At the concluding HOB news conference, Virtueonline remarked that Bishop Martins had blogged his reservations about the HOB meeting in Taiwan and that the money it would cost to travel could best be used elsewhere.

Four Episcopal bishops -- Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori; Bishop Dean Wolfe (IX Kansas): Bishop Ken Price (Ohio Suffragan); and Bishop Todd Ousley (II Eastern Michigan) -- leapt to their feet to defend the House of Bishops' desire to go to Taiwan for its September meeting.
The Presiding Bishop was quick to note that Bishop David Lai (V Taiwan) is a very active member of the House of Bishops who attends all the HOB meetings, not only in the United States, but in South America, too.

Since 2000, when Bishop Lai joined the Episcopal House of Bishops, the bishops have gathered at least twice a year in their spring and autumn confabs as well as every three years for General Convention. HOB meetings have bounced around the United States including but not limited to Nashville, TN; New Orleans, LA; Salt Lake City, UT; Phoenix, AZ; Navasota, TX; and Henderson, NC. Texas' Camp Allen in Navasota and North Carolina's Kanuga Conference Center in Henderson seem to be favorite meeting locations. In September 2011 the HOB also met in Quito, Equator. Since Bishop Lai joined the HOB General Conventions have been held in Minneapolis, MN; Columbus, OH; Anaheim, CA; and Indianapolis, IN.

This time Bishop Lai extended an invitation to his fellow HOB bishops to visit him in his Pacific Ocean island diocese. Taiwan, formerly called Formosa and situated off the coast of China, is an island smaller than Maryland and Delaware combined, about the size of Belgium.

"The reality is that Taiwan is the eastern most portion of The Episcopal Church," the Presiding Bishop explained, "it celebrates its 60th anniversary as a diocese or missionary district of this church."

The Episcopal Church came to Taiwan in 1949 when missionaries were forced out of China following the Chinese Revolution, which brought about the suppression of religion from the Communist nation. The Episcopal Diocese of Taiwan was then established in 1954 and is part of Province VIII, which also includes the Pacific West Coast, Alaska, Hawaii and Micronesia.

The Presiding Bishop called the Taiwan invitation a "remarkable opportunity for the bishops of this church to learn something about the Asian context in which the church has relationships," thus in keeping with the theme of the just completed March HOB meeting which was "How Shall We Sing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land."

Taiwan is a strange land. Its 23 million inhabitants speak, read and write Chinese. The predominate religion is Buddhism, followed by Taoism. Christians make up less than four percent of the entire population. The Gospel was first brought to the island in the early 1500s by the Roman Catholic Church, which now claims the most Christian adherents with 300,000 souls. Of the non-Catholics, the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Mennonites, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Orthodox, Holiness, Adventists, Assemblies of God, Bread of Life Christian Church, Reformed Presbyterian, and Episcopalians all labor in the Taiwan mission field. Several other religious sects and cults also operate in Taiwan including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons); the Community of Christ (Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), the True Jesus Church (Nontrinitarians) and the Unification Church (Moonies).

The Episcopal Church in Taiwan seems to be the smallest Christian denomination on the island. Of the 605,000 Protestants worshipping in 3,609 congregations, only 1,176 are baptized Episcopalians. Of that number, only 687 attend church on a Sunday in one of 13 churches. In 2012, the Diocese of Taiwan celebrated 79 baptisms, 59 confirmations, 20 weddings and 22 funerals. There were 186 in Sunday school.

"Either we are going to be an international church or we are not," added Bishop Wolfe. "If we are that's going to require some costs, both in terms of travel and expenditure and the cost of being willing to engage in new cultures and different experiences."

The Episcopal Church boasts several "foreign" dioceses and territories of which Taiwan and Micronesia are the furthest away from American soil. Both Taiwan and Micronesia are about 8,000 air miles away from Episcopal Church headquarters in New York.

Bishop Ousley said he is excited to be going to Taiwan for the September House of Bishops' meeting.

"The theme for our gathering in September is 'Expanding the Apostolic Imagination’," the Eastern Michigan bishop explained. "What better way for us to expand our imagination than to be within a culture that, by its very existence, forces us to think differently, to listen and hear differently and then translate this experience back to our own culture."

"It costs something to go there," The Presiding Bishop also noted. "It costs something of each bishop in the terms of an openness to new experiences and in discerning the presence of God in other contexts."

"As far as the cost is concerned," Bishop Ousley said, minimizing concern about the expense to bring the House of Bishops to Taiwan, "being faithful in church is not just a question of financial and economic issues, but rather 'Who is God calling us to be?' and 'What is God calling us to do?' That is always a part of the equation of the church."

