Bank. He has two grown daughters, Molly and Emily, and a granddaughter named Rowan.
Peter was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1977 on Mt. Trashmore in Virginia Beach, Va. He had attended seminary at the University of Toronto. He came to the Diocese of Indianapolis and to West Lafayette from R.E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington, Virginia.

Peter’s hobby is local politics. He has represented West Lafayette Council District #2 since 2008. That’s New Chauncey, a near campus neighborhood. He is also the President of the City Council. Ask him about land use, historic preservation, and the city’s environmental commission.

Here’s what Peter thinks his job is:  “And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” – Mt.13:52
peter@goodshep.org

Peter has announced his plans to retire in August of 2019 at age 68 after 34 years of service in West Lafayette, 37 years in the Episcopal Church, and 42 years as a priest.