Every so often, in and amongst the general chatter, something catches your attention. Crusty Old Dean (Bexley Hall’s Rev. Dr. Tom Ferguson) made this blogger sit up straight this morning in an entry on blips and germs in an entry he calls a manifesto.
If I’m reading him right, part of Ferguson’s argument is that truly to restructure things means something much more fundamental and wide-reaching than ecclesial decision making bodies are equipped to handle. It means accepting that history has been kind to The Episcopal Church, but that history is history. (One commenter’s remark that our denomination has already feasted on its seed corn is still haunting my coffee-addled imagination.)
What is that “something much more fundamental and wide-reaching”?
COD finds himself thinking that restructuring is so 2011. The past few months have convinced him that on the one hand the scope of change we are looking at in the next 50 years is so profound, and, on the other hand, how utterly incapable governing structures currently are at shaping a discussion about what is needed (a quick run-through of the Blue Book Report shows that nothing of substance will likely emerge from this General Convention this summer, brought to us by the same people who can’t use Excel properly).
Collapse, my friends. That’s what’s coming.
1) Realize the blip is not normative, and that the much of the structures we have cannot be tweaked because the structures are part of the blip.
2) Dismantle national church structures to be solely canonical governance. Looks like we will spend 2012, just like we did in 2009, letting the General Convention and the Politburo that makes decisions slowly decide what we cannot do (in 2009, things like Liturgy & Music, Theological Education, and others; in 2012, Youth & Young Adult; in 2015, what next?) so they can struggle to do what they think they can still do or prefer to do. A slow, slow death march to irrelevance. Begin to end it now; shut it down but do so in order to
3) Begin a process to fully empower dioceses, provinces, networks to do the mission of the church. We have some assets: $250 million in endowment funds held by the DFMS; property in New York; a series of networks which, at times some more successfully than others, coordinated by denominational staff; a network of over 7,000 parishes and 100 dioceses and many, many affiliation based groups and networks. Empower the networks fully instead of having them have stuff periodically dumped on them every three years. We will still do many of the things we used to do, but in different ways, with broader buy-in and support — maybe Forma (formerly NAECED) or provinces would hire Young Adult & Youth Ministry network coordinators to work with congregations and dioceses instead of what 815 used to do.
Or, maybe like those germs which devastated the Aztecs, maybe a whole new and unexpected way of doing church is going to emerge. Or maybe it’s already here and we can’t fully empower it blowing millions on a building in New York and on holding a once-every-three-years meeting.
4) End parishes as clubs for members with a chaplain to minister to them, set up as Ponzi schemes for committees, which sees recruitment as getting people to serve on committees. Would many of the towns where our Episcopal churches are located even notice, or care, if they were to close? How many of our parishes function solely as clubs for the gathered? How many dioceses have 10%, 15%, 20%, of their parishes on diocesan support? How many dioceses are struggling to function? We have to change not only the diocesan structure, but fundamentally reshape what it means to be a parish and a diocese. Some of many options which are available, should we be willing to pursue them:
–We could recruit and train non-stipendiary priests to gracefully end parishes which are unwilling or unable to engage in any actual mission, evangelism, or discipleship; even develop a system of training and education for non-stipendiary priests which wouldn’t make them have to drop everything to go to seminary.
–In turn, for what full time clergy we have, train them not to be chaplains to a gathered community but missionaries and community organizers. This will also require a fundamental rethinking of seminary education in how we train such folks. You know, COD is a Dean, and is ready to partner with whomever is willing to work on the two points above.
This blogger would love to find a crack in the armor of the COD’s thoughts on the matter strictly for reasons of personal convenience, but can’t. Heck, I bet the COD would love to have a crack pointed out to him for the same reasons.
Anyway, read the whole darned thing and let’s have a conversation.