My response herein is provided in two fashions:

1. in order to fervently request your forgiveness for our action as a vestry in abandoning our allegiance to our mother church by accepting the alternative ecclesiastical authority of Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America and the Church of Nigeria until the parishioners of Grace and St. Stephen's can accede to that decision; and

2. to provide you a background to the circumstances of that sorry decision made necessary by the complex events which have transpired through my eyes.

Let me begin with my own history and then provide my heartfelt apology:

Although I have sat on this vestry these last two years with a one year hiatus and service the preceding three years, I have also been a loyal parishioner and communicant and member in good standing at Grace Church and a member of The Episcopal Church in the USA since 1987. I was born a sinner, repented and was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ in 1968 under Presbyterian minister, Dr. Rousas John Rushdoony. I was confirmed in the Anglican Church under Bishop Truman Davis in 1983 and was accepted on transfer to Grace Church in 1987 by letter. My introduction to Grace Episcopal Church occurred in 1985 upon moving to Colorado Springs with my young family and that initial experience was negative.

The parish at that time was in severe decline in part due to the inadequate pastoral rectorship. Through God's grace and the blessing of the Holy Spirit, Father Donald Armstrong was installed as rector at Grace Church in 1987, and my family was led to return to a mightily revived place of worship which has grown to the present state of glorious existence. My first personal contact with Father Armstrong was on a pastoral visit to my home in 1987 where I asked the Rector two questions which confirmed my loyalty to this place: 1. Do you believe Jesus Christ is Lord, and 2. Do you believe Holy Scripture is true?

My tenures on the vestry at Grace Church have been fraught with difficulty. It has been a troublesome task to understand the hierarchical (as I have called it, "feudalistic") nature of our church and its leadership. I do understand implied responsibility and my service as parishioner and vestryman has been undertaken with the utmost seriousness and integrity and with the knowledge that decisions I and my fellows have made are of the highest importance, from the financial decisions we have made unto the present dilemma we are confronting in ecclesiastical oversight.

I believe that the vast congregation in all of its variety and backgrounds at Grace Church deserve no less than its leadership's highest efforts and intense prayerful consideration of the history, theology, circumstances, financial status, parishioners' and community's needs, outreach and evangelical expectations and hierarchical leadership's faithfulness to biblical truth in our exercise of our duty to our parish and our Lord.

It is my understanding that a vestryman has more than the simple fiduciary responsibility to a parish, and as expressed in Robert Hansel's little book, Vestries in the Episcopal Church, "As church trustees, the vestry has a dual responsibility: it carries out legal mandates as officers of a chartered corporation and it spearheads the congregation's mission and ministry." The "mission" at Grace Church is to be "Devoted to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers." (Acts 2:42)

Fortunately, at Grace Church, the vestry men and women have been extraordinarily thoughtful, intelligent, and committed Christian folk. It is truly an honor to have been associated with such integrity and intellect and Godly people as are within our congregation and especially our vestry. Each of these to whom you have written notice of "...incomprehensible ... intentional and irresponsible breach of ...fiduciary responsibilities." is a pillar of leadership in our community and beyond reproach in matters of intimate and abiding care in the fiscal management of this parish. Your words, Your Grace, belie a serious disingenuousness and blatant ignorance of our commitment to Christian service, as has been the case for much of these last several months. Your indictment, designed to give basis to your action to remove this vestry, is a lie.

That you and the Diocese, without charitable effort of seeking assistance or confirmation from our vestry and staff in congenial conversation and mutual endeavor, have sought to unilaterally defame and implicate Father Armstrong in wrongdoing; and that you and your investigators have relied upon the hearsay and invective of a few disenfranchised and disenchanted "goats of the congregation" at Grace Church in your presentment of our rector is apparent and demonstrable.

What you have failed to appreciate is that the knowledgeable and loyal parishioners and vestrymen of this parish have an abiding and real affection for our clergy and a resolute faith in their trustworthiness and honesty. We are also acutely aware of Mr. Nussbaum's irascible and detailed delineation of our own complicity in every supposed misapplication or presumptive defalcation if your presentment charges, and we are incensed. That "secret meetings, rumor-milling, invective harbored in the heart - sinful violations of our bond to one another" (Robert Hansel's Vestries in the Episcopal Church) has been your modus operandi is our sorry perception. How could it not be that we feel divorced and abandoned by our leadership in Denver?