"... I do not wish to be complicit in furthering the narrative that 'the Episcopal Church is an international church; we're in 16 countries on four continents'." Bishop Martins blogged, "While technically true, that is an incidental and circumstantial reality, not the virtuous fruit of a grand missionary strategy."

Several Christian denominations in Taiwan are actively engaged in very fruitful mission. The Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists Baptists and Lutherans operate schools while the Adventists and Mennonites have hospitals.

"If anything, it is a vestige of colonialism and we ought to find it an embarrassment and be taking more aggressive steps to spin off our overseas dioceses into self-sustaining Anglican provinces," Bishop Martins blogged.

This happened in 1990 when the Philippine Episcopal Church, founded by American missionaries in 1901 following the first Episcopal worship service in Manila in 1898 by an American military chaplain, became autonomous.

About one hundred years later, the Philippine Episcopal Church was weaned from its Mother Church in the United States and became an independent Episcopal church as well as self-sustaining Province within the Anglican Communion as the Episcopal Church in the Philippines. The Diocese of Puerto Rico joined The Episcopal Church in 2003, becoming another "foreign" Episcopal diocese.

In addition to Taiwan, The Episcopal Church's "foreign" dioceses and mission fields include: The Episcopal Churches in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Kazakhstan); South America (Central & Litoral Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela) the Caribbean (the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island); Honduras in Central America; and Micronesia (Guam and Saipan) in the Pacific.

"As it happens, though, it is politically useful for TEC to have recourse to the 'international church' meme," the Springfield bishop concluded. "In any case, I don't need to be an accomplice."

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is mandated by Title I Canon 1.2.4 (a) (6) to “visit every Diocese of this Church for the purpose of: (i) Holding pastoral consultations with the Bishop or Bishops thereof and, with their advice, with the Lay and Clerical leaders of the jurisdiction; (ii) Preaching the Word; and (iii) Celebrating the Holy Eucharist.”

She filled that task a year ago when she visited the Diocese of Central Florida last March. In so doing she visited all 112 domestic and foreign dioceses or ecclesial jurisdictions spread across all nine Episcopal provinces travelling to all 50 states and going to four continents and 13 separate countries to complete the task thus living up to The Episcopal Church's corporate name as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. She has already been to Taiwan at least once.

She visited Taiwan late last February and early March as a part of a three-week Anglican Asian tour where she stepped foot in the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, China and Hong Kong. While in Taiwan she reminded the Taiwanese to "love the world into a new future" at the opening of the Diocese of Taiwan's Annual Synod. Although the Presiding Bishop speaks fluent Spanish, she needed an interpreter to deliver her sermon "The Whole Church Serving" to the diocesan synod.

While on the ground in Taiwan she also visited St. James Episcopal Kindergarten in Taichung, which was originally founded for post World War II servicemen; and she toured Tung Hai University in Taichung and St. Johns’ University near Taipei, two institutes of higher learning originally founded by The Episcopal Church.

Bishop Price explained that as the former provisional bishop of TEC Pittsburgh, he made it a point to visit every parish and mission in his provisional diocese every year -- all 37 congregations -- even if there were only five people.

He noted that when he met with his smallest and most remote congregations, he always came back with the feeling that it was one of the more valuable episcopal visits he had made in terms of the impact with the parishioners and that his ability to be in relationship with his people overshadowed the time and distance involved in getting there.

Therefore, Bishop Price said that it would be wrong for him, as a member of the House of Bishops, to not travel to Taiwan just because of its small size and distance from the United States.

With 13 congregations and 1,176 baptized souls, Taiwan is one of the smallest dioceses in The Episcopal Church. However, it is not the smallest. That honor goes to Micronesia with 250 souls worshipping in four churches. The Navajoland has 643 baptized members in nine congregations while the former TEC Diocese of Quincy had nine worshipping locations with 672 members before it folded back into the Diocese of Chicago last fall to as the Peoria Deanery. The Diocese of Venezuela has fewer than 1,000 baptized members. A total of 977 souls are scattered across 24 congregations.

In 2003, Taiwan had 975 baptized souls. There has been an increase of 201 baptized members as reflected in the 2012 diocesan figures. However, there has been an overall loss of 116 people in the pews on Sunday mornings. In 2003, the ASA was 803 that figure has dropped to 687 ten years later.

About 140 bishops traveled to Texas for the March HOB meeting. The question is: How many will travel to Taiwan in September? It is now known that Bishop Martins will not be one of them.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline