Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Together with our local congregations, we’re creating a website or, more broadly, some kind of web-based platform to better market The Episcopal Church in southern Maryland. The goal is to create a site which would speak more compellingly to younger adults, as well as act as a pass-through to the websites of the twenty-two congregations that make-up this portion of our Diocese of Washington.

In this initial planning phase, the website is meeting with great support from our member congregations. We’ve found a local web-designer (who also happens to be a young adult Episcopalian) and for a very affordable fee she will create a new logo and web platform that will be attractive, simple, and help push people to identify with their nearby congregation(s).

Primarily, it’ll feature pictures – really good, really compelling people pictures. (We don’t want yet more pictures of our beloved buildings!) And the site’s picture slideshow will also scroll with key phrases from our Baptismal Covenant: community and prayer, justice and peace, love and serve, respect and dignity, teaching and fellowship. A pinpoint map will showcase the congregations of the region, perhaps with small pop-up boxes revealing service times and other vital information when the user moves her cursor over the point, and there will be a few words of welcome and description of what it means to be an Episcopal Christian and follower of Jesus. We’ve asked all twenty-two congregations to contribute something financially to this project, but we are not stipulating a dollar amount. The cost per congregation, if everyone paid the same amount, would be astonishingly low.

The point is that the message of The Episcopal Church is compelling and has great potential to make disciples of Jesus and transform lives. The problem, however, is that too many of our institutions have begun to serve their own needs. And religious seekers, really, aren’t inclined to help prop up an insular organization. A further challenge is that, in The Episcopal Church, we don’t have any mechanisms to encourage broader, bigger thinking and more compelling marketing campaigns. While it’s true that people don’t join a “denomination” nor do they choose to become members of a “diocese” – people join actual congregations of flesh-and-blood Christians – it’s a lingering challenge that our current polity pretty much leaves it up to the local congregation or community of congregations to act beyond their perceived self interest.

The way through is to realize that we’re all in this together, as fellow ECF blogger, Richelle Thompson, wrote so well back in March 2014. Sometimes, as in the example Richelle cites – specifically, the creative work she did to help re-brand The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Southern Ohio – dioceses are the key player to encourage this broader, bigger thinking. Sometimes it’s a region or a deanery. Sometimes it’s just you and your neighbor congregation. In our context, in fact, the keyword “southern Maryland” includes the southernmost portion of the Diocese of Maryland, as well, so this may be an opportunity to reach beyond diocesan lines. For those who don’t have an Episcopal neighbor church nearby, the principles are still the same.

As ironic as it may seem, given the fears and anxieties of a shrinking church, now is very much the time to act bigger, speak more broadly, and position ourselves to gain a greater market share for Christ. The way to do that is simple: act as though we’re all in this together.