A Call to the Leadership of The Episcopal Church to Address with Greater Urgency the Three Challenges Confronting our Parishes
Introduction
With the approaching
General Convention of the Episcopal Church, my purpose in writing this paper is
to communicate a greater awareness of three major challenges confronting
Episcopal congregations and the urgent need we have for our leaders to address
these issues. With over 30 years of experience in analyzing and addressing the
dynamics and potentials of congregations, I believe the present and future
effectiveness and, in some cases, the very existence of our congregations as
thriving, transformative communities of faith are in question. I will propose
strategic responses to this increasingly urgent situation and request that our Bishops
and Deputies to Convention take the necessary steps that will inspire and enable
broad based initiatives by Clergy and Lay leaders throughout the wider Church
on national, regional, and diocesan levels. My overall goal is to further the
work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through renewed and effective means.
The ongoing decline in the number of
our congregations and those participating regularly in their worship and work is
well documented. These trends are
accentuated by our continuing inability to reach newer, younger, and diverse
people. Obviously, a now shortened General Convention will make the awareness
of and addressing these challenges even more difficult. Yet, it must happen,
and the renewal and redevelopment of our congregations must be prioritized by
the Convention and extended into the whole Church. The three challenges are:
1.
A
failure to form ordained leaders to do the work of congregational revitalization
and of planting new communities of faith.
2.
A
failure in the spiritual formation of present and new members in the work of
following Jesus and his of way love.
3. A failure in reaching newer, younger, and diverse people with the good news of Jesus’ resurrection and God’s reign.
My purpose is not to have our leaders
wringing their hands about these failures or even worse becoming resigned to
them. In my work with local congregations, I am absolutely assured that, with
God’s help, we can turn around our current crisis and make this a time of renewal
and revitalization for the whole Church. But all change begins with awareness
and all leaders must begin with an honest assessment of our current realities.
Leaders and our Congregations
The trends indicate that 70% to 75% of our current congregations need revitalization. Yet, many of these congregations are stuck and resistant to change. The needed work includes clergy and lay leadership development, new member ministry, the formation of new and current members, and healthy working relationships between members of our congregations, and between those members and their clergy. This means we need our diocesan leaders and our clergy educated in this work. Regrettably, none of our current seminaries do a good job in preparing our future clergy for the present needs of our congregations. This is not a criticism of seminary education. I believe in seminaries and their methodologies that have developed over past decades. It is a criticism of the Church for assuming that three years of theological formation produces leaders capable of starting new church communities or revitalizing the ones we have. It is a declaration of the consequence of leaving the formation of leaders in the hands of specialized academics.
Today, almost all our seminaries through their deans are declaring that what they do is really leadership training for the Church. We need to be clear about two things. First, this is a marketing strategy aimed at diocesan bishops. Second, diocesan bishops are acutely aware that this is not what our seminaries are about. The wise bishops expect our seminaries to prepare women and men for the profession of ministry through learning the basics of the profession, just as law schools and medical schools teach their students the foundations of law and medicine. The not so wise bishops are happy if seminaries indoctrinate their candidates in the bishop’s own theological preferences and agendas. Thank God we still have wise bishops!
Those who teach leadership, as I have done for decades, know that leaders are developed primarily as they attempt to lead. The textbooks on leadership are secondary to the leaders’ development as they attempt to function in our churches and mission areas. Such work involves good theory combined with practice done under supervision and coaching. In recent years, more dioceses are attempting to provide such education for curates and new rectors. This is a good step forward. However, their efforts face two challenges.
The first is that many of our dioceses have too few resources to do this work effectively. I retired from the Diocese of Dallas which does curacy well, and I live in the Diocese of Texas that is able with its size and resources to provide much post-seminary education around leadership. They are, however, the exceptions to the general rule.
The second challenge is that education in leading, planting, and revitalizing congregations needs to be done by our clergy who have had demonstratable success in doing this kind of work. I often point out to leaders that few if any our diocesan leaders even bishops have had any experience in planting a church. Most of these leaders also have not led a congregation in revitalization. What they often have done is maintain already healthy congregations. This, of course, demands an important set of skills but is much different from the risky kind of leadership that those who lead new plants and congregations in need of revitalization must learn to provide.
What the Church is doing well is preparing clergy to pass the General Ordination Exams while at the very time there is a tremendous shortage of clergy prepared to do the primary work our Church needs to develop and lead healthy growing congregations. Thinking that our seminaries can add a class or two to change this is following the maxim “if you always do what you always have done, you will get what you have always gotten.” After all, “Insanity can best be described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Summary: A significant majority of our congregations need clergy formed in the spiritual, organizational, and relational skills and commitments required to lead the adaptive change required to revitalize a congregation. We also must identify and form clergy who are called and committed to planting new congregations.
I ask that our Bishops and Deputies
to General Convention help to create a training center for clergy leaders. This
could be modeled on the outstanding work done years ago by the College of
Preachers. Such an organization needs to be led and taught by clergy who have
done this work. They need both a solid understanding of congregational systems and
dynamics and the ability to teach and inspire others. This training center can
create a resource of experienced clergy available to supervise and coach future
leaders. Imagine our church transformed into a learning community that trains
future leaders ordained and lay in responding to the missional challenges we
face in the 21st century.
The State of Evangelism and New Member Ministry
Next, I want to write about the crisis in evangelism and leading others to faith in Christ, what we might call the front door and foundation of our communities. Let me begin by commending the ongoing and great work of the Invite, Welcome, Connect Ministry in equipping congregational leaders in building up our communities of faith. This is hands-on information for leaders who care about reaching and welcoming those outside the Church.
According to the Church, evangelism is to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that others are led to believe in him as Savior and follow him as Lord within the fellowship of his Church. We should be honest that today this definition is largely ignored. TEC’s functional definition of evangelism has become rooted in something like this: ‘We are out to make the world a more just and inclusive society, to bring in “the reign of God,” and we invite anyone who would like to help us in this task to join us.’ According to the Evangelism Network’s publications, we are also committed to saving the environment and planting gardens to help provide food to those in need. This too falls within the category of making the world a better place. After all, what better news can we share than God cares for those in need?
Before you think that this is a solely negative set of statements, let me clarify that I identify with a great deal with the Church’s efforts to be inclusive of all people and to be advocates of justice and protectors of the environment. These are all worthy works of the Church. However, this functional definition changes the way we invite others into the community of the Church.
To be more precise, we are not so much reaching out to all those willing to listen but rather we are recruiting like-minded people. As one priest said recently in a public forum, “We will not accept anyone in our church who does not accept fully all our LGBTQ people.” It was not surprising to hear this said in a public forum, but what was troubling was that not one person present objected. It would do no good in Episcopal circles to warn of the attitude of recruiting like-minded people because it has become so much the norm that a large majority of Episcopalians would not see anything wrong with it. However, I must point out that a community made up of like-minded people that will not let in anyone who does not agree with them is a better definition of a cult than a church.
Next, the current leaders of our Church have made Christianity principally about what is classically called “works.” Most Episcopal leaders still remember that salvation is a grace and gift of God, but now they often say salvation results from living lives “modeled for us by Jesus.” As one recent leader wrote, “It is not necessary for people to believe in Jesus as God or the Son of God or to worship him. We just need to follow his example.”
Further, while most Episcopalians are mindful of the classical formula that we are saved through God’s grace alone and not merely by our works, now we have a revised view of what salvation means. It is that God accepts us just the way we are. In other words, we have come to believe that therapeutic self-acceptance and salvation by grace are the same thing. Yes, there is a therapeutic benefit in self-acceptance, but salvation is not a therapeutic state which we can achieve on our own. Rather, salvation is the result of what God has done for us through sending us his only Son Jesus, while we were yet broken sinners, thus inviting our faithful response to and trust in his unearned, prevenient, and transformative love for us.
What I am highlighting is the
abysmal state of theological understanding that deconstructionism and
revisionist theology have brought about in a community where having correct
intentions and self-acceptance are the dominant themes. Fortunately, this is
not the only story of the Church. There are many especially younger clergy who
understand where all this leads us. But for now, many leaders keep repeating these
current themes.
