The rector of Christ Church Plano has traded the pulpit for a new position as our Dean of the Diocese. He sits down with us to share what Bishop Hunter tasked him to do—and how it all starts at the 2016 Clergy Retreat.
Q: Welcome to the team! What will you be doing for C4SO?
David Roseberry: I’ll be working with C4SO developing our plans to multiply our churches. C4SO’s deans gathered in November and laid out a plan to expand the diocese through church planting. We took that plan to the Unity Task Force and presented it to them later that month, and they were supportive. They also challenged us to fulfill the original mandate for C4SO and create new dioceses! We will be unveiling these plans to our clergy at next month’s Clergy Retreat.
Though we have so much potential, we have challenges in terms of how to maximize Bishop Todd’s time and gifts and keep the ethos of church planting alive and growing. Sustainable systems are not yet in place. That’s what I love to do—help organizations grow, capture vision and lay out the plans to accomplish it. Bishop Todd has commissioned me to do that for C4SO, and Archbishop Beach is very supportive of this effort.
Q: What will your day-to-day look like?
DR: I will be doing a lot of remote work, traveling, interfacing with Bishop Todd and with clergy and church planters; I will love to do some coaching, investing in young leaders, helping churches untie knots and sort through difficult issues. My hope is to be a ministry developer for C4SO; I want to help clergy develop their ministries, and help the diocese develop its ministry. I bring 33 years’ experience in parish ministry, so I’m looking forward to using that to help others.
Q. Was it hard for you to leave Christ Church Plano?
DR: Emotionally, it was a long, prayerful, agonizing process. I was leaving my life’s work. I’ve spent more than half my life pastoring that church. But I felt the best thing Christ Church could do was support our diocesan effort to build strong, multifaceted dioceses so that we can have great communication, build a strong administration, support our clergy and our leadership, and maintain our efforts to plant churches. I realized I was in a unique position to help do that, and that if I could find somebody to take over the helm at Christ Church, the church would benefit and so would our diocese.
But I felt the best thing Christ Church could do was support our diocesan effort to build strong, multifaceted dioceses, starting with having great communication, building a strong administration, supporting our clergy and our leadership, and maintaining our efforts to plant churches.
Q: What do you think makes C4SO unique among dioceses?
DR: I love that we have strength in regional areas all over the country. But what makes C4SO really unique is Bishop Todd’s ministry to clergy…primarily. Some bishops focus on the pews, so to speak. That is wonderful. But Bishop Todd is an equipper of leaders—his primary purpose is to help equip and activate individual clergy. To my knowledge, we’re the only diocese that puts money back into the mission field. We take 20% of the diocesan budget and give it back to individual planters. That’s unique!
The other part is that C4SO wants to help other dioceses plant churches without proprietary interest. That is a phrase we have come to own and love. We want to be able to help a bishop in New England or the South plant a church there, not “in” C4SO, but “through” C4SO. C4SO would not have any “propritary interest.” We will help provide the coaching, training and encouragement for a planter in a local diocese, and we expect the plant and planter to stay within the geographic diocese.
Q: What excites you about our future?
DR: We are at a tipping point. So many young leaders want to come in and do work in the Anglican world. If we can find a way to resource, support and uphold them in their work, our diocese could double in church plants in the next year—and duplicate its own diocese a few years after that! A lot of organizations are worried about addition and subtraction; I am excited about multiplication.
Q: Over the next 18 months, what do you hope to accomplish?
DR: By the summer of 2017, we will have outstanding, robust communication with our diocese, clergy and parishes. We will have scalable administration and infrastructure to support the diocese. We will have clear lines of pastoral care for clergy and church planters.
Q: What is the first step you will take?
DR: The first step is to communicate all this to the clergy at the Clergy Retreat next month in San Francisco. Next, we will open up a C4SO office here in Dallas with some additional support staff.
Q: So it’s important for C4SO’s clergy to be at the clergy retreat!
DR: Yes. It’s a family reunion, and we’re doing this work across the nation together. We have James K.A. Smith, one of the most outstanding speakers and commentators on faith and culture we could possibly have. Most importantly, we’ll have a chance to roll out some of our exciting plans for the future. I hope to see everyone there!