Tag Archives: Episcopal

On Bulletins

Penelope at One Can Not Have Too Large a Party (How True!) asks about the use of putting everything in the Sunday Bulletin.

I’m for it.  The arguments against it are trivial.

It was once a serious issue in my congregation.  I had started, over time, to include more information in our weekly bulletin.  Initially it was simply the responses of the congregation.  Then I included more of the priest text.  Soon, the hymns.  Announcements.

No papers flying about.  No need to juggle books and worry about choosing the right one.  Ushers freed from handing out the various additional hymnals when we needed them.  We included sermons by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop.  We could use more from the Book of Occasional Services.  It was full, and comprehensive.  Like Anglican and Catholic Christianity should be.

Of course, this caused a little consternation.  Our bulletins have become fairly thick, including the lessons, ministry schedules and announcements.    But of course, quietly, a few asked why we didn’t use the Book of Common Prayer or the hymnal any more (although we often still did for non-Sunday worship), and more complained about the destruction of large forests for the sake of the priest’s pride.  “We’ll help people who are visiting” they would assert confidently.

The sentiment was generous, but I’d never seen it happen.

The central question I posed back to them: what do recent members and visitors think?  Has it made worship more comfortable for them?  Did they come to our congregation because they wanted to become more familiar with the books?  Or were they coming to be a part of a hospitable, welcoming community?  Most of the few individuals who raised the questions about the bulletin were people who grew up in the church.  After many years of formation, the seasoned don’t experience our service the same way visitors and seeker do.  I’d change it back if that’s what our recent members desired.

Some enjoy learning the intricacies of worship and its complexity.  But a service that is too obscure can also be an unnecessary stumbling bloc to individuals looking for a community or a spiritual home.  So my criteria for analyzing whether a bulletin should be complete, is to first learn what the new members think.

And let’s face it:  saving paper is a ridiculous criteria.  Perhaps once we’ve given up seating meat twice a week; forgone air travel; started walking or riding our bike as a primary transportation, then we can get all fussy about paper. Download it on an ereader!  But until then, it seems to be miserliness masked as righteousness; a sacrificing of hospitality for some reason that cannot be fathomed.

But there are three challenges a full bulletin does not accomplish on its own.

A full bulletin is merely one example of hospitality.  But it cannot, on its own, overcome a parish that does not really want to grow.  It comes out of a generous spirit; it does not create it. It cannot hide it.

A full bulletin cannot mask rushed, incompetent, or lazy worship.  Worship that does not allow for some silence and reverence; that has cringe worthy music and singing; and includes dull, tepid and inauthentic preaching; will not be aided by a comprehensive bulletin, even if it is illuminated by hand by a order of monks with gold leaf.

Having a complete bulletin also does not excuse any pastor from teaching, in some fashion, the tradition.  We should be actively, continuously, repeatedly, be helping people explore their relationship with the transcendent using the many practices at our disposal, whether it be the symbols we hold, the words we read, or the prayers we say.  Those who want to learn about the Daily Office, about asperges and anointing, church seasons and colors, should be offered those opportunities.  And certainly, we can deepen people’s spirituality as best we can, so that they do not need even the bulletin or the BCP.  They can just look up, around, and participate in the liturgy by simply lifting their hearts to God, and learning to listen.

But we do this in steps.  Certainly do not skimp on strong worship; work hard on your sermons; love the stranger.  As you have done these these, you will find a complete bulletin will be a useful tool for everyone.

Do Churches Need Denominations?

A few weeks ago, The Lead at the Episcopal Cafe quoted an article by Ken Carter, who argues that churches need denominations.   He contrasts denominations to sociologists who argue that we are entering a post-denominational phase.

Certainly the particular denominations that make up the mainline traditions are losing their distinctiveness.  Episcopalians are no longer only prosperous WASPs who enjoy early cocktail hours.   Lutherans chant.  Congregationalists use the BCP for weddings.   However, individuals raised in one denomination will go to any church that has a strong leader or a vibrant Sunday School.

But as Ken Carter implies, churches are more effective when they organize together.  They can harness resources.  They can protect hard working pastors from poisonous congregations and hard working congregations from narcissistic pastors.  They assure some modest degree of reliability by establishing set norms amongst the professional clergy.   They can assist congregations, who work as volunteers, by providing professional help when they need it.

So yes, churches need denominational structures. Continue reading →

“I just want to know what it means!”

Perry Robinson, a philosopher in the Orthodox Church, wrote an interesting article Why I am Not an Episcopalian. It’s a fairly sharp response to an Episcopalian struggling with the trinity.

I sure hope that God will not judge me on my theology.  My faith is strong.  My belief system probably needs a little tinkering.   But I’ll still sing what the church says.

The general article, however, repeats the same tired analysis of why TEC is in such bad shape.  Admittedly, he’s amusing:  “TEC – “Don’t believe in that crap?  Neither do we” with KJS is in one photo.   But it is finally unenlightening (although true).