I have been and continue to be a strong advocate for evangelism. This largely falls on deaf ears among my fellow Episcopal clergy, but I can assure you not among the laity. I continue to declare that evangelism “proclaiming the God News of Salvation in Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God and others, and the new life in the power of the Holy Spirit” is at the heart of our calling, just that it is out of step with the with the spirit of the times.
If I could provide a jolt to this mindset, what could I say? Why is it, I ask, that at so many public events of loss or tragedy voices are raised to sing “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me? I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see”? I would contend that beyond the meeting rooms of seminary professors and the gatherings of well-meaning church leaders lies the dominant DNA of faith that knows the desperate need people and our society have for redemption and transformation. And if you do not know this need, I would suggest the evening news as the best jolt to question these false assumptions with the grim reminder of the human condition. For example, is the message that we just need to love other people going to stop the rumbling of those Russian tanks? No, our dilemma is that we know what is right, but we are unable in and of ourselves to do it as Paul so powerfully preached! He goes on to ask, “who can free us from this bondage to sin and death?” “Jesus” is the resounding response the Christian community from the Resurrection until this day. As Thomas Cahill has written so clearly, Jesus is the icon of non-power and of God’s love.
Summary: The state of the Church
today is that we have lost the message of the life giving, liberating, and
loving Christ and we have sold our heritage of transformation in the power of
his resurrection for a bowl of good intentions and therapeutic self-love.
What can General Convention do to set the Church back on the right course? I would suggest that they direct our current leadership to recapture our historic Anglican formularies of faith and place in leadership positions those who are committed to our own definition of evangelism.
The Formation of Members
There are many examples of clergy and congregations that do an outstanding work in deepening the Christian formation of their members. This issue is dear to my heart because I believe that it is the continual work of the Church to grow our members into closer disciples of our Lord. For example, when I have taught preaching, I share that our time in the pulpit is an opportunity for the spiritual direction for our people. Part of our work as a clergy is to motivate people to have a longing for and to seek this spiritual growth.
The congregations that do this well have given thought and planning on how to do formation. They think through the steps and present a clear way forward. Those who benefit from spiritual direction know that this is precisely what a spiritual director does for individuals. Congregations that do spiritual formation well are following the same model.
There now is considerable research on congregations that shows that the spiritual growth of members has almost no correlation to the planned activities of their churches. According to this research, members mostly grow because they just happen to be at the right place at the right time and were challenged to take a step further into the Christian life. Such providential steps are unpredictable and often far apart. The gaps are rarely filled in by the regular intentional spiritual direction by their leaders and the formational practices of their congregations. The classical image of the Christian life and following Jesus is pilgrimage. Unfortunately, many of our leaders and congregations seem to have forgotten that we are after all headed somewhere others have gone before.
There is a great lesson from church planting about all of this. Church planters find that when they launch new congregations, they face a dilemma in our core value of using the three-year lectionary. Non-Episcopalians and non-Christians make up a large percentage of people in newly planted congregations. Using the common lectionary does not serve well in the early formation of those in these new congregations. Church planters often share that they had to plan the first months of services in ways that supported the presentation of the basics of the Christian faith via the lessons, gospels, and sermons. This involved using carefully selected scripture readings rather than those appointed by the lectionary.
Of course, a regular attending member will find that the Church’s seasons and lectionary are generally an enriching experience, but I would point out that there are many life-long Episcopalians with large gaps in their formation in understanding Christ and living out their call to believe and follow him. My point is that assuming that people can sit in our pews for years and “get it” is quite an assumption. As a one astute teacher once said, “It’s like putting people in a chicken coop and expecting them to eventually lay eggs.”
In consultation work with churches and in teaching congregational development to leaders, I often speak to the need for formation. I point out that this needs to be intentional and aimed at spiritual growth. Further, I describe the two paths that are necessary to a healthy congregation. The first is a clear tract to membership which means active participation in the congregation’s worship, ministries, and stewardship.
