Friends, I am Mark Delcuze, and I serve as rector of St. Stephen's, Ridgefield. My parochial focus includes the renewal of the liturgy, broadening our outreach in the world and strengthening our incorporation of newcomers. Elected Clergy Alternate to GC 2009, I worked three years on the Cathedral Chapter. For the past year I've served as Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for CT, a post I also held for ten years in Southern Virginia.

Prior to coming to CT, I served for 20 years in parishes in the Dioceses of West Virginia, Virginia and Southern Virginia. I've been active in community organizing including Norfolk Urban Outreach and participated in the startup of Empower Hampton Roads. I served on Diocesan Executive Committee and as Chair of Examining Chaplains.

Music and travel are my outlets for recreation. A singer-songwriter in college, I've performed in community musical theater. I have been privileged to travel in South America, Europe and most frequently in the British Isles. At home, I'm increasingly fascinated by the connective potential of the digital age.

As a child of career Marine Corps officer, I moved more than a dozen times before the age of 18 and so struggle to articulate "where I am from". Until I turned 40, the longest I'd ever lived anywhere was my four years at UVA. Since 1992, our only move has been to CT. My wife Mary (Mimi) Jerome Delcuze, a church and organizational consultant, and I have two college age daughters, Sarah and Bethany

Like the steady beating of the human heart, opening to receive and then pushing to propel, I see the mission of our diocese as an active exchange. Our diocese is not so much a geographic location as it is a series of interactions, a drawing together and a sending out.

I seek to be an agent of reconciliation, a desire I have lived out in rust-belt towns and suburban parishes. I have worked across boundaries of denominations and ideology to seek common ground. I believe that the work of reconciliation will be our first order of business. We must draw together to hear each other's stories and shape a common vocabulary of purpose. I also seek the collaboration of people from many faith traditions to address the injustice and poverty which confront us locally and abroad.

I seek to be an agent of mission. Through the Cursillo movement and Benedictine practice, I've seen repeatedly the ways in which prayer and study compel us to action. I look forward to working in the Diocese in conversation with Christ in each other to shape a common rule of life, a rule which nourishes our apostolic action through common prayer and study.

Our diocesan mission must include many voices and many perspectives. Real work will be required to reach across the divisions which fracture us. Drawing in and sending out, with joy, will form the rhythm of our life together. I believe this is the work we are called to do.

How often has the story been told of the seeker who sets out on a perilous adventure only to discover the prize was already at hand? The challenges facing clergy today seem worthy of some exotic quest. I submit to you that what we seek is already available.

The daily pursuit of God in Christ through prayer and study of the Scriptures is our first, best response to the suffering and anxiety that surrounds us. Such work, done corporately and privately in the Holy Spirit, is not pious window dressing, but the prize we seek.

Ministry is shared among all the baptized. As clergy, we do well to listen to the witness of the laity, who are, more often than not, better positioned to be evangelists, missioners, teachers and administrators than we are. St. Paul spoke to the Corinthians about how they needed each other. So too, we need the full variety of gifts.

Our work is equipping: offering the tools, encouragement and critique that allow all to perceive the world in light of the Gospel. Mary's Magnificat and Micah's challenge to "do justice" are principal among a host of resources.

We also must care for ourselves, our households and our colleagues. Many of the difficulties which beset our church are fed by exhausted clergy whose overstressed calendars leave us ill-prepared to serve as guides to others.

In the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and our common pursuit of God's best desire for creation, we are fully supplied.

We have work to do. A generation has passed since our catechism first explicitly affirmed that the laity are full ministers of the church. It has taken us thirty three years to meaningfully engage the significance and practice of baptismal ministry.

This gift is a coin with two sides. Baptism is the sign and guarantee of inclusion. We are washed from sin and made members of Christ's Body, the church. Every Episcopalian, every Christian should regularly examine, renew and deepen the commitment to the covenant that was made with and for them at their baptism.

The reverse of the coin is ministry. Having been joined to the new creation, we look afresh at the world and see human need and injustice. We see neighbors who do not know Christ. Each member of our church is uniquely located and responsible as an agent of the good news.

In supporting congregations, the work of the diocese is to empower every member for baptismal ministry. The bishop is to be an educator as well as an administrator; an organizer in addition to a presider. Along with the other clergy, the bishop offers one frail and human image of the Rabbi who washed the disciples' feet.

My hope for Connecticut is that we will live into our baptisms. I will seek the counsel of all the orders of ministry and give first place to our baptisms as our commissioning to serve this world which God so loves. We have work to do.