What a 5.2 Million Dollar Surplus Reveals About our Lack of Leadership

The Executive Council members of the Episcopal Church were told that there was a $5.2 million surplus in the Church’s last 3-year Budget. What they debated doing with it tells us everything we need to know about the lack of vision and clear direction of our current leaders.

Why is this important? The Episcopal News Service reported that having received a report on the continuing decline of the Episcopal Church including the number of congregations that are closing, the Executive Board preferred to discuss “Abundance instead of Scarcity.” Evidently, when they did not like our trends, they chose to deny the facts and the consequences of this continued decline. Then as if to illustrate their complete lack of vision or direction, they debated about returning the 5.2 million dollar surplus to the dioceses.

The Backstory: Since 2003, the Episcopal Church has experienced a substantial decline in membership due to several complex reasons including a series of controversial decisions around sexuality. The current leadership on the wider Church level and in many of our dioceses seem to be unable to imagine any attempt to reverse these trends or to reach out to a wider group of unchurched people. So, given surplus money, they had no idea of how to use this for creating a healthy response to this decline.

The Alternative? Investing in parish revitalization. As the Church has declined, the number of mid-sized congregations that can afford a full-time ordained leader has also declined. Many congregations are now forced to seek part-time solutions for clergy aimed mostly at providing sacramental ministry to present members. While there are some significant stories of growth among some of these part-time situations, the general trend is that part-time clergy do not have the time or skills to help congregations grow by reaching new people especially from younger generations. In other words, part-time clergy is primarily a status quo solution, one that merely makes an adjustment to our decline.

Here is a direct action that they could have taken to strengthen our congregations. They could have used these funds to identify parishes with possible growth potential, we already have ministries that have the resources to do this. Then we could match these congregations to ordained leaders with skills to lead such congregations into revitalization and new member growth. If you are wondering if we have such clergy, the answer is yes, but they are not normally those clergy willing to supply and serve part-time. This means that the funds could be used to call such clergy and provide a subsidized salary for 3 to 5 years. The results of such an initiative could be monitored and what we learn shared with the wider Church. Imagine what 100 to 200 such congregations could do for our struggling denomination. Obviously, our Executive Council could not imagine this.

The fact that such an initiative was never even a topic reflects poorly on the Executive Council and their inability to understand that a healthy vibrant Church needs healthy vibrant congregations. Despite the inevitable affirmations they made of justice, diversity, and inclusion, it should be obvious that as important as these issues are, our leaders have no real idea how to include new people in our local congregations. I would point out that growth, inclusion, and diversity are not conflicting values. At the last minute, the Council approver $2 million to study the Episcopal Churches complacency in the past scandal of the Indigenous school ministries. This action is predictably not going to help the health and vitality of our present Church. It will also not directly help indigenous children today. Ironically, we have indigenous leaders who would know how to help their communities care for their children. One has to wonder who really will benefit from this action.  

As one knowledgeable organizational consultant observed about efforts to change an organization’s direction, “The people who got you into this mess are not going to get you out of it.” The recent Executive Council’s meeting showed us that even with millions of dollars at their disposal, most of them are just clueless about how to build up our congregations.  It should also be pointed out that what the Executive Council has in abundance is denial.

 

  

What Happens when a Great Teacher Demonstrates Great Scholarship?

In 2003, I attended a summer session at Regents in Vancouver to take a class taught by J.I. Packer titled “A History of Anglican Theology.” At that time Packer was one of the most read Evangelicals not just in the Anglican Church, but in the worldwide Evangelical community. The class was profound.

Why this is important? You would think being an English Evangelical that the class would have been presented with a strong bias toward his theological viewpoint. However, Dr. Packer was a prolific teacher and writer because he was first a great scholar. On each section from pre-Reformation to the modern era, his remarks were balanced and insightful. He would describe the theme or movement and talk about each’s strengths and weaknesses. One special delight was his knowledge of the good Puritan spiritual guides and writers which I learned about at my seminary by the Cliff Notes.

There were three areas in which he showed special prescience and a reconciling grace to those who you might think, given his Calvinistic theology, he would not.

For example, in covering the Oxford Movement which the evangelical English Bishop Ryle reviled, Packer was at moments very understanding. He saw their commitment to the scholarship of the early church fathers, the holiness of their lives, and the loving commitment of their early sacrificial ministry to the urban poor of the 19^th century. Many of the early Oxford movement leaders were dedicated to ministry among the working classes during the rise of the industrial revolution. Some were even Christian socialists.

Another important area for me was his appreciation for the Charismatic Movement, often much maligned by English Evangelicals. His book on Romans, Keeping in Step with the Spirit is a tour de force on this very topic and carefully points out what the movement got right.

I want to mention what he said at the end about the Liberal/Progressive Movement because it speaks to our current situation. What follows is a summary of his comments from my notes which I still revisit regularly.

First, the strength: Packer said this. Liberalism’s great strength and contribution to the Church is that essentially it is not so much a theological movement as a protest movement. The protest is over what is wrong in the Church and in society. And he underscored “there are always things in the status quo that need to be highlighted, criticized, and even reformed!” He mentioned several examples of this.

Second, the weakness: Packer pointed out that while liberals are often right on the mark in the protest and criticism, they are often the weakest on the ability to say what should be done, even at times unrealistic in their prescriptions. His final summary comment was “We need their voice, but I have NO idea what they would possible do if they end up running the Church!” Well, now we know.

When liberal/progressives got the leadership and power of the Church’s structure, what did they do? They used it to accomplish their ends at the expense of their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who do not believe in their theology or agendas, but who are still legitimately Anglicans. This attitude, of course, fractured the Anglican Church in North America. 

Those of us who remain in TEC and who speak on behalf of classical Anglicanism and the inclusive theological and ecumenical nature of our historic faith keep facing this issue of power over and over.

The important issues of social justice, racism, and gender equality have become for many of those who run things the imposition of shame and guilt to control the agenda of our community of faith. What would the Jesus of the Cross say about this? Alas, we know.

The Gospel writers are unanimous on the topic. Jesus declared, “MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD!” Jesus would not allow his disciples to use power to accomplish God’s reign of love. That is why he is the Prince of Peace and the incarnation of God’s love. And it is why Jesus of the New Testament remains such a captivating person to millions of people even outside of the Church, His way is the way of love and as one of his disciple’s wrote “love does not insist on its own way.” 

Many progressives like to say, “Love Wins.” Ultimately this is the message of the resurrection, but love wins most fully when it has no power and does not command others. This is why no matter how many times progressives repeat that we are a Church of inclusiveness and diversity, their words sound hollow. We now know that the words "inclusive and diverse" are code words for "people who agree with us." This is a long way from the simple invitation that was placed outside of Episcopal Congregations for over 100 years. These gracious words were "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You."