The State of the Church 2022: Blog 1

A non-authorized and personal reflection on the health of our churches.

One of the great experiences that I had as a Deputy to General Convention was the year that I served on the Committee on the State of the Church. This group reports to each General Convention on the State (health and vitality) of the Church.  The year I did this, we produced a great report with just criticisms mixed with insight and suggestions for the future. Delegates liked it.  I read everyone one of these reports since 1990, and some are both prophetic and profound.

If so, why have they had such little effect on the decisions of GC? The answer is systemic. To give the Committees some objectiveness, they are not allowed to propose legislation only make their report.  Ironically, the more profound and insightful these reports, the more complicated translating them into action becomes especially in a legislative body already overloaded with hundreds of resolutions prepared by join committees and commissions. GC is by all accounts a dysfunctional and oversized organization, but that is a subject for another time.

This blog series is about the state of our churches by one observer with 50 years of ordination and many years working with congregations and their leaders. By church, I do not mean the offices at 815 Second Avenue or even local diocesan entities.  I mean the local congregation where our people receive Word and Sacrament and are formed in Christ. The simple truth is this. If we continue to decline in membership and congregations, at what point do we cease to be any semblance of a Church? Imagine a Church in which the number of clergy including Bishops outnumber the members. That is where we are currently heading.

Here is my first reflection

70 to 80% of our current congregations need revitalization. This includes lay leadership development, new member ministry, formation of new and current members, and healthy working relationships among members and between members and our clergy. This means we need our diocesan leaders and our clergy educated in this work. Here is a list of our current seminaries that do a good job in preparing our future clergy for this.

Yes, you saw this correctly. There are NONE. Listen, this is not a criticism of seminary education. I believe in seminaries and their methodology as it has developed over past centuries. It is a criticism of the Church for assuming that three years of theological formation produces leaders capable of starting new communities or revitalizing the ones we have.  It is a declaration of the consequence of leaving the formation of leaders in the hands of academics.

Today, almost all our seminaries through their deans are declaring that what they do is really leadership for the Church. We need to be clear about two things. First, this is a marketing strategy aimed at Diocesan Bishops. Second, Diocesan Bishop 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 professionals the foundations of law and medicine.  The not so wise Bishops are happy if seminaries indoctrinate their candidates in the bishop’s theology preferences and agendas. Thank God we still have wise bishops! What part of Episcopal Church do we not understand?

Everyone who teaches leadership, as I have done for over 30 years, knows that we develop leaders as they attempt to lead.  The textbooks on leadership are secondary to the leaders attempts to function in our communities. Such work involves good theory combined with practice done under supervision and with coaching. In recent years, more dioceses have been providing such education for curates and for new Rectors. This is a great step forward.  However, it faces two challenges.

The first challenge is that many of our dioceses have too little resources in trying to do this work. I am 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 excepts to the general rule. 

The second challenge is that education in leading planting and revitalization needs to be done by our clergy who have had demonstratable success in doing this. I often point out to leaders that my experience is that few if any our Diocesan leaders even Bishops have had any experience in planting a Church. (Which by the way, does not stop them from having opinions on how it should be done.) Most of these leaders also have not led revitalization. What they 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 planting and revitalizing leaders must give.

In summary, my first observation about our churches in that many of them need clergy formed as leaders to revitalize congregations, many of which also resist change, but few clergy are prepared for such work. While there a hopeful example of offering this education, it is often done by people who have never done it themselves.

This means that we are preparing clergy, but at the same time, there is a tremendous void in the number of them prepared to do the work our churches now need. Thinking that our seminaries can add a class or two to change this void 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.”