Yes, your average Episcopal priest isn’t a great expert in theology.   I wish more were familiar with the broad panentheism in the Orthodox tradition, and the deeper expressions of recent Catholic theology.  I wish priests were better able at explaining the relevance of the living God known through the Trinity.   When an Episcopal priest denies the atonement, discards the sacrificial language of the Eucharist, or explicitly avoids the readings of Revelation, I’m disturbed.  But Perry misreads the past and seems oblivious to our current context.  Bad theology didn’t simply drop into the Episcopal Church and cause it to go to hell. Continue reading →

Reflections on General Convention

I’ve generally stayed out of the General Convention fray. After reading the long missives, the assertions, the arguments, the proposals and the plans I’ve come to a realization.

I’m addicted to the internet.
I need a media diet.

Sometimes I’m moved by the occasional blog; inspired by a just cause; convinced by a conservative. But most of the time I think, “I just spent an hour, or two, doing what?”

I could have written a small pamphlet explaining the liturgy to newcomers, or given Paul V a call. He just had a pacemaker put in. I should have taken out the trash and done some weeding. I could have reconnected with friends.

Instead, engaging a screen.

I can’t resist, however, making a few observations.

  • Although I’m a fan of the Archbishop, he is becoming more obscure.
  • When conservatives leave a church, there will be a greater number of liberals making policy.
  • Conservatives will remain surprised that there are more liberals in the church, confirming that conservatives are bad at math, except when calculating how many people are leaving the Episcopal Church.
  • Liberals aren’t very good at reading scripture.
  • GC wanted to remind people that we don’t submit to the queen of England anymore.
  • We submit to our own queens.
  • Although LGBT have positions of authority in every part of the Episcopal Church, they continue to think they don’t have power in the church. Don’t they know all the bishops still wear pink and lace?
  • GC addressed other issues besides sexuality. I’m not sure what, but they did.
  • And finally, the ABC has suggested a two track system for the church. I’m disappointed that it is only two.

Three Ways the Church can be a Mission Organization.

Over the next several decades, many churches will be closing.  They will have been unable to fund ministry, or call people who can train them for ministry.

The church should

1) Actively harness online social networking as a part of a more coherent communication strategy. How it does this will require tinkering depending on its cultural context. Westchester is very different than South Carolina.

2) Train priests and laity in the principles of community organizing and development.  This means identifying needs and leaders. Community organizing is fundamentally about discerning what people in the community believe about churches. In business it is a bit like “market research.” Evangelicals do this well.

3) Actively create partnerships with other effective institutions. Churches can partner with not-for-profits, becoming a distributor of care. It can also help raise money for those institutions mitigating sorrow.

Facebook, Meetup, myspace and NING allow for excellent opportunities to assist with gathering people.  There is still a fair amount of learning with this.

The principles of organzing is another way of building the “priesthood of all believers” and is essentially sof-style evangelism.  This is the primary way people create “buzz.”  The church becomes the voice of those people who are in the church’s radar.

Last, by partnering with other organizations, we harness and enhance our own effectiveness and visibility. Too often the church is insular and invisible.

Sell the Buildings, Call the Tentmakers

Updated:  After Tobias’s Comments, I’ve changed this post so that it doesn’t refer to ACNA.  I think he is right in his analysis.

I believe that ACNA, the new convocation of traditionalist, anti-gay sex churches might be offering the Episcopal Church a gift.

I do believe that TEC’s immediate response toward the new province is justifiable.  In an atmosphere of mutual hostility and recriminations, the suspicion that TEC is on its way to irrelevance and ACNA wants to take all the property, our conflict is placed in the hands of secular law.  It is ugly.  And it seems necessary.  But it need not be.

If we want to grow as a church, we should sell our buildings.  Not all of them, but ten percent.  Let that ten percent endow tentmaking ministry in the church.

Money that could be spent on mission is now used to maintain buildings with decades of deferred maintenance.  Congregations often place a higher priority upon a building’s beauty than reaching out to the spiritually bereft, without taking care of them effectively.  Their pledges, instead of being used to bring people into the light of Christ, are used for building projects.  Although not all building maintenance is useless, it misplaces resources that could especially used for church growth.

I don’t mean this to be a universally applicable sentiment.  Maintaining buildings is effective after a church can afford the staff that helps the laity do the work of ministry.  A building may be a church’s ministry.  But too often, it sucks the energy and resources of struggling congregations who should be spending money on sending people out into the world.

A good example are congregations in Manhattan.  New York City has several million inhabitants.  There are dozens of churches on the island.  However, few of the churches are growing.  The well endowed don’t have to.  But the rest, what will come of them?

It can’t be because there aren’t people.  Redeemer Church, for example, a PCA church, has more than six thousand members and plants communities.  Times Square church has thousands.   People are surely eager for the Word.

Some argue that the reason is because of the type of Christianity being peddled.  Conservative Christianity has stronger appeal.   It demands commitment that pusillanimous churches won’t have.   They are better organized and are more entrepreneurial.  Theologically modern churches, in this view, are simply destined to pass away.

