By Marshall Scott
I’ve been told that I have an odd outlook on the world. Mostly, I attribute it to my astigmatism. However, I have to admit to taking some pleasure in some experiences that others don’t – like, crisis calls in the middle of the night. (Well, it’s part of the job; although as I age the weakening flesh is challenging the willing spirit.)
As an example, I find myself thinking about some obscure, less attended things that will in time turn out to be quite important. Maybe it comes from working in an environment where tiny things like viruses and bacteria make a big difference. Maybe it comes from the promise that faith in quantity like a mustard seed can yield blessings all out of proportion. Whatever it is, I have this conviction that little things that go unnoticed can make a big difference.
I’ve been continuing to think about General Convention. Like many a powerful and moving experience, it’s taking some time to process it all, and to appreciate the many things that happened there. I’ve written about coming away with a sense of hope, and that hope remains; but with a little time passed I’m beginning to appreciate some more subtle things that we did.
With everyone else, I’ve read and thought about and commented on what happened with the hot button issues. However, there was another resolution that has stayed with me. That resolution was A061, and these were the most significant points:
“Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 76th General Convention direct the Executive Council to create a Committee of Strategic Planning to guide the Executive Council and the Church Center in their capacities as leaders of The Episcopal Church; and be it further
Resolved, That the Committee on Strategic Planning be charged with using the best appropriate planning methods available to develop a ten-year plan, updated annually, that identifies and tracks the missional, financial, societal, cultural and other challenges and opportunities facing The Episcopal Church; considers alternative paths of action; recommends a path; defines measurable indicators of success of the selected direction and a specific timeline; details resources needed and proposes how those resources will be gathered;”
I’ll admit that this caught my attention in no small part because strategic planning is an important part of the world I work in. It’s getting to be that time again when we update our strategic planning goals as a preliminary step to preparing our budget (and yes, even the chaplain participates in strategic planning). However, as we get away from the excitement and begin to wonder what this will mean over time, I think this is may turn out to be one of the most important actions from this General Convention for the future of the Church.
While the rest of the world wondered how we would manage to care both for our GLBT siblings and our international Anglican siblings, at General Convention we spoke about mission. The Presiding Bishop reminded us that “Mission is our life” as a Church in a sermon that focused on the sending out of the disciples. In her sermon, she focused on traveling light; and at first blush a process of strategic planning might seem its antithesis. However, while the disciples were instructed to travel light, they were clear as to where to go and to what to do when they got there. Their goals were clear, and attainable. They weren’t asked to walk to Rome or even to Damascus, but only to the towns in their neighborhood. Their instructions were clear, but were also flexible. They had options for when they were welcomed and when they weren’t, and for being good guests regardless of the resources of their hosts.
As we seek to live out our mission, it would be great if our directions were so simple. However, our circumstances are different enough to really complicate matters. There are so many more of us. Our reach, our neighborhood, is so much wider. Our rate of travel is now measured in seconds, if you think of how fast a message can move.
At the same time, we find ourselves pressed to rethink how we’ve done things in the past and how we want to do things in the future. In Anaheim we spent almost as much time on the budget as we did on D025, and more than we did on C063. For that matter, we shed almost as many tears. Once the Triennial Budget had been introduced, we prayed at almost every legislative session for the staff of the Episcopal Church Center who would lose their jobs. We spent much less time discussing explicitly the Report of the Commission on the State of the Church, but it was mentioned often enough that we could not ignore how our numbers have faded. At the same time, we were also agreed that our relations with our Anglican siblings were in flux, even if we differed on how to respond.
With all these things in mind, I think some strategic planning is certainly called for. We are called to “mission;” but what is our mission? That is, how do we get specific about how we will live out the Gospel? More particularly, how do we get specific about how we will live out the Gospel as a Church? Among all the organs in the body of Christ, what is our particular part in God’s mission, and what special charism has God given us as a body for that purpose? How, then, can our servant leaders in Executive Council and the Episcopal Church Center exercise that charism for our particular mission? Each of us tends to consider our own vocational focus and project it on the General Convention and Executive Council as if the Episcopal Church as a body were simply one member or one group of members writ large. I don’t think that’s an adequate way to find our vocation as a whole Church.
We would normally speak of this as discernment, and not as strategic planning. That, however, is to miss seeing strategic planning for what it is: it is a tool. In fact it can be quite a good tool, and one that, if it’s modeled well by the Executive Council and Church Center staff, and done well at other levels, can help us not only discern but move forward.
And I think this resolution calls for the right characteristics in our strategic planning. To begin with, the first and primary focus called for is on “missional challenges and opportunities.” While it also calls for examining “financial, societal, cultural and other challenges and opportunities,” I think we can hold these as supplementing and informing our understanding of challenges and opportunities for mission. Second, it calls for an ongoing, long-term process. We have a tendency to move from General Convention to General Convention, and arrive at each new triennium with little memory of what we have done before. I’ve been to eight General Conventions on one capacity or another, and I’m as troubled as anyone else by our institutional forgetfulness that has us trying to reinvent the wheel. Finally, the process called for is reflective and open to modification. It needs to be flexible and adaptable. In our world where things seem to change so rapidly, many institutions have found that flexibility allows for sustained mission, while inflexibility is death. Certainly, we don’t want to be “blown about by every wind,” whether theological or cultural. At the same time, if our discernment, our strategic planning is focused first on missional concerns we should be able to make good choices about when to stand and when to move.
My friend and colleague George Clifford has recently written here about how the structures of the Church might change to better support mission. We might make such choices of course, but they would be an enterprise of years, if not decades. In the meantime good discernment, using the tool of ongoing strategic planning, can help us find our vocation as a whole Church and pursue them as well as we can within the structures that we have. Indeed, a good process of strategic planning for the work of the Executive Council and the Episcopal Church Center could recommend structural changes, or demonstrate that changes were unnecessary.
In a world where shouting has come to replace discussion (and apparently both news and entertainment), we will still rumble around hot button issues. However, I think we will find our future shaped more by lower key but systemic changes taking place in the background. A good process for strategic planning for the Executive Council and the Episcopal Church Center isn’t sexy. It isn’t going to attract, much less hold, attention in our noisy, flashy world. However, I think it will be critical for the future of the Episcopal Church. We are called to the ministry of Christ, both as individuals and as a body. For that purpose, we need a structured and flexible process for discerning our vocation and the challenges and opportunities we face in living it out. The attention will continue to come to specific issues, specific aspects of that vocation; but good strategic planning will better prepare us and our servant leaders to address all the aspects of the vocation to which God calls us.
The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System, a ministry of the Diocese of West Missouri. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, and an associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.