This blog is in response to an article by Canon Neal Michell, an Episcopal Priest who works for the Bishop of Dallas. In his article, he discusses the current state of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States and the cause of its decline in membership.
http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/27546/
I also reference an excellent article written in response to Neal's article by Tim Fountain about the problem in the Episcopal Church. You should read these articles even if you are not Episcopalian. They apply to many denominations.
And my thoughts (angry, I admit) on the matter:
There are some truths here, but we Episcopalians (or Anglicans) need to beware: “We have found the enemy and it is us.” I agree that the leadership of tEC is completely out of touch with what is important to most Christians and are off tilting at the social justice, environmentalism, and peace windmills. But in our parishes and at the Diocesan level, we have to take the blame as well.
Tim Fountain’s response is right on: Most of our parishes are oriented to the stick-in-the-mud older generation. They don’t care about the next generations; instead they are focused on themselves and the way they remember the Episcopal Church of their youth. Their emphasis is on the status quo: maintain the beautiful churches their ancestors built, maintain the liturgy, and make sure the “right kind” of people are in the pews on Sunday. That way, they will be buried in the same church that is as beautiful as it was when their father or grandmother was buried there. Fountain refers to this as the church hospice.
I am a younger Episcopalian (44) with small children and I witnessed this attitude first hand at my previous church where I was a vestryman, very active in children’s and youth ministry, and a junior warden. I was often frustrated with our worship of the physical plant idol, often to the detriment or exclusion of mission and evangelism. The stalwarts said they wanted growth, but I found out only on their terms. We spent over $400,000 refurbishing our beautiful sanctuary (which I voted for while on the vestry). When we were done, the young in the church felt it was time to focus on missions and evangelism. Now we hear complaints that we don’t need a full-time youth minister because we don’t have that many youth in the church. And there is carping about spending money providing supper for youth group on Sunday night “for kids who don’t come to church here.” Kids who are members of the parish account for less than 1/3 of the kids at youth group. That sounds like evangelism to me.
Many, many times, I have regretted my commitment to this parish along with the massive amounts of time, energy, and money my wife and I put into it. It would have been so much better to find a school or community center to meet in and start an Episcopal church from a green field with no baggage.
I often asked my parish priest, who is no longer there and who I believe was frustrated with the same issues, if planting a church with no plans to ever build and own a building was antithetical to the Episcopalian way. Can you imagine the freedom a parish would have with no physical plant to maintain, care for, or grow comfortable and complacent in? Imagine being able to up and move to a larger facility or one that is more convenient for parishioners and leave the old building behind. I have a good friend who is a church planter (Evangelical Free Church) in Colorado. We had lunch over a year ago and I asked him if they ever planned to move out of the school where they meet now. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Not if I can help it.” The mortgage on a building would take money away from his church’s ministries and evangelism. Incidentally, this church which he planted 7 years ago, has twice the members and attendance as our 125 year old parish did. I should have sent my pledges to him.
Dioceses in the Episcopal Church need to have that attitude, although I’m skeptical we can elect bishops with that philosophy. Dioceses need to be focusing on young church planters who really want to evangelize and build a body of communicants, not a physically impressive building that will be three-quarters-empty in 50 years. That may mean that we let some parishes slowly dwindle away - will the last person who dies please turn out the lights and turn off the air conditioner?
Is there anger in my words? Certainly. But I am most angry at myself because I feel like I wasted 6 prime years of my life trying to force a parish to become what it didn’t want to be. And when I and others moved away or were driven away, the parish quickly returned to what it was before I joined, almost as if my family had never been there.
And that’s what we need to remember - we can’t just be angry at the Presiding Bishop for the state of the church, we also need to be mad at our Diocesan staff, our parish, and ourselves. Remember, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