It is one thing to implicate our clergy in a crime, but to include eleven vestry men and women by implication and complicity in an ongoing scheme to defraud our parish of over a million dollars during the last ten to fifteen years of voluntary Christian service is pure vilification and libel.

As I have noted, I am the worst of all of God's creatures and an inveterate sinner and a worm and no man. I have received great forgiveness and have been an ungrateful wretch and thief of God's gracious goodness to mankind. I can discern only what fills my belly and satiates my base instincts. I know that I want to worship my Lord in a hierarchical system that confirms my understanding of scriptural truth and reasonableness and a stable tradition of a unified systematic faith described in the Creeds, Prayer Book, and in the Anglican tradition.

In self preservation I wish to guard and I am willing to fight these things, understanding that there are some in my own parish who will not agree with me. I am one of the sheep who will follow my shepherd in this regard, though I know some of my fellows will wander away and fall into a pit. I know the voice of my shepherd and he protects me from the wolves of this world, which he helps me recognize as wolves those who may sometimes be in a sheep's vesture.

I am most aware that I am a member and communicant in good standing in The Episcopal Church and in the Diocese of Colorado by the definitions and understanding of the intent and canons of this institution. I am unaware of any violation I may have committed as to Canon 1.17.8 wherein I have not "...well and faithfully performed the duties ... in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of this Church and of the Diocese in which this office is being exercised."

Indeed, I believe that myself and my vestry fellows have been exceedingly diligent in "well and faithful" performance of our responsibilities in these trying times and in the face of an ignominious ecclesiastical oppression. We have not alienated nor encumbered our parish property to any new authority, and we have preserved that which has been sanctified to our Lord Jesus Christ intact and in functioning good order under a continuing Anglican episcopacy in legitimate communion with Canterbury and safe from a renegade apostasy.

I reiterate herewith my humble accession to the Preamble of The Episcopal Church, which states: "(it is) a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, a fellowship within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer."

My present understanding is that the vestry of Grace Church holds a "dual citizenship" of sorts, both being communicants in good standing within The Episcopal Church (of the USA) as well as being accepted into the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. I am unaware of any canonical regulation or rule authorizing ANY Bishop in The Episcopal Church to unilaterally remove a faithful vestryperson before expiration of his term for ANY reason whatsoever. I am unaware of ANY Bishop or ANY ecclesiastical authority in The Episcopal Church having ANY authority to declare a communicant to not be in "good standing", less that communicant be unfaithful in his attendance or stewardship responsibilities as determined by his rector of his parish church.

Please explain then, Your Grace, how you can declare a thing you hold no power to declare? We are "declared" by you to have vacated our positions? Is this not further exhibition of your disingenuous and unwarranted interference into matters from which you should abstain? You, Sir, increasingly have become a tyrant and insidious snake of the worst sort. Unless you now declare Grace and St Stephen's a mission - a thing you have nowhere previously declared - I am unclear how you have any authority over a duly established vestry and specifically over my own present status as a vestry member of Grace Church? What pastoral effect is this that your only consistent behavior with our parish leadership has been to strike us repeatedly with the staff of your crook by threatening us with civil proceedings and prolonged personal and collective legal actions?

Finally, Your Grace, I do sincerely apologize and beg your merciful understanding and forgiveness that I have been party to secessionist decisions to divorce our parish from the Diocese of Colorado by voting for the ecclesiastical request of protection and oversight of an alternative Bishop in communion with Canterbury.

While I personally believe this decision is never a correct or desired resolution of irreconcilable differences, the Declaration of Independence of our United States does recognize that: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

And better than I could say, the fourth paragraph of said document goes on: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

I can only place myself upon the merciful expectation and guaranty that God Almighty has promised in our Lord Jesus Christ that our cause is just and good in His eyes; that our desire at Grace Church to be faithful in the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers is right-minded and to be blessed, and ask you to exercise that charitable and emulative character that God does wish in His Bishops, for you leave off your threats, legal actions, defamations, interferences and conduct unbecoming your office of Bishop and let our people go to worship our Lord in peace. I am

Comforted By That Peace Which Passeth All Understanding,

Keith W. Stampher, M.D.