Four Strategies Needed Now

            In my blogs on the seven reasons the Episcopal Church is in decline, I say that “if” we know why we are in decline – start with the current realities – it is possible for us to map a more optimistic future.  Here are four strategies that I think we need now. 

           Please note that when I say “we” that I have in mind mostly leaders on the diocesan level.  I believe that the most effective strategies can be carried out on this level.  Of course, our national office could assist this work by helping to coordinate it, but I am so pessimistic that this will happen that I find any discussion of this too theoretical.  Let’s stick with what local leaders can do.  However, the first item would need to be done by a coalition of leaders beyond the local community.

1. Create a Mission Training Center (or Centers) for the preparation of missionary leaders:  This training would need three components.  First would be Mission/Apologetics.  Second would be Leadership; this would have a particular emphasis on helping people understand their own leadership style and to use it effectively in the service of the Church’s Mission.  Third would be an on-going follow up to support such leaders in their work including a kind of missionary order for the 21^st Century..

2. Recruit a Younger Generation of leaders:  Train these at the above centers and empower them for ministry to younger generations.  This means that Bishops and Commissions on Ministry especially must abandon the current strategies of waiting for people to come seeking ordination, and begin to search for younger leaders and challenge them to consider ordination.  

3. Develop a Comprehensive Plan for congregational revitalization: this would include, but not be limited to, assessing readiness for revitalization, providing the right leaders, intervention into dysfunctional congregations, strategies for meeting the needs of our family-size congregations, and developing effective educational materials for the congregational leaders on all levels.  

4. Develop a Systematic Plan for New Congregational starts; this would include reaching new people groups, developing parallel communities within the same church, and strategies to reach specialized communities.  All this is based on reaching those not currently served by the Church.  (And I will add again that for those of us in North America this must particularly focus on the Latino population.)

Will this work?  I certainly think that there is every reason to believe that just such strategies would work in the sense of helping reverse our decline and re-energizing the Church’s Mission.  

A critical question to ask is where can we predict to find the most resistance to initiating these strategies?  I would suggest the following:

1. Many of the current leaders at 815.
2. A number of current Bishops and Diocesan Staff Members who are stuck in current ways of doing things and threatened by suggestions that they change their current behavior.
3. Many current members of Commissions on Ministry
4. Most of the leadership of our current seminaries
5. Leaders of dysfunctional congregations who wish use our current climate of congregationalism to prevent diocesan intervention
6. All Episcopalians who believe that the Church is doing just fine and does not need systemic change – denial is a powerful human dynamic
7. Many clergy who prefer the current system of low accountability

A second question is where we will find the momentum and support for these needed changes.  I would suggest some of the following:

1. The increasing financial crisis generated by the on-gong decline in membership, attendance, and the number of congregations

2.  A small but growing group of current Bishops who understand the depth of our current crisis and who want to make a difference for the future.

3.  The leaders of the 20% of our congregations that are healthy, vibrant and mission directed

4.  Current leaders who are willing to be accountable to Mission and have little interest in titles, status, and security.  This includes a number of younger, future leaders who would give their lives to be part of such a movement.  

  

5.  A core of able lay leaders who are willing to support the needed strategies and are willing to invest financially in making them happen.