The second path is that of discipleship. I ask leaders to image a person or family that comes to their church as spiritual seekers, not already formed Christians. I then ask them to map out events, education, and experiences that will lead them in becoming intentional followers of Jesus Christ. Amazingly, once given the task, many of our leaders are up for the work. But how many congregations in TEC do this? How many of our clergy and lay leaders assume that attending Church 1, 2, 3, or even 4 Sundays a month will make that happen? Current experience shows that answer is TOO MANY.
This is not to negate the value of baptismal or confirmation instruction. Many of our churches put good effort into this. Unfortunately, many times these are aimed at becoming an Episcopalian. Once having completed this instruction followed by baptism or conformation, new people are treated as if they have arrived at the destination.
Because I am rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of TEC, I had a strong desire to make formation and spiritual direction part of the congregations I served. For example, when I was Dean at the Cathedral in Dallas, we created a core curriculum and a Cathedral Way of Life, a traditional Christian path for deepening one’s spiritual life as committed disciples of Jesus. We constantly invited both new members and long-time members to take these on. Were we perfect at this? Of course not, but we were intentional about it. When I retired from the Cathedral over half our members had signed on to following The Cathedral Way. It was the singularly most significant congregational dynamic that I had ever been a part of in years of ministry.
Summary: When we look at our congregations,
we see that too few of them have thought through a path of membership and many
fewer have thought through a path of discipleship. When it comes to formation,
the State of our congregations is that, despite some wonderful exceptions, most
of them are not doing this work.
What do our
congregations need given these issues?
What do I ask Deputies and Bishops to do to improve all the areas that have been presented? To answer this, I would like to look back on a significant time in our Church’s history. From 1995 to 2000, TEC was the only mainline denomination that was growing in membership, attendance, and adult baptisms. This is a fact that few leaders of our denominational community now either know or understand. More specifically, what was TEC doing for its congregations during this time of expansion and new member incorporation?
Starting in the middle of the decade of the 1990s, Charles Fulton of the Church Building Fund gathered those in dioceses who had direct responsibility for the development and health of our congregations. At its peak, we had 32 members in this dynamic but unofficial group. This represented a major effort to give direct support to local congregations.
Remember, no one joins TEC generically. People join our local congregations. Service the congregations, help their ability to include new people, attend to healthy organizational life, and share examples (benchmarks) of congregations with outstanding ministries, and the whole Church will benefit. That is what we do not have now. In fact, I was a member and leader of that creative and productive community who serviced congregations. Our slogan was “Healthy Leaders, Healthy Congregations.” It was also implicitly “Healthy Congregations, Healthy Denomination.”
Today many of the dioceses that once had capable people to provide these services are now too small to afford staff dedicated to this task. But such services to congregations are even more needed today than ever. The good news is that we have qualified, experienced leaders and more potential ones. We have exemplary congregations, but little of this work is done by the whole Church. During this same time span organizations such as the Alban Institute and even the Church Building Fund have changed their focus. Ironically, one of the people who benefited from this work in the 90s was our current Presiding Bishop. Bishop Curry does have people on his staff tasked with some of this work, but the offices at 815 are financially limited and are much too far removed from our local dioceses and congregations to provide this support effectively.
Imagine a Church that has 35 to 50 able leaders to provide direct services to our local congregations and you envision a healthy, growing, inclusive and diverse Episcopal Church. I am asking our Deputies and Bishops to make such services once again available to our congregations. This is NOT nostalgia; it is remembering a tremendously effective method of ministry that has been lost in the past two decades and that is sorely needed today.
If TEC wants to accomplish its faithful, noble, and inspiring goals, it must attend to the ongoing health of its congregations. What is the cost of not doing this? Remember, if we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we currently have, a community with high and inspired goals but no ability to maintain its own health and viability by reaching new and diverse people to accomplish the work that Jesus has called us to do.
What can our leaders do? We need a
new sense of urgency in building up the health and vitality of our
congregations especially in reaching newer, younger, and more diverse people
and forming them into fully formed disciples of Jesus Christ.