If this is true, then we should sell our buildings.  Sell them to ACNA at a little less than market value.  We’ve been poor stewards of many of our churches.  Time to let them go.  Sell them to churches who will care for them.    We’ve implicitly given up the belief that a progressive church can thrive, justifying our mismanagement by worshiping the ideal of the small church and country parson.

There are good objections.  We’ve sold properties before, without any sense of how we should use the income.  Instead, we continued our poor practices.  We should not sell our buildings merely to create an income for spending irresponsibly on the 1950’s niche model of doing church.     But we should recognize that we’ve mistaken mission for maintenance.  We’ve poured our money into buildings rather than building relationships.  We must stop.

Sell ten percent of all our buildings to endow varieties of tentmaking ministers and clergy.

I’m not sure which buildings we would sell.  I might start with the ones in the worst shape.  I would analyze the demographics of all the churches in the local diocese and see which ones can support paid staff effectively and have congregations who want to grow.    Yes, there will be some places we’d sell that might seem like bad choices.    However, if a congregation lacks resources to care for a building, is uninterested in church growth, and lacks leadership to do either, sell that piece of property, or offer it to a developer for 20 years.    Put the money into triple rated bonds and take out just a few percent a year.

The endowment would subsidize the tentmaker’s vocation.  It may include insurance, pension, continuing education, transportation, housing allowance and $10,000 in hospitality (this would be a necessity).   Some may work other vocations for their stipend, but are liberated from requiring a day job that has benefits.  Perhaps tentmakers would conduct morning or afternoon services in a partnering Episcopal church, providing support or collaborating with overworked full time rectors who never have enough time to write a decent sermon.

Some may be people seeking ordination.  Others might be lay people who have other professional jobs.  Others might be interns in big companies or chaplains at universities.  And a few might be paid, full-time tentmakers whose only job is to bring the gospel to the people.

Tentmakers will have to be special sorts.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s terms, they will be “connectors”  and “mavens” of spirituality.  They will be eager to make friends, build community, and organize.   They will meet groups in bars, movie theaters, providing opportunities for people to serve.  They may invite people they meet to church, or they may also encourage rectors, and continue networking.  They will be ready when people have questions about spirituality, Jesus and God.   I suspect that they will be extroverts of a sort, good at music, with a sense of jouissance.

Such a position would have to have clear expectations and a way for people to be evaluated, encouraged and trained.  But an endowment would give such people freedom to experiment and be creative in their ministry.

Selling 10 churches in NYC could an endowment of about $50 million dollars.  That would allow us to fund anywhere from 30 to 70 people willing to be the church in the world.   Selling an additional 100 (or even 1000!) churches throughout the country for the purpose of funding people, rather than buildings, would show some audacity and foresight.  We would be the first denomination to fund the leadership of the next wave of churches, the emerging church.

ACNA might just be offering TEC that opportunity.  Sell them the buildings.   God bless them if they can do better.

The New Province

A few initial thoughts about the new province:

1) Christians getting together outside of their own church can be a good thing. They leave the provinciality of their local congregation, once founded, for example on hating Anglo-Catholics or objecting to wimmyn on the altar of God. Those edges, now revealed to be adiaphora, will be smoothed.

2) I’m impressed with an organiation where Evangelicals are hanging with Catholics, Catholics are hanging out with wannabe catholics and whites are submitting to blacks.   Those who hated the idea of Women on the altar will room with people who merely didn’t like the 1979 prayerbook.  Those who didn’t like Pike will hang out with those who only left because of some other reason, like incense.  In this way they will be kind of like TEC, except for the gay thing.

3) A new province doesn’t mean that TEC won’t be recognized. It simply means that instead of engaging with TEC on a national level, they’ll be engaging at an international level.  They’ll probably run into us in coffee shops or some Renaissance Festival.

4) Question: Does Bob Duncan secretly want to be a pope?

5) The curmudgeonly priests who didn’t like to hang out with other diocesan clergy now have a home with other curmudgeons.

6) Common Cause doesn’t quite recognize they have an image problem.  They don’t realize that an image problem might be important when dealing with the press.

7) Perhaps, now that we’re out of their system, they’ll discover that the challenges of the culture to the Christian Churches are far deeper than sexuality or reading the bible.  People are going to continue to have sex, and would rather watch the bible on YouTube.

8) They’ve got a lot of bishops. Bishops are trouble.  Mad trouble.

9) TEC’s challenge remains. Does it have the leadership to capitalize on being liberated from these continuing churches? The institutional church is dying. Can TEC reconfigure itself to make tentmakers?

10) If the liberal church dies, it is the remnant conservatives who will inherit the body of The Episcopal Church.  And they will be in a much stronger place to proclaim the Gospel.

11) Yet, if there remains a witness to an intellectually credible, progressive church, we modernists have nothing to worry about.