Bishop Benfield: The openly gay Michael Briggs is as evangelical a member of the clergy as we have in this diocese. I have the feeling that evangelism is in his DNA. He and his spouse Tim are active in the life of St Mark's Church in Jonesboro. We will see Jesus in the face of Michael and the people of Jonesboro who want good news in their lives.

Delusion No. 2: Not true. What we will hear from Briggs is the need (read whine) for TEC to be more open, more inclusive, and to affirm and celebrate unbiblical sexual behaviors (LGBTQ). For the vast majority of Episcopalians hunkered down in small parishes (most of which are aging and dying), these issues have no relevance or interest whatsoever. He will preach, "come as you are stay as you are" without a word of redemption through Christ having shed His blood for sin (all sin) including sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. To that extent, he is not preaching "good news", but bad news that will have eternal consequences for his soul and the souls who buy this heretical nonsense. To put the word "evangelism" and "his spouse Tim" in the same sentence is a mockery of 2,000 years of Christian teaching on human sexual behavior that violates every known Scriptural norm on the subject.

Bishop Benfield: I am going to be frank. It is hard many days to see Jesus in the face of everyone we encounter when so much of how this world is constructed is to set one person against another, to see one person as inferior to someone else, whether on the basis of class or wealth or race or sexual orientation or even political party affiliation. But the church is in some ways profoundly counter-cultural, We work to usher in the kingdom of God in which everyone is reconciled one to another in Christ and all of us are reconciled to God, That is why we as a church exist, not for ourselves, not for our own comfort, not for our own sense of well being, but instead for every person who still stands outside our doors and who wants to hear the good news that in God all things and all people are made new. Whether or not they know it, people are looking for resurrection.

Delusion No. 3: This is a giant half-truth. I doubt very much that Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw the face of Jesus in Adolph Hitler. In fact, he worked to assassinate him. I further doubt if Arkansas Police are running around looking for the face of Jesus in serial murderers or pedophiles they encounter each day. Benfield is the soft face of liberalism looking for the good in people when he ought to be teaching the inherent sinfulness of people in need of a savior. Affirming aberrant lifestyles is gospel denying, not gospel proclamation.

Yes, there is greed that is not only on Wall Street. Structural racism is alive and well (my wife works on eliminating this as a consulting project for America's Black community). Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is a myth. There is no such thing. It is more accurately called same-sex attractions, attractions which can be redirected with wise and deep counseling. (And please don't call me a liar or deluded. I have seen reparative therapy work and seen the liberation it has brought men.)

Benfield nowhere mentions HOW we are reconciled to God. Where is the talk of repentance and faith? It is nowhere mentioned. Is he pinning his faith on interfaith relationships by offering a new universal religion with a universal god to provide cover?

People are looking for a resurrected life that can only be found in Jesus Christ, not in Buddha, Mohammed or Desmond Tutu nor, for that matter, in some "spiritual" resurrection because a physical resurrection is an embarrassment to science believers.

Bishop Benfield: The urging of the presiding bishop that almost all of us agree with is that it is time to be about the mission of the church. It is no longer business as usual. A reporter asked me what I thought this convention would be remembered for, and I replied that in the long run it may be the convention that said "business as usual" is no longer acceptable.

The first sign of that change is that we approved a budget for the next three years that shakes up who we are. The old ways of doing things are at an end. There is less money for commission meetings and headquarters staffing and more for Latino ministries and financial help for seminarians, for example. We have finally begun to realize that the vital mission of the church takes place in local congregations, not at church headquarters.

The second sign that it is not business as usual was our willingness to tackle some important social issues with which society at large is struggling as well. What the Convention said first is that the Episcopal Church remains committed to the Anglican Communion. Indeed, we showed that commitment through our desire to continue funding Communion activities, and we saw the reciprocal love that other parts of the Communion have for us in the attendance at Convention of primates from all over the world, including Africa.

Delusion No. 4: There is no mention of the Great Commission as the basis of mission or declaring Good News and the coming Kingdom of God that attends that. Nothing. This is about horizontal salvation not vertical. Then he mentions money, or the church's lack of it, as less is coming in to national headquarters and more is going out in lawsuits. He says the church needs to get back to mission in "local congregations". A congregational research report, from Congregational and Diocesan Ministries by C. Kirk Hadaway on the Episcopal Church, completed in March of 2011, reveals that two-thirds of all Episcopal parishes are in financial trouble. More than half (52.4 percent) of all Episcopal congregations had an average attendance of 70 or fewer persons in 2009, as compared with 50.7 percent in 2007. The median Episcopal congregation had 66 persons at Sunday worship in 2009, compared to 72 in 2006 and 77 in 2003. Most churches want to be left alone, thank you very much. Based on this report alone, Benfield has about as much chance of jump restarting his congregations as Gene Robinson has of reclaiming his virginity.

As far as "reciprocal love" from other parts of the Anglican Communion is concerned, there isn't any coming from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, West Africa or South East Asia. Any "love" that is to be found is coming from those Anglican African provinces TEC can influence with its money and, in doing so, hope to push TEC's pansexual agenda.

Bishop Benefield: Regarding ordination, we stated that God's call to the ordained ministry is a mystery, which the church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes. Some people might read this as an overturning of a resolution (BO33) of the 75th General Convention, in which Convention stated that it urged restraint on the ordination to the episcopate of people whose manner of life might be a cause for concern for the larger Communion. Those of us at this Convention believe that these two resolutions "walk alongside" one another as we continue to discern God's will for us, and a letter from the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies to the archbishop of Canterbury stated that fact. It was a moderate response to the love that we have for the Communion and to the mystery of God's call to us in this Church.

Delusion No. 5: There is now no official restraint about pansexuality in TEC. None. The (so far) five (LGBTQ) sexualities reach from the Diaconate to the episcopacy. B033 got briefly brokered in under PB Frank Griswold to appease Rowan Williams, but got ditched in the next General Convention. "Moderate" left TEC a long time ago.

Bishop Benfield: The second area of public interest is how the church views same-gender unions. This is a subject in which society has greatly changed since the last convention. We now have six states in which marriage of same-gendered persons is legal, and more states in which civil unions are legal. This Convention felt that it is time for a renewed pastoral response to this present reality. Thus, we advised bishops that they may provide a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church. We did not order the publication of any authorized rites, and we made no attempt whatsoever to change the language of the Book of Common Prayer to be "gender neutral" in its marriage rite. I think that the response was moderate and in keeping with the reality of where church and society find themselves today.

Delusion No.6: So the Church, in this case TEC, which is called to be a counter culture, rolls over to the culture and that is somehow right? Since when? And Rites will be firmly established by GC2012. Count on it.

Bishop Benfield: I am firmly convinced that had this Convention made no statements about these issues, we would have continued to be obsessed by them for the next three years, when our real need is to turn our attention to the mission of the church, which is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. I often say that Satan likes us to talk about sex; it takes our focus off of our mission. And if that supposition is true, we have given Satan one less tool for the next three years. We have spoken honestly and lovingly about where the Church finds itself in a real world. Now we can focus on proclaiming good news to the people who stand outside our doors. As the presiding bishop said, the heartbeat of this church is going to be, "mission, mission, mission."

Delusion No. 7: The Episcopal Church is in major decline and yes it will be obsessed about these issues till they are resolved in favor of the church's handful of pansexualists. It has no message or ability "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ" bearing in mind that Washington Bishop John Chane recently said we all worship the same God. If "Satan likes to talk about sex" then TEC wins the Louie Crew award for talking about it solidly for the last 40 years.

Here are some sobering statistics for this diocese:

The Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas is comprised of 56 congregations.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's figures, Arkansas population grew over 8% from 2000 to 2009. By contrast, the Diocese of Arkansas went from an Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 5,349 in 1998 to 4,684 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 12% over this ten year period.

Furthermore, there were more Burials - 190 - than Infant Baptisms - 150. That means it took 90 Members to produce ONE Infant Baptism. Perhaps TEC should reverse itself on birth control and abortion.

Between 2002 and 2008, Members declined by 6.6 percent, ASA dropped 15.9 percent, but with Plate & Pledge (adjusted for inflation) actually increased about 1.9 percent. Money looks a bit brighter with 24 of its 56 churches having Plate & Pledge over $150,000 in 2008 which means that for every two "rich" churches the diocese has three "poor" churches to help. Growth is poor with 32 of its 56 churches having an ASA of 70 or less in 2008. 13 of these 32 have an ASA of 20 or less.

For 2008 those baptized in the diocese were 13,559. By 2009 that figure had dropped to 13,003 for a net loss of 256. ASA figures for 2008 were 4,684. In 2009 they had dropped to 4,634 a net loss of 50. It is believed that the figures for both groups will be even lower in 2010.

The biggest impact on this diocese however has been the intrusion of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), which has negatively impacted the Diocese of Arkansas's numbers with 10 start-up missional churches including three Anglican Mission in the Americas (TheAM) parishes.

If Benfield's "gospel" is so compelling why is there the need to plant these new parishes in his own backyard?

The truth is Bishop Benfield's parishes are withering with at least 13 on life support. His diocese is in decline and a gay evangelist will change nothing. Unless he can stem the hemorrhaging in his own backyard with a biblical understanding of the gospel, all the high-sounding talk about "restoring all people to God" is just sound and fury signifying nothing.